Light a candle with me - Let's Hold the Light Together

What prayer is, what it isn't, and what it can still do for you

So many of you lit candles, sent prayers, and held me in your thoughts while I healed from my hysterectomy last week. I have felt every single one. Thank you for that. It has been a true gift to be held through the tenderest parts of what I'm calling "new life in my crone era."

I want to talk about prayer this week: what it actually is, and what it can be for those of us who have complicated feelings about the word.

Here is what I know: prayer is imagination.

Do you remember being little, handed a blank page and a box of crayons, and asked to draw something you had to summon entirely from your mind? A purple-spotted dragon that breathed fire and ice. A rainbow-striped Liger (Lion + Tiger) that confounded its enemies with its pure strangeness. A toy for Santa's wishlist that hadn't been invented yet. The page didn't care whether you believed in dragons. It just asked you to imagine one.

Prayer is like that.

When you see someone in grief, or confusion, or pain, and you don't know what to say or do, you can light a candle. You can pull out a piece of paper. You can close your eyes and, in your mind's eye, summon forth the seemingly impossible. Imagine them well. Remember them doing the things they love. This is not child's play. This is allowing a reality to exist, even in its smallest form, so that it has somewhere to grow.

Prayer cannot bring back the dead. There are heartbreaking circumstances we simply have to muddle through. But we can imagine what soothing would look like. Feel like. Taste like.

As I pray for myself in this healing time, I keep returning to a memory my father shared with me — of sitting beside his mother while she was sick with ovarian cancer. She taught him to bird watch from her sitting room, where she spent most of her days. I hold that image, and then I place myself years from now with my own kids in their young adulthood, running and jumping and going on adventures — unconfined, fully alive — because I took this step today.

What else can we imagine for the people we love? For the ones we struggle to love?

I light a candle with you. I set my prayers to work.

It is a privilege to make this way with you.

--Elaine

P.S. Want to imagine more with other wayfinders? I'm putting together a Fall 2026 retreat in the Texas Hill Country. Learn more here

This reflection is part of Wayfinder's Weekly, my free Monday newsletter for people navigating threshold seasons. Subscribe here

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