Light Is Returning (Charlie Murphy & Jami Sieber)

"Traditionally, the Winter Solstice, December 21, was considered the birth day of the sun, that magnificent point in time when the sun begins its return to the Earth again. In the midst of the longest darkest night, deep in the earth, even the seeds begin to stir with hope.

In times past and present, people gathered around bonfires, lit candles, sang songs of holiness and joy, and danced together to welcome the return of the light and the promise of new life. Homes were decorated with evergreen boughs, the symbol of life everlasting, and great feasts were prepared. We can still do much of this!

Now, more than ever, when so many people are suffering, isolated and alone, and the Earth herself seems in crisis, it is important to honor and celebrate these great shiftings of Earthly cycles. 

✨ We are the light, living stars on Earth reflecting our light back into the darkness. Our task is to remember to turn that light on in our hearts and souls. Let it reflect in who we are and what we do in the world and the possibilities are infinite.✨

This Solstice, join your energies with the thousands of others around the world who are lighting their fires and singing their songs into the darkness. Dance freely, set your intentions, let go, and release all that no longer serves you or humanity. Order your seeds, plan your gardens, dream your future, and never fear, the sun is returning again and a new dawn is on its way.

With love from Vermont,

Rosemary 🌿"

Happy Yule!  I have always appreciated and been in awe of the Winter Solstice, but, unlike many dear friends (M!), I have never actively celebrated it.  With my recent affinity for gardening leading me to Herbalism (what I like to call Kitchen Witchery), I am finding myself drawn to earth-centered beliefs and Pagan rituals.

Do you have a Solstice ritual?  I actually started one this year.  I of course had candles, sage, and the Internet to find blessings and words of wisdom, all accompanied by a mug of Cinnamon Apple Spice Tea, a recent gift from a dear friend... 🍵  As good a time as any to chase away the darkness and to conjure light in these troubled/trying/tragic times, right?

P.S.  If you're paying attention... yes, my blogging routine is Tuesdays and Fridays but, since today is the Winter Solstice, it only made sense to post on the actual day.. 🔥🕯🔥🕯🔥

SONG:  Light Is Returning by Charlie Murphy & Jami Sieber

BOOK:  Winter Solstice: An Essay by Nina MacLaughlin

POEM(S):  

I cannot tell you

how the light comes.

What I know

is that it is more ancient

than imagining.

That it travels

across an astounding expanse

to reach us.

That it loves

searching out

what is hidden

what is lost

what is forgotten

or in peril

or in pain.

That it has a fondness

for the body

for finding its way

toward flesh

for tracing the edges

of form

for shining forth

through the eye,

the hand,

the heart.

I cannot tell you

how the light comes,

but that it does.

That it will.

That it works its way

into the deepest dark

that enfolds you,

though it may seem

long ages in coming

or arrive in a shape

you did not foresee.

And so

may we this day

turn ourselves toward it.

May we lift our faces

to let it find us.

May we bend our bodies

to follow the arc it makes.

May we open

and open more

and open still

to the blessed light

that comes.

   - Jan Richardson 

Spell of the Christmas Cactus by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Something magic

about knowing

it’s the darkest days

that bring on the buds,

the extravagant bloom,

because oh, friend,

how dark it is.

To Know the Dark by Wendell Berry

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.

Love the Dark by James Crews

Sometimes it is only the darkness

that can free us. Sunlight might be

streaming in from all sides, yet you

crave the safety of drawn shades,

locked doors, the silenced phone.

Give yourself permission to rest

like the orchid whose bud must stay

shut tight as a chrysalis for days,

curled up and waiting for that final

moment of unfurling, when it opens

pink-veined, white wings of petals

wide to the sky, embracing the light

that comes only after the longest night.

QUOTE(S):  "Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight." ~ Joan Chittister and Rowan Williams

"Reclaim what has been forgotten.  Dance the fire of your longing under the waxing moon of your full presence.  Carry the seeds of your dreams awhile longer in the womb of Nature’s being.  Let the Earth incubate your wild if-onlys in its embryonic embrace as you re-member the self you were so many eons ago when you were forest and moonlight." ~ Edveeje Fairchild

"I danced with my shadows until they became part of my light." ~ Jodi Livon

Yule (Winter Solstice Song) - (Lisa Thiel)

artist: George Wolfe Plank

Happy Yule!  I have always appreciated and been in awe of the Winter Solstice, but, unlike many dear friends, I have never actively celebrated it.  With my recent affinity for gardening leading me to Herbalism (what I like to call Kitchen Witchery), I am finding myself drawn to earth-centered beliefs and Pagan rituals.

