The Winter Solstice: Return of the Light

 

Saint Lucia Swedish Celebration 

The longest night, the sweet and Blessed Dark, and the Rebirth of the Sun.  Perhaps the oldest of all human holy days, and source of many different sacred celebrations. In Sweden it is celebrated with St. Lucia's Day.  "Lucia" derives from the Latin word for "Light", and one such story concerns the arrival of a Christian martyr named Lucia who appeared in white, with a crown of light around her head, to give succor to the hungry and suffering.  Different stories and traditions surround St. Lucia in different countries, but all focus on central themes of service  and light.  Lucia symbolizes the coming end of the long winter nights and the return of light to the darkened world.

 

As the dark is holy, the generative place of rest, so is the Light holy.  On this, the longest and darkest night,  we light our candles and our bonfires as ancestors have done for uncounted centuries, around the world and in many languages, before us.  We bring light to darkness, light to each other, and we honor the Blessing of the Return of the Sun.  And I also reflect on the healing and creative powers of  what poet David Whyte called "sweet darkness", the times of silence and incubation that are wedded to the times of  illumination.

For myself, I ask what  Light I might hope to  ignite within myself.  What light can I offer that might illuminate not only my path, but perhaps assist the pathways of  other Beings of the Earth as well?  

"To go in the dark with a light

is to know the light. 

To know the dark, go dark.

 Go without sight, and find

 that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

 and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings."

Wendell Berry

Winter Solstice, Willits Community (2012)
 Photos courtesy JJ Idarius and Ann Waters

Wendell Berry - A 2013 Interview

"Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays.  Make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came."

“It’s mighty hard right now to think of anything that’s precious that isn’t endangered.  There are no sacred and un-sacred places -  there are only sacred and desecrated places. My belief is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts.” 

Wendell Berry

I was moved to share an interview with Wendell Berry, who has sometimes been called a
“ prophet of responsibility,” by another "prophet" I admire, journalist Bill Moyers.  Berry  lives and works on the Kentucky farm his family has tilled for 200 years, and is a true visionary and advocate  for the Earth.  He is a prolific writer, a poet, and an environmental  activist.  In 2011, he joined a four-day sit-in at the Kentucky governor’s office to protest mountaintop mining, a brutally destructive method of extracting coal. Moyers explores Berry’s views on civil disobedience as well as his strong opposition to agribusiness and massive industrial farms. They also discuss Berry’s support for sustainable farming and the local food movement.

“We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it. 
And to take good care of it we have to know it.  And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it.”

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry: Poet and Prophet is a collaboration between Mannes Productions, Inc. and Schumann Media Center, Inc., headed by Bill Moyers, which supports independent journalism and media programs to advance the understanding of the critical issues of democracy for the benefit of the public.

http://billmoyers.com/segment/wendell-berry-on-his-hopes-for-humanity/

The Winter Solstice

Serpent Mound illuminated through the efforts of the Friends of Serpent Mound

This has been a strange year, a year in which chaos and shadow and tragedy has been rising, as well as extraordinary bravery and new clarity.  A year of tremendous contrasts, and I think many of us are frightened now, and unsure of what to do.  Lately I have been feeling the need to make circles, to bring forth the "light" wherever it can be found, including inside me, that is inclusive, that reminds me of how sacred the world is, and how we, as human beings among so many incredible beings on our Mother Earth are all a part of each other.  And the Solstice is a Circle as well.

When language was young, when even the gods and goddesses had not yet entirely taken human form but still ran with the deer in the forest, or flew with the wings of crows, or were glimpsed the depths of a numinous pool, when World was still a conversation, and poems were spoken by both bards and by trees,  and our unimaginable ancestors danced and kept watch  through the long, cold, dark night....... even then, long before the writing of words, but perhaps not before the telling of tales,  this was a (w)holy day. 

The Sun was returning to the dark and sleeping world, bringing life-giving light and warmth.

Before ever there were Christmas lights, or candles, or even torches burning olive oil, fires were lit to welcome the Shining One returning from the depths of the underworld.  Stones aligned with the  Sun's journey made a pathway, and food and drink and gifts were given to the young god, just born,  to give him  strength for the new year and his long bright journey across the skylands. 

Perhaps  they  danced through the long cold night, and when they lit bonfires, they did so reverently and with love, knowing that they were  helping him on his way, keeping vigil for him.  Before ever he was called the Christ, or Osiris, or Lugh, he had other names, names lost to history that still whisper and sound sometimes sing again among the stones and circles of another time.   

 Planet Earth turns her face toward the glory of her star again,  She circles round, just as we do,  and we turn with her, every  creature held  within her fragile, azure skin.   May the Light bless you, and Shine in your life.

Winter Solstice, Willits Community (2012) Photo courtesy JJ Idarius & Ann Waters

  

  Happy Solstice!

I pledge allegiance

to the soil of Turtle Island,

and to the beings

who thereon dwell

one ecosystem in diversity

under the sun

With joyful

interpenetration for all.

Gary Snyder

Winter Solstice, Willits Community (2012) Photo courtesy JJ Idarius & Ann Waters

"To go in the dark with a light
is to know the light. 

To know the dark, go dark.
 Go without sight, and find
 that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
 and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings."

Wendell Berry

Winter Solstice inside Newgrange

SWEET DARKNESS
 

When your eyes are tired
the world is  tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes to recognize its own.

There you can be sure you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness
and the sweet confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

David Whyte

Photo by NASA

Wendell Barry

"There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

 ― Wendell Berry

“Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world.

Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?

 Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.”

― Wendell Berry