Empowerment and Entanglement | December 14, 2025 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton

A candle is a small thing.

But one candle can light another.

And as it gives its flame to the other,

see how its own light…increases!

YOU ARE SUCH A LIGHT.

Light is the power to dispel darkness.

You have this power to move back the darkness in yourself

and in others – with the birth of light created when one mind illuminates another, when one heart kindles another, when one person strengthens another.

And its flame also enlarges within you as you pass it on.

The opening quote appears in Howard Thurman’s book, The Growing Edge and is attributed to the Hanukkah message of the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1955. It is a powerful message of empowerment and what a teacher of mine calls entanglement. So that not only are we powerful, but we are profoundly connected…reminding one of the Hindu concept of Indra’s Net. It is a net that goes on and on infinitely in every direction and has jewels at every intersection of the strands. These jewels reflect all the other jewels around it and actually has no individual existence, but instead are said to have mutual identity and mutual intercausality…thus entanglement. And it is within the web that empowerment occurs.

The chapter in The Growing Edge is entitled, The Eternal Light and includes a history of the story of Hanukkah. The following clip gives us the basic information.

https://www.britannica.com/video/explaining-the-origins-traditions-Hanukkah/-273876

But Thurman reveals more. He relates the context for this event. He writes of Syrian King Antiochus IV, who called himself a God. Indeed, his full name was Antiochus Epiphanes, meaning God manifest. He set a day each month to celebrate his own anniversary, a day for the people to worship him. He placed a picture of himself in the temple and all over Palestine. He prohibited Jewish culture and practices throughout the land and even his friends called him Antiochus Epimanes, which means half-mad. He tells of a man, Mattathias who refused to worship Antiochus and ended up fleeing to the hills and leading his sons and others in guerrilla warfare upon Antiochus that lasted for many years. Eventually, they were able to defeat him and when they took over the temple, we have the story of the oil….

Of course, it is hard to miss the parallels between Antiochus Epimanes and our current leader. Thurman continues with the Hanukkah message…

THROUGHOUT HISTORY children of darkness have tried to smother this passage of light from person to person. Throughout history dictators, large and small, have tried to darken, diminish and separate people by force.

But always in the end they fail.

For always somewhere in the world the light remains;

ready to burn its brightest where it is dark;

a light that began when God created the world:

“…Who coverest Thyself with light as with a garment…”

And every free people has remained free by resisting those who would extinguish in people the light of freedom, of love, of truth.

The message describes the history and present reality of children of darkness trying to smother the light…in Israel, the Sudan, Russia and the Ukraine, here in the United States, all over the world. The message says that in the end they fail. I think this has become a difficult statement to believe. It seems that, partially because of the seemingly ubiquitous nature of the power of what Matthew Fox continues to call evil, we imagine that we cannot get away from its clutches. It is included in our entire system of whiteness…white supremacy. Now, we know this is not just white people, though they are the ones who benefit from it, but includes our entire system…a system that has separated us from each other, from nature, indeed from the connected…the entangled reality itself. We have, I think, become blinded to this light…the light that began when God created the world. Now whether or not we use the term God, the current understanding of our origins is a massive explosion that then birthed stars…light and energy…perhaps of freedom, of love, of truth. It is the awe and wonder of what we know to be true…our original blessing. We see it in a flower, a tree, a fungus growing, a baby human or more than human being born. But as Hildegard pointed out in the 12^th century:

Now in the people that were meant to be green there is no more life of any kind. There is only shriveled barrenness. The winds are burdened by the utterly awful stink of evil, selfish goings-on. Thunderstorms menace. The air belches out the filthy uncleanliness of the peoples. The earth should not be injured!

The earth must not be destroyed!

We know this to be even more true today than it was then. And of course she knew that, God has arranged all things in the world in consideration of everything else…we are entangled. She knew, as John Muir knew that what happened to one part of the web happened to all of it. The hope is that our empowerment includes our own power to change things. Can we resist the awful stink of evil, selfish goings-on? The Hanukkah message continues:

TO DO OUR DAILY PART to increase this light, we must remember that a candle alone is a small thing, a person alone is a small thing,

a nation alone is a small thing.

Remembering this, we must recognize something much more than our indispensability to others. We must also remember their indispensability to us…

The resistance needed is hopefully not a guerrilla war, although at times it seems that is what is necessary. Instead, we need to do our daily part…we need to remember that we are part of the web of Creation and that what we do is reflected in those around us. Although we are indeed small, we are powerful in our connections…our entanglements… and our reflection in and indispensability to each other. We remember this as the lights are kindled…

“THESE LIGHTS WE NOW KINDLE…”

These words accompany the lighting of Hanukkah candles in the home,

and in the heart, to commemorate the eternal bridge of light which reaches from creation itself to the radiant spirit of free people.

In this spirit is celebrated the Festival of Hanukkah – the Festival of Light – wherein the candle that gives its light to the others is called “the servant candle.”

You, too, are strongest…when you serve.

So, we have come full circle, acknowledging that the candles that we kindle commemorate more than the winning of a battle…more than the miracle of the oil. It commemorates the eternal bridge…the bridge of light…from creation to our present moment. And we are actually only strong when we act in the full knowledge of the reality of our situation…the reality of the web of life of which we are a part. For we are being called to serve…to serve the Great Spirit…the all-pervading presence that is part of the very fiber of our being.

Empowerment and Entanglement. Both are at work inside of us and all around us…in every movement we make. If we remember this, then like Mattathias, we will speak up for justice. This will be our part in the web. Thurman asks, For what are you willing, for what am I willing to give up for life? He answers with the words of Jesus, Whosoever will lose his life for my sake will find it. This, he says is the Hanukkah message and the Christmas message. The following song that is translated from the Zulu as We are marching in the light of God might accompany our steps.