I've been wanting to have My Sweet Babboo (a.k.a. four-year-old grandson Colin) over to view my holiday decorations but, through a series of best-laid-plans-gone-awry, it just hasn't worked out yet... until now, when the plan is for me to pick him up from preschool (which I do a few times a week anyway) this afternoon, bring him to my house for a few hours, and then deliver him home to Sarah... 😍  

I cannot wait to walk him through the house, spotlighting my small lighted tree (similar to the one my Mom made in her ceramics class in the '60s)... my dining room table (with vintage ornaments in a square glass vase)... my "candle tree", with presents underneath... my Santa collection, lovingly acquired over the decades (and which I haven't displayed the last few years)... lighting candles throughout... then putting the Netflix fireplace on my TV screen and turning down the overhead lights, enjoying a snack of hot chocolate and cookies, and talking about our holiday wishes (not just which toys Santa is bringing, but of experiences and love... 💖 )

Maybe I have high expectations for those upcoming few hours but, smart and thoughtful kiddo that he is, I think he will more than live up to them.  And, bonding time with my Snugglebunny:  Priceless!

P.S.  Had to share the below article, as I'm recently enamored with Ms. Renkl's writing and am, in fact, giving her book of essays to various of my special peeps this holiday season... 🎁

Falling a Little Bit in Love with the Dark by Margaret Renkl

Dec. 19, 2022

Ms. Renkl is a contributing [NYT] Opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.

NASHVILLE — This year the winter solstice arrives on Dec. 21 in the shank of the dark afternoon. Officially the first day of astronomical winter, the solstice is better known as the shortest day of the year. I prefer to think of it as the longest night of the year, for I am making friends with darkness.

For most of my life, I looked forward to the solstice because it signals a shift to longer days. I was never a fan of winter, and earlier sunrises and later sunsets always felt to me like a kind of compensation for the cold. But my heart has been thawing these past years, watching as winter becomes ever more fragile, its cold imperiled by the changing climate, its darkness by our own foolishness and fear.

With the arrival of LED lighting, which costs so little to burn, every house has become an island of illumination, every city a blazing forest fire of artificial light. In my own backyard, it’s hard to enjoy the full moon because so many of our neighbors now leave their lights on all night long. And that’s without the holiday displays, each one bright enough to guide an airplane from the sky and land it safely in the middle of our street.

This resolve to snuff out every shadow of night — I wonder how closely it might be linked to the metaphorical darknesses of our age. Discord, suffering and sorrow are everywhere, all much darker than any winter night, and tilting Earth is not to blame for them. It’s not hard to understand what’s really to blame: Media and political figures alike profit when we are angry or afraid.

Literal darkness is simple by comparison, but people inclined to flood their own yards with light for safety’s sake seem not to know how little safety they’ve provided themselves or what measures of actual safety they have closed off in the attempt. They will never know what dangers might lurk beyond their own little circle of light because they’ve created the very circumstances that prevent their eyes from adjusting to darkness.

This is the flip side of Willy Loman’s lament about the loss of sunlight — “The grass don’t grow anymore, you can’t raise a carrot in the backyard,” he says in “Death of a Salesman.” Willy’s trouble is the proliferation of apartment houses. Ours is the proliferation of LEDs. Willy’s garden languishes, and we can no longer see in the dark.

It has become fashionable in fall for people to decorate their front porches with pumpkins of all colors and sizes. In Middle Tennessee, we don’t get more than a few days of true fall weather anymore, and no one I know grows pumpkins, so these porchscapes, as they are called, are mostly aspirational. Less fall than faux fall. An Instagram season.

But the pumpkins are real, heavy and ripe. Pumpkin season used to run right up to Thanksgiving, but Halloween now marks the end of the porchscapes. Apparently taking their cue from the big-box stores, Americans have decided to hang their Christmas lights on the day after Halloween.

