Winter Solstice Readings

Without regard for the patterns or demands of modern life, the world turns on its axis and the seasons turn with it. In a group gathering earlier this week someone referred to winter as "the dusk of the year", which is a lovely way of expressing it. Dusk is a time of transition, when things of both the light and the dark may be making their way to where they need to be for the next period of their lives.

Much of my ancestry comes from the places where Celtic people lived, and they would have gathered on this night to light fires in the darkness. On this shortest day and longest night of the year, some of you may gather with friends and family at a fire or hearth to watch flames reach upward.  If I were at an open flame, I might practice a ritual I've read of that seems fitting for this night (more so than for New Year's Eve, which bears no relationship to natural cycles, only to human record-keeping): writing things I want to let go of on pieces of paper and consigning them to the fire to let them turn to ash and float up and away.

I start each day reading poetry, and this morning in addition to the sites I visit daily I went in search of winter solstice blessings, poems, and readings online and in my poetry collection. Sharing here ones I found that resonated for me with a snippet of text from some. These are excerpts only, not the entire poem or reading, and I encourage you to follow the links.

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Wendell Berry: "2007, VI" ["It is hard to have hope"]

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
and the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
which is the light of imagination. By it you see
the likeness of people in other places to yourself
in your place. It lights invariably the need for care
toward other people, other creatures, in other places
as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

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Jan Richardson: Winter Solstice: Blessing for the Longest Night

This is the night
when you can trust
that any direction
you go,
you will be walking
toward the dawn.

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Molly Remer: A Winter Solstice Blessing

May you circle and celebrate,
may you change and grow
May that which is waiting to be unlocked
be freed.

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Terry Windling: On Winter Solstice, a round-up of reading, art, and animation

In the mythic sense, we practice moving from darkness into light every morning of our lives. The task now is make that movement larger, to join together to carry the entire world through the long night to the dawn.

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Spirituality & Practice: Winter Solstice readings, poems, reflections, and practices

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Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Take Five

it is
after all
the longest night
and even though
tomorrow
it’s only one
more minute
of light
it is one
more
minute

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I'll close with a blessing by John O'Donohue. He wrote several that resonate at this time of year, when it's dark and cold in our shared hemisphere. Rather than his blessing for the solstice I'll share the first of his works I ever read.

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Beannacht

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

~ John O’Donohue ~

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Wishing you warmth, and light, and the peace that comes in darkness when we curl into ourselves and rest before new effort, before walking toward the dawn.