i’ve been thinking about this quote from the hebrew bible (aka the old testament): “the spirit of man is the candle of the lord” (proverbs 20:27).
i like this imagery. i picture a small, fragile, but brightly burning flame within my heart. i think about my family, my friends, my coworkers, the people i bump into or pass by each day–each one of them has a similar flame burning within them. the little lights dance and burn deep within, under clothing, under skin, under the layers of flesh and bone, deep in the core of each person. perhaps the intensity varies, perhaps some flicker more than others or produce more smoke or haver a stronger bluish tinge, but the little fires are there, regardless.

i also imagine a sensitive camera mounted on a satellite circling around the earth, designed to photograph these lights. if it zoomed into uc irvine, it might spot my tiny flame among those of the tens of thousands of students and employees of the university as they crawl around like so many flaming ants. as the camera zoomed out to take in all of southern california, it might detect less movement, but perhaps it might catch the flickering of lights as they are born into the world, or as they are snuffed out. some pairs of lights might merge together to form one, and there would be the lines of lights traveling slowly up and down the freeways.

pull further back and the whole of the north and south american continents become visible, with concentrations of lights in the cities, near darkness in parts of the tundra, the desert, the great amazon jungle and most of the ocean surface.

as the earth rotates beneath the camera, africa slowly comes into view. in contrast with the relatively stable brilliance of europe, points of flame are rapidly flashing into existence while almost as many go black–the effect is perhaps not unlike a great pile of microscopic christmas tree lights.

if we zoomed into the current conflict in iraq, what would we see? certainly the candles would going out faster than they are being lit. would we see columns of little flames, advancing through the black desert, pushing a cloud of darkness before it? perhaps, as the five million lights of baghdad filled the screen, we would see small black patches suddenly appear here and there::