Dear Frank,

I’ve been thinking about Thanksgiving and how it seems to tuck little lanterns of light into the corners of our lives, the small kind, the lovely ones shaped from tradition, memories, and affection. My own lanterns come from the sweetest and oddest places, and most of them began long before I knew what Thanksgiving even meant.

 

One of my first comes from my grandmother, Allie Verta Chambers Kinard. She’d hum hymns while she sewed, there on Chilton Street in Marlin, Texas, sitting over her machine, stitching with perfect concentration. She hummed the old hymns, and without meaning to, she stitched them into me. I absorbed them the way a child absorbs the feeling of being safe in a room: quietly, automatically, as natural as breathing. Old hymns hold a strong place in my being because of her.

 

And it wasn’t just humming. When I stayed with her, she had two harmonicas, one for her and one for me. I’d back up to the space heater in my little nightgown she had made (as she did everything!) and get toasty, then make a running leap to get under the covers fast. We would sit up in her warm bed under layers of quilts, taking turns playing and singing. She taught me the hymns line by line, one harmonica between verses, one little-girl voice singing back. I still have those harmonicas. Those evenings were their own kind of soft, steady light.

 

And then there was my mother, with her dramatic, wholehearted love. When I brought home an A+, she threw her arms in the air and declared, “My precious little creature! You are the SMARTEST thing in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD!” The curtains believed her, the dog believed her, and I believed her. That is sunlight straight to the heart.

 

I’ve read the modern philosophies about not praising a child’s attributes, but their hard work. However, I’ve always felt the heart needs both. I know it does.  

 

So my children grew up with the same big-hearted, wonderfully dramatic love language: praise for who they were and praise for what they did.

 

And there was never any need to be the Equalizer-parent. A sibling might glance over with a flicker of envy, yes, but they knew perfectly well their own marvelous, over-the-top declaration was coming next. No child was ever left un-adored. Those are lanterns.

 

And now I hope to pass them on to my grandbabies. Just the other night, little Lewis (our brand new little one) woke from his sleep crying in that newly-awake way babies have. I stepped into the room and whispered the soft little things I always say, and he settled at the sound. Not because I’m remarkable, but simply because he knows my voice, a familiar voice at the right moment, its own kind of lantern.

 

And there’s the hymn I used to sing to each grandchild- “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning,” a song about sailors’ lanterns on the shore that had absolutely no business being a lullaby, but somehow, for me, it was. And “Love Lifted Me” which briefly belonged to Charles, until the children started trading favorites and giving themselves someone else’s Mamamom hymn!  

 

“Power in the Blood” started it all, with my first grandchild, Vivi. It’s objectively not lullaby material but makes tiny Lewis perfectly content. Imagine this, I’m rocking the sweetest smelling little baby, all bundled up in a neat package, his tiny hand gripping my index finger, and I’m asking him that first verse, “Would you be free from your burden of sin? Then reassuring him with the next line, “There’s power in the blood, power in the blood!”

 

And never mind that he’s six weeks old and hasn’t yet accumulated a single burden of sin — he looks up at me with those big trusting eyes as if the question is entirely reasonable. Maybe it helps that the man who wrote the hymn was also named Lewis. It’s as if he and my tiny Lewis have a quiet understanding across the centuries.

 

Little Jane, always attentive, has always seemed to listen so carefully. Henry experiences his hymn, as requested, right up in the bed with me at his sleepover. And David typically wants his repeated one more time. They’ve all heard them, and each claims a different one depending on the day. I’ve included the lyrics to each, below.  

 

This year’s Thanksgiving will bring its own lanterns. We’ll be at my house – nothing elaborate, just the sweetness of being together. Some pretty touches, yes, because I can’t help myself, and my mother’s silver of course, because it deserves to live. But no big production, just plates filled in the kitchen, then a simple table set for people I adore.

 

Frank, when I look at my life, I see lanterns everywhere:
• the hymns sewn into me by hands that loved me
• the harmonica lessons in that warm bed under quilts
• the children I raised who became extraordinary adults, and their spouses, what beautiful matches
• the grandchildren who settle when they hear the voices that have held them
• the silver I use every day because life is too short to keep beauty in drawers
• the recognition that love, when it’s real, doesn’t need much to shine

 

These tiny glimmers, when you gather enough of them, make you realize that your life has been lit far more generously than you knew at the time.

