‘It is such a soft and pleasant light.’ Photo: by Tim Umphreys on Unsplash
‘Commentary’, by Clifford Haigh, December 18, 1970
‘I find it difficult not to be sentimental about candles.’
During one of the first of the power cuts of last week (1) I was glad to retreat for a time from the semi-darkness of Drayton House to a neighbouring church still brightly lighted. Heaven will forgive me, I hope, for using the church as an office for a while and for certain unworthy, irreverent thoughts I had as my gaze was drawn towards the church’s candles. When, next day, after a spell of feeling like the foolish virgins, we got around to buying candles for the Friend office, it was from a vaguely Christian brotherhood that we bought them; and then we felt like the Presbyterian minister who wrote to The Times to say that, though he would never use candles in his church, he had been delighted to buy altar candles to use in the Manse. So oddly ‘ecumenical’ were some of the side effects of that ‘work to rule’.
