Candles in the dark

A quiet moment in Holy Trinity church this afternoon, where a candle burned in front of the icons in the Prayer Corner which is one of the lovely things to have happened in the church this past year. I'm posting it as an antidote to my gloomy morning blip from yesterday, for right now prayer seems to offer the only hope for the world I occupy.

The icon in the shadows comes from Crete; we brought it back many years ago now at the request of a former rector and it shows the effect of hanging in a damp lady chapel rather than in the dry environment of a Cretan mountain shrine - the gold leaf has been coming off the lower corner for a long time. The candle light glows on the gold and lights up the prayer requests on a heart-shaped frame off to the right.

Of course, Shakespeare got there before me: 
"How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”