As often happens in the wake of a Poem-a-day spree on the blog, when the month (November or April) is over, I neglect the blog. This time, I did begin writing a piece in early December on spiritual gaslighting, but I couldn’t find my way the whole way through it, so I’ve been letting that sit here, waiting for me to come back and give it some energy and focus.
In the meantime, it’s Yuletide, Solstice season, Christmastide, the High Holy Days of the year, and I want to offer some seasonal greetings here at the Turning, the Pause, the Quiet and the Hush, the Between.
I know two things about the Dark Season of the Wheel of the Year: One is that I am physiologically inclined to depression and anxiety when I am not getting enough sunlight. The other is that I love the darkness, the shadows, the dreamtime and storytime, the flickering candles in the dusk, the fogs and mists of winter. So I live in the paradox of that, tending to my mental and physical health the best I can while reveling in the spiritual richness to be found in wandering through the shadows.
As my wise mother says, it can be both/and. I can be tending to my winter sadness AND reveling in the darkness at the same time.
In this season of lights and shadows, may you
revel and celebrate joy,
and sit quietly in the darkness with your shadows,
honor the pain and the memories,
and dance with delight at the new thing coming,
follow the stories of of anguish and horror,
and hold the stories of bravery and kindness,
feast merrily with your beloveds,
and offer food to those who do not have enough,
give in to your weariness, and take your rest,
and stay up all night with the revelers.
Take from the season what you need.
Let it offer you darkness and light, sorrow and joy,
glad tidings and the space to mourn.
May your heart be broken open
as you re-member yourself to the shadows,
as you re-call yourself to the light.
Keep track of your dreams in these days between Solstice and Christmas, between Christmas and New Year, New Year and Epiphany. Notice the persistent images and words that float around you in the day. What messages are you hearing? What words are asking for your attention? What birds and animals keep slipping through the edges of your awareness? Sometime around the New Year, or Epiphany, settle on one word or image or idea. Let that be your guide for the coming season, or the coming year. Between now and the beginning of February, when we celebrate our awareness of the growing light, the quickening of the Earthwomb–this six weeks is a time to consider what we need to bring into the light, and what we need to allow to gestate for a longer time in our own inner darkness.
Now is the time to claim your darkness. It might make me uncomfortable. It may make me afraid. But it’s my own shadow, my own personal cave. This is the time to gently probe the corners with our hands and toes, into the places where the light does not reach. In those places that make us afraid because we do not know them, there may also be treasures hidden. Blessings on your searching. Blessings on your darkness.
Gratitude List:
1. Time with Beloveds
2. The hush, the pause, the quiet, and the riotous revels
3. The spaces for both joy and sadness
4. Morning fog, and birds singing through the fog
5. The merry lights of my Advent candles in their birch candle holders
May we walk in Beauty!
Joyful Kwanzaa to my friends who are celebrating the first fruits: Today is Umoja, or Unity, time to reflect on ways in which we can bring unity in divided situations in the coming year.
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” —Mary Oliver
“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” ―Susan Sontag
“People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped; by influence, by power, by us.” —Wendell Berry
“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.” —Mary Oliver
“When you understand interconnectedness, it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying.”
—Robert A. F. Thurman
“It’s quiet now. So quiet that can almost hear other people’s dreams.” ―Gayle Forman
“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” ―Thich Nhat Hanh
“There is still a window of time. Nature can win If we give her a chance.”
—Dr. Jane Goodall
“By virtue of the Creation and, still more, of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. On the contrary, everything is sacred.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“I am as conscious as anyone of the gravity of the present situation for [hu]mankind. . . . And yet some instinct, developed in contact with life’s long past, tells me that salvation for us lies in the direction of the very danger the so terrifies us. . . . We are like travelers caught up in a current, trying to make our way back: an impossible and a fatal course. Salvation for us lies ahead, beyond the rapids. We must not turn back—we need a strong hand on the tiller, and a good compass.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“Many years from now, when the world I know now is only an echo, my love will still be alive, still be touching hearts and changing minds, still be bringing people a sense of peace and hope. The love we send out does not disappear. It is carried forward by those who receive it, adding their love to ours, sending it forward, a promise made and remade for generations. Rejoice: your love lives forever.” —Steven Charleston