 

Regarding that favorite old hymn: there’s a depth beneath “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning” that might be missed. The song isn’t only about saving a sailor who is already half-lost at sea. It’s about something far more ordinary, far more daily. It’s about the lights that guide us through the normal moments of life, not just the difficult ones.

 

In the lyrics, the “upper light” is God: steady, unwavering, far above the fog and storms. That light never fails. But the “lower lights,” the lanterns along the shoreline, are the human lights, the everyday people placed in just the right spot in ordinary moments. As the hymn goes: “But to us He gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore.” 

 

In the old harbors, those shoreline lanterns didn’t just help sailors in emergencies.
They helped them:
• find the right inlet in the dark
• steer around a sandbar
• judge the tide
• line up properly with the break
• avoid drifting just a little too far off course
• and simply get home

 

They were meant not only for the dramatic rescue but for the nightly navigation.

 

Most of us don’t need to be “saved from doom” every day. But every day, we do need guidance in the subtle ways, the small ways, the ways that help us navigate:
• our moods
• our doubts
• our choices
• our relationships
• our ordinary Tuesday evenings
• our sense of where home is

 

The lower lights stayed lit. They are the steady lights Jesus meant when He said, “You are the light of the world… let your light shine.”

 

We don’t have to prepare to be lanterns.
We already are, by simply showing up with steadiness, patience and love. We light the shoreline for someone else, often without ever knowing it.  

 

At your Thanksgiving table, wherever it is, however simple or elaborate, know that your light is shining.

Love,
Jane

 

Power in the Blood

1 Would you be free from the burden of sin?
There’s power in the blood, power in the blood.
Would you o’er evil a victory win?
There’s wonderful power in the blood.

Refrain:
There is power, power, wonder-working power
in the blood of the Lamb;
there is power, power, wonder-working power
in the precious blood of the Lamb.

2 Would you be free from your passion and pride?
There’s power in the blood, power in the blood.
Come for a cleansing to Calvary’s tide.
There’s wonderful power in the blood. [Refrain]

3 Would you be whiter, much whiter than snow?
There’s power in the blood, power in the blood.
Sin-stains are lost in its life-giving flow;
there’s wonderful power in the blood. [Refrain]

4 Would you do service for Jesus your King?
There’s power in the blood, power in the blood.
Would you live daily His praises to sing?
There’s wonderful power in the blood. [Refrain)

By Lewis E Jones, 1899

 

Love Lifted Me

1 I was sinking deep in sin,
Far from the peaceful shore,
Very deeply stained within,
Sinking to rise no more;
But the Master of the sea
Heard my despairing cry,
From the waters lifted me–
Now safe am I.

Refrain:
Love lifted me,
Love lifted me,
When nothing else could help,
Love lifted me;
Love lifted me,
Love lifted me,
When nothing else could help,
Love lifted me.

2 All my heart to Him I give,
Ever to Him I’ll cling,
In His blessed presence live,
Ever His praises sing.
Love so mighty and so true
Merits my soul’s best songs;
Faithful, loving service, too,
To Him belongs. [Refrain]

3 Souls in danger, look above,
Jesus completely saves;
He will lift you by His love
Out of the angry waves.
He’s the Master of the sea,
Billows His will obey;
He your Savior wants to be–
Be saved today. [Refrain)

By James Rowe, 1912

 

Let the Lower Lights be Burning

1 Brightly beams our Father’s mercy
From His lighthouse evermore;
But to us He gives the keeping
Of the lights along the shore.

Refrain:
Let the lower lights be burning!
Send a gleam across the wave!
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman
You may rescue, you may save.

2 Dark the night of sin has settled,
Loud the angry billows roar;
Eager eyes are watching, longing,
For the lights along the shore. [Refrain]

3 Trim your feeble lamp, my brother!
Some poor seaman, tempest-tossed,
Trying now to make the harbor,
In the darkness may be lost. [Refrain)

By Phillip P. Bliss, 1871