At the Solstice: Pax Gaia (Peace on Earth)

                        

  "What is the new mythology to be, the mythology of this unified earth as of one harmonious being?"

------ Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (1986)

Pax Gaia (the Peace of Earth) is the most compelling challenge of our time. Thomas Berry, speaking as he did for all the Relations on our beautiful planet,  introduced this t,heme after 9/11, reflecting on the urgent need to embrace a cosmology of a truly comprehensive Gaian  peace. It is a peace that transcends Pax Romana (the peace of an empire) and Pax Humana (peace among humans).  To imagine a Peace that extends to all the interwoven, interdependent life on Gaia, recognizing that what we do to others, and not just human, we are doing to ourselves, and to those who must come after us. Co-creators, not exploiters .  A great calling indeed, given the chaos and violence of our time.  But as Berry wrote, if we are to survive, and meet the evolutionary challenge we now face, holding that Pax in our minds and hearts is the only way.

"We are called as an evolving humanity to the Great Work that engenders Pax Gaia. To this end we create and foster deep cultural therapies that address the deep cultural pathology of our time that has brought about such ecological damage." 

Thomas Berry "Evening Thoughts" 2006)

"Only now we see with clarity that we live not so much in a cosmos (a place) as in a cosmogenesis (a process) -- scientific in its data, mythic in its form."  

~ The Universe Story by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry  

The Winter Solstice was perhaps the earliest universal holy day, celebrated in different ways   throughout the world from the earliest days of human culture.  The Solstice is the ancient center of the Holiday Season and our New Year.   When language was young, when even the gods and goddesses had not yet taken human forms within the human imagination, but they ran instead with deer in the forest, flew with the wings of crows, or were glimpsed nameless from the awed depths of every numinous pool, sensed as Presence in the womb depths of caves........ even then, the Return of the Light was a holy day, a day of celebration. 

Long ago ancestors lit fires to welcome the "shining god" who was the sun returning from mysterious underworld depths to bring the life giving Sun as the nights grew so long. They built stones or made circles or created doorways to be aligned with the sun's pathway. They lit fires as "sympathetic magic", fires to light and imitate the Sun's passage (which is why we still light candles, and Christmas lights, today, although no one remembers.........)

Welcoming the Sun, they left offerings of food to show their gratitude, and invented songs or danced throughout the longest cold night, encouraging, helping the Sun on its  difficult journey to return to the world, and to the promise of new life.    I remember at this time of the Holy/Wholly/Holidays that Holydays begin among our most ancient, instinctual roots, taproots that reach down, deeply entwined within the visible and invisible web of  Gaia's life.  I believe having a mythos, indeed, and experience of that taproot, is essential to our physical and spiritual health.  

Planet Earth turns her face toward her star again, circling in brilliant orbit, bearing every evolving, responsive, living, infinitely intertwined be-ing within her fragile, exquisite azure skin on her long journey.   

Perhaps we sensed, as the sun rose on the Winter Solstice,  that pre-verbal, instinctual knowing, found hidden beneath the pages of any book written with five fingered hands, beneath each inscribed layer of words, signs, hieroglyphs, pictures in jet or ochre or sepia, luminous beneath the oldest pages.  A veneer peels away, revealing a pentimento, an ancient heartbeat found within our genetic memories, shared again with all beings that keep vigil on the long night of the winter Solstice, and celebrate the Return of the Light with many different religious traditions.  Or with just awe and reverence, candles in the night.  

"Winter Solstice, Willits, California 2013" Photo by Jerri Jo Idarius

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

For the Winter Solstice, 2024

 

luminaria on Serpent Mound in Ohio

You, Darkness

 

You, darkness, that I come from

I love you more than all the fires

that fence in the world,

for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone

and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything –

shapes and fires, animals and myself,

how easily it gathers them! –

powers and people –

and it is possible 

a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

 

Rainer Maria Rilke

December Moon

 

Before going to bed

After a fall of snow

I look out on the field

Shining there in the moonlight

So calm, untouched and white

Snow silence fills my head

After I leave the window.

Hours later near dawn

When I look down again

The whole landscape has changed

The perfect surface gone

Criss-crossed and written on

Where the wild creatures ranged

While the moon rose and shone.

