May a Nation's Candles Glow until Our Soldiers Come Home

The Boston Herald

I put the candle in my window Thursday morning. I walked down to my cellar, rummaged through the Christmas decorations, found a candle with a working light and set it in the middle of my living room window.

It's been shining since, day and night.

I like that light. The TV makes noise in another room and illuminates in its own self-important way. But this small candle with its softer glow simply shines, as quiet as faith, as important as prayer, a symbol of hope and a front door left open and a family patiently waiting inside. 

"One candle for our troops," was the headline of a Herald editorial Tuesday. "In a community north of Boston, a single candle shines in the bedroom window of a young Marine, placed there by his parents to symbolize their hope for his safe return home, even as he pushes north toward Baghdad and unknown danger.”

"Light a Small Light for a Big Reason" began because of another Marine. In January, Nancy and Dan Wright's son Chris, a lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps, left his Needham home for the Middle East. The day he left, they received an electric holiday candle with a note attached. “Once a Christmas light, now a Chris light, this candle is given to you by the neighborhood you have given so much to. We each have a candle just like this one. Starting tonight we will all put this light in our window and leave it on 24 hours a day until Chris returns home. The light it puts out is small, but the message is not. We are thinking of and praying for all of you, especially Chris. Please let him know that whenever he comes home, day or night, the lights will be on.”

At first, these lights shone just in the homes of his family and friends. But the idea spread, and within days these "Chris Lights" burned in other neighborhoods and in storefronts in Needham's downtown. And, within weeks, because of phone calls and e-mails, Chris lights were shining in more than 1,000 homes in New Hampshire, Florida, North Carolina and Washington.

The idea continues to spread and across the country, people eager to do something to show they are thinking of and praying for America's troops are lighting a single candle for the whole world to see. "This is not a political issue," the Wrights say in bold print on their Web site.

For or against George Bush, Americans support the men and women in the armed services who are in the fight of their lives. This is about letting them know that we haven't moved on to something else, that we're not sitting around watching sitcoms and reality TV and zoning out. That we're focused on this war, too. And that we are committed to them and to their safety. 

The candle is about letting the troops know they are being thought of 24 hours a day. 

Protesters make the news. That's because they're loud and disruptive. As the Herald said Tuesday, "Television cameras are unlikely to be drawn by the light of a single candle.”

But our hearts are drawn.

And that's why this idea is spreading. 

Three thousand miles away, in the Monterey (Calif.) Herald, columnist Sharon Randall writes about the safety of home and the lights that lead you there and how she learned about "Chris lights" from a reader. And how she's glad she learned because she's putting a light in her window, too, and naming it after a soldier she knows. And urging everyone who reads her column to do the same.

I hope this idea spreads not just all over our country but throughout Canada. And that Canadians in every province unpack a Christmas light and let it shine day and night, showing its government and the world, too, that we are not divided. That politics aren't people. And that when it comes to the safety of American soldiers, Canadians do care.

Put a light in your window today. Call your friends and tell them to do the same. E-mail the people you don't call.

Spread the word, and keep the lights burning until this war has ended and all of our soldiers come home.