For several years I had carved “Marriage Crosses” for friends. This one on the left is undated, but probably done in 1970 or so. It was before I had found sources of hardwood, and was made from a drawer front of a discarded dresser, probably maple, and finished with brown shoe polish. Someone visiting asked if I could carve the symbol on a candle holder for a wedding, along with the names of the bride and groom, and the date of their marriage. Of course, I did.
It was my first “Wedding Candle”. Six months ago, that person’s daughter called me and asked if I was “still making wedding candles”. Her father had lost track of me, and wanted to order three more for…for two upcoming weddings and one as a belated wedding present for his son. It is an honor to be serving a second generation in this work! Here are two of the three.
The history of “Unity Candles” seems to be recent. In the wedding ceremony, bride and groom (or mothers of the bride and groom) each light a taper from a candle on the altar, and then together light a wedding candle. So my first customer wanted a commemorative base that would hold this wedding candle and serve the couple as a candle holder for frequent use, a reminder of that ritual. In time, an option of including on that candle holder not only a place for the large marriage candle, but also for those two tapers.
The first of these that I was asked to do was this one, for a couple whose Irish ancestry guided them to request a Celtic cross and Trinity symbol on the two sides, their names and wedding date around a Celtic knot on the front. A variation on this was used on the most recent one for a couple who I knew as students. When they said that they wanted only one symbol in addition to their names and dates, I mentioned that we could turn the “cube” diagonally. But the fact that their Marriage Candle emerged as something other than a diagonal cube invites a description of the artistic process in creating these candles, because wood is not plastic; it has a life of its own, and that life participates in the evolution of the final product.
For this most recent candle, I looked among my walnut logs and planks for a suitable piece. Finding one thick and wide enough, I took it to my band saw to slice off a cube. But when I looked at the cube, I found that what looked on the surface like a flawless log had indeed healed over a significant wound for the past forty years. There in the center of their candle base was an immense wound! To craft the candle, was not a matter of cutting the perfect cube and carving the sides. It was a matter of releasing from the wood the candle holder that was within. The process of fabrication was that of removing what was necessary to discover the treasure that was waiting to be brought to light. The wound was filled with resin and polished, that gem being the back face of the candle holder. It was guided by a song I had just a week before discovered, “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen: “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” On that back face I carved my own message to the couple…the final words of the reading at their Mass: “Love never fails”.
“We are, each of us angels with only one wing; and we can only fly by embracing one another.” These candles are as diverse as the couples for whom they have been made. One of our daughters had married an artistic man who with her had designed wedding invitations that had their sense of finding completion in each other. It is a quote by Luciano de Crescenzo. It is the simple, elegant line drawing that found a home in the palette of the marvelously figured “crotch” of the Black Walnut tree that I had brought back from Huron, Ohio, a gift of the mother of an IHM sister who wanted me to have it “so her neighbor wouldn’t make firewood out of it”. The “crotch” is the most elaborately figured wood in the tree, because it dances with the colors and grain created by the growth of two branches as they adapt to each other sharing the same life, the same sources of food and light.
One of these generally takes the better part of two days. Wedding Candles, Marriage Candles, Unity Candles all begin with the desires of the couple. What are the symbols that are important to them? The question itself allows me to participate in their evoking from themselves and each other the nature of their love. And from their desires the creation of these candles invites me to spend hours in the visual and tactile joy of honoring their love by working the surface of a piece of a wood of their preference that has grown for decades, from cutting to shaping to carving to smoothing to anointing with Tung Oil again and again and again.
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