Why did my dog not bark?

Why did I hear no sound

There on the snow-locked ground

In the tumultuous dark?

How much can come, how much can go

When the December moon is bright,

What worlds of play we'll never know

Sleeping away the cold white night

After a fall of snow.

 

May Sarton

Pledge of Allegiance

 

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

Poetry for a Winter Solstice

luminaria on Serpent Mound in Ohio

 

You, Darkness

 

You, darkness, that I come from

I love you more than all the fires

that fence in the world,

for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone

and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything –

shapes and fires, animals and myself,

how easily it gathers them! –

powers and people –

and it is possible 

a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

 

Rainer Maria Rilke

December Moon

 

Before going to bed

After a fall of snow

I look out on the field

Shining there in the moonlight

So calm, untouched and white

Snow silence fills my head

After I leave the window.

Hours later near dawn

When I look down again

The whole landscape has changed

The perfect surface gone

Criss-crossed and written on

Where the wild creatures ranged

While the moon rose and shone.

Why did my dog not bark?

Why did I hear no sound

There on the snow-locked ground

In the tumultuous dark?

How much can come, how much can go

When the December moon is bright,

What worlds of play we'll never know

Sleeping away the cold white night

After a fall of snow.

 

May Sarton

Pledge of Allegiance

 

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

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

Winter Solstice

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 in the depths of a numinous pool........even then,  I think this was a holy day.  The Sun was returning to the sleeping world.

Fires were lit to welcome the Shining One returning from the underworld.  Stones aligned with the  Sun's journey made a pathway, and food and drink were left to give the Young God the strength he would need. 

Perhaps  they  danced through the long cold night, lighting   fires for him,  helping him on his way, keeping vigil.

These ancient roots are still found in many traditions, from the Lumaria of the Festival of Lights, to the lighting of the Menorah Candles at Hanukkah.   Planet Earth turns her face toward her star again,  she circles round,  and we turn with her, every  creat(e)ure  within her fragile, azure skin.   The light is returning!   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

Photo by NASA

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........ even then,  I think this was a holy day.  The Sun was returning to the sleeping world.


Fires were lit to welcome the Shining One returning from the underworld.  Stones aligned with the  Sun's journey made a pathway, and food and drink were left to give the young god strength.  Perhaps  they  danced through the long cold night, helping him on his way, keeping vigil.

Planet Earth turns her face toward her star again,  she circles round,  and we turn with her, every  creat(e)ure  within her fragile, azure skin.     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

THE SHORTEST DAY

BY SUSAN COOPER 

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive,

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us—Listen!!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,

This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!

The Winter Solstice

To day I remember that the Winter Solstice was perhaps the earliest universal holy day, celebrated in different ways in different places throughout the world from the earliest days of human culture. When language was young, when even the gods and goddesses had not yet taken human forms in the human imagination, but ran instead with deer in the forest, flew with the wings of crows, or were glimpsed nameless from the awed depths of every numinous pool........ even then, this was a holy day, a day of celebration.

Long ago ancestors lit fires before cave homes to welcome the shining god who was the sun return from mysterious underworld depths. They built stones or made circles or created doorways to be aligned with the sun's pathway. They left offerings of food to show their gratitude, they invented songs or danced throughout the long cold night, grateful, encouraging, hoping to help the Sun on his difficult journey to the promise of new life.

I remember today that holy days begin among our most ancient, instinctual roots, taproots that reach down, deeply entwined within the visible and invisible web of life. Planet Earth turns her face toward her star again, circling in brilliant orbit, bearing every evolving, responsive, living, infinitely conversant be-ing within her fragile, exquisite azure skin on her long journey.

Perhaps I can regain, for just one instant, that pre-verbal, instinctual animal knowing, found beneath the pages of any book written with five fingered hands, beneath each inscribed layer of words, signs, hieroglyphs, pictures in jet or ochre or sepia, the primal light, luminous beneath the oldest pages. Veneer peels away, revealing a pentimento, an ancient heartbeat, shared again with all beings that keep vigil on the night of the winter Solstice. The light is returning again.

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