This was a video taken on New Year’s Eve a few years ago. Halved lemons were scooped and replaced with oil and a wick. We placed the lit oil lamps into the pond with prayers for peace and happiness.

“There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond us all, beyond the heavens, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in our heart.”

– Upanishads

“We can be mirrors that brightly reflect the glory of the Lord.”

—2 Corinthians 3:18, The Living Bible

“Swift As A Star Flicker

Prayer, it does ascend
Up from the mind into the air
Through the highest cumulus
In an orange dusky sky

And higher still, like a tailed comet
Out of earth’s realm of spiraling starlights
And into the black of space,
And higher still

Past a rare jeweled galaxy
With stars like sapphires, rubies, emeralds and diamonds
Where a nebulous cloud, a violet mountain births
Explodes new stars forth

A factory place, a sandcastle of space
And higher still,
To the top of the highest universe-
That second sky

Swift as a star flicker
To God’s ear
An ear pressed close to the keyhole
Of that other Kingdom’s door

An ear so fine
That it can hear
Unspoken prayer clear
As a trumpet’s mighty blare

And God’s spirit reaches forth
Heaven descends
To companion the soul
That prays.”

—Zellie M. Quinn