It’s almost always a mistake to feed wildlife, in part because feeding habituates wild creatures to our presence. Animals that are not afraid of us tend to come to a bad end at the hands of people who are afraid of them. But I couldn’t bear to see those perfectly good pumpkins, dozens of them, heading to the landfill, so I mentioned on WhatsApp that I thought our wild neighbors would welcome a pumpkin dinner once the pumpkins were no longer useful as decorations.

My human neighbors responded by bringing me trunkloads of pumpkins. Day after day I would find our front bench piled high, and day after day I would carry the pumpkins out back and tuck them up against the fence around the play yard we built to keep our dog out of the wildlife sanctuary that is the rest of this half acre. Every morning I walk down to look at the impromptu fencescape, delighting in each new sign that a raucous feast has been unfolding in our backyard after dark.

The party has been going on for weeks now. Some of the pumpkins have been rolled across the yard, to what purpose I can’t guess. Some of the first pumpkins to arrive are beginning to rot now, but others are perfectly clean inside, gnawed down to the rind. The hollows fill up with rain, a natural water source for thirsty wildlife.

Many creatures in this part of the world will eat a pumpkin: squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, birds and turtles by day; mice, deer, opossums, skunks, raccoons, foxes and coyotes by night. Heading out to check the mail, I have watched more than one squirrel spring from the center of a giant pumpkin, rocket-launched from deep within, at the sound of my footfall.

But I don’t know who’s been feasting at night. Nearly every potential pumpkin eater in the suburbs has been spotted in this neighborhood during the 27 years we’ve lived here, and it could be any of them. It could be all of them, one after another. It would be so wonderful if it was all of them.

Which beautiful mysteries are out there in the dark, living their hidden lives so near our own unshadowed lives? I could hang our old trail camera on a nearby tree and probably find out, but so far I haven’t even charged the camera batteries. Something is holding me back, and I’m not sure what.

It might be fear. It would be a thrill to discover some rare and elusive creature delighting in these donated pumpkins, but the reverse is also true. What if I peered at all the grainy trail-cam images and found only the solitary opossum who sleeps under our shed? What if the only thing I learned from the camera is that most of my treasured backyard neighbors have been pushed out by all the changes in this changing city?

I know that’s not true, at least not yet. I can see the coyotes and the foxes with my own eyes. I see the skunks and the raccoons. Every morning Rascal heads down into his yard to sniff the pumpkins through the fence, and some mornings he leaps back in alarm at the scent of what must surely be a predator. Even so, I am afraid the day is coming when they will all be gone.

So I am teaching myself to rest in uncertainties, to revel in the secrets of darkness. I welcome the hungry creatures, cold and wild, that find their way in the dark to this unexpected bounty, but I don’t need to know who they are. Let them live out their lives in mystery. Let the cold nights hold them. Let the cold nights hold me, too.

SONG:  Yule (Winter Solstice Song) by Lisa Thiel

BOOK:  A Light in Life:  Meditations on Impermanence by Mary Pipher

POEM:  Celebration by M.E. Hope

 

 There is a reason we save this time

 of the year for celebration,

 this time when we need sun or star or flame

 to take us through the axis tip;

 when we need snowfall and miracle

 and warmth and song to carry us through

 till spring.  There is a reason

 we search the sky, listening for wingbeat,

 verse, the sound of doves hovering

 in the shelter of pine. We look toward

 one another, rather than away,

 pull in toward the hearth

 the sturdy chair, take the arms of one

 so loved, we could not go on

 without them, and in this

 pause, we pull in the world.

 The long winter night fills us:

 a renewal, a radiance, a reason for waking.

QUOTE(S):  "Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, beckons us into the darkness, inviting us into the depths of ourselves and asks us, “What must you let die at this time? What is calling to you to be born? What is your next step?” ~ Wild Woman Magic

"May you find peace in the promise of the solstice night, that each day forward is blessed with more light.  That the cycle of nature, unbroken and true, brings faith to your soul and wellbeing to you.  Rejoice in the darkness, in the silence find rest, and may the days that follow be abundantly blessed." ~ Unknown

“This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year's threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath, the door of a vanished house left ajar.“ ~ Margaret Atwood

“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

Solstice Carole (Wyrd Sisters)

From the New York Times Weekend Briefing:

Today is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the longest, darkest night of a long, dark year.

This winter’s darkness is as literal as it is metaphorical, with the catastrophic toll of Covid-19, and fear and dread for what is to come. But as our faith and politics reporter writes, it also serves as a reminder that for millenniums, “humans have turned to rituals and stories to remind one another of hope and deeper truths.”

There is some solace for the darkness: On Monday night, Jupiter and Saturn will almost kiss in the night sky, appearing as one bright planet. The last time they came this visibly close to each other was in the year 1226. Go out and look southwest in the hour after sunset.

For those looking for greater meaning, “this is the end of an era and the beginning of a new one,” said the astrologer Chani Nicholas.

Do you have a Solstice ritual?  I know my friend M does.  Maybe I'll start one this year.  I certainly have candles, herbs/sage, and the Internet to find blessings and words of wisdom.  As good a time as any to chase away the darkness and to conjure light in these troubled times, right?

NR:  Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse

SONG:  Solstice Carole by Wyrd Sisters

BOOK:  The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper, Carson Ellis (Illustrator) 

POEM:  A Winter Solstice Prayer by Edward Hays

The dark shadow of space leans over us

We are mindful that the darkness of greed, exploitation, and hatred

also lengthens its shadow over our small planet Earth.

As our ancestors feared death and evil and all the dark powers of winter,

we fear that the darkness of war, discrimination, and selfishness

may doom us and our planet to an eternal winter.

May we find hope in the lights we have kindled on this sacred night,

hope in one another and in all who form the web-work of peace and justice

that spans the world.

In the heart of every person on this Earth

burns the spark of luminous goodness;

in no heart is there total darkness.

May we who have celebrated this winter solstice,

by our lives and service, by our prayers and love,

call forth from one another the light and the love

that is hidden in every heart.

Amen.

QUOTE:  "Both the Winter and the Summer Solstices are expressions of love. They show us the opposition of light and dark, expansion and contraction, that characterize our experiences in the Earth school so that we can recognize our options as we move through our lives." ~ Gary Zukav

Baby, It's Cold Outside (the James Taylor/Natalie Cole version)

Hi Susan! Here is your Daily Horoscope for Tuesday, January 5:

Though you may be the life of the party on other days, right now you'd rather sit quietly with close family and read or play games. It's not a sign of anything serious -- you just need a break!

It is f*cking freezing here in South Florida - I have not left the house in four days. It is the first time I have turned on the heat in years - with highs in the 50's during the day and lows in the 30's at night, expected to extend through the end of the week, this is not normal!

My bundled-up household attire has ranged from a thermal dress, a long black sweater and some knock-off Uggs I got from Target (rather than springing for the real thing, which cost upwards of $200)... to my cute embellished-on-the-*ss sweatpants, a long-sleeved fleecy nightgown and some chenille slipper socks - over the last few days, I have made a big pot of my ground turkey and vegetable soup... as well as my sister's chicken-corn chowder recipe, both amazingly delicious, nutritious and cold-weather-comforting... but soon I *must* get dressed to venture out to Publix, because I am out of everything (d*mn these menfolk of mine and their appetites... :-)

My friend Stephen is always trying to get me to move north (to the Boston area) and I repeatedly tell him there aren't enough socks in the world - however, it's a nice change of pace to stay inside, watch mindless TV, catch up on wishlist reading and To Do computer stuff... and just generally hibernate (bears and bears and bears, oh my!)...

SONG: Baby, It's Cold Outside by Frank Loesser (and there are a bazillion covers!)

BOOK: Santa Claus: Super Spy--The Case of the Florida Freeze by Ryan Jacobson

POEM: Cold Watercolor by Wyatt Prunty

We saw the birds jockeying for the feeder.
Inside, the networks fed us New Year's Day.
And then there was the snow, in thick raw blots
Down past a row of windows where it caught,
Turning the sills to ridges, as outside
The streets, houses, and yards thickened
From their named and numbered ways into
A watercolor unreadably white . . .
And all the while the manic snow descending,
Sometimes glazed against a pane but mostly
Falling from itself into itself
Under a low, bruised, and indefinite sky . . .

Until the things I watched to measure change,
A recent stump, raised flower beds, porch steps —
Had disappeared, with the snow still falling
And the gray January light fading,
Fusing the trees and houses in one shade . . .
Suddenly a shadow now, beyond the glass
That mirrored us with looking out,
Ourselves out there, watches and rings reversed —
As reporters had the years reversed,
We said, looking out, seeing us looking in.

QUOTE: “Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.” ~ Edith Sitwell