On Solstice’ Eve

Tomorrow real winter arrives with the solstice at 9:59 am hereabouts. Meteorological winter, the one for record keepers, began on December 1. Our local weather forecast, appropriately enough, includes snow and cold. The odds of a white Christmas are now looking excellent, with the prospect of more snow on Christmas Eve. December’s full moon was two days ago so the waning moon still will be bright on the solstice. We’ll see if it’s cloud-covered or not.

dawn: a new season; soon a new year; then new era?

Photo by J. Harrington

Even allowing for the vagaries of weather these days, I’m finding that natural events, and their progression, make much more sense and are more reliable than the social, cultural, and, especially, political events these days. Once again, Rebecca Solnit has helped provide a frame that offers a somewhat reassuring context for current events: Why are US rightwingers so angry? Because they know social change is coming. She notes the path of change during recent decades [all within my lifetime] as an example of progress:

The Civil Rights Act passed in 1964; in 1965, with Griswold v Connecticut, the supreme court overruled state laws criminalizing birth control and laid the groundwork for Roe v Wade six years later; only in 2015, Obergefell v Hodges established marriage equality for same-sex couples (while equality of rights between different-sex couples had also gradually been established as marriage became a less authoritarian institution). The right is trying to push the water back behind the dam. With deregulation and social service and tax cuts, they have succeeded in reestablishing an economy of extreme inequality, but not a society fully committed to that inequality.

While poking about the internet this morning, I once again came across the source of a Gary Snyder epigram I’ve been trying to practice for some years. He wrote: “Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.” According to the Bioneers' audio transcript of a recording of Snyder’s Four Changes, that essay is the source of the quote. It’s definitely worth a read because much of it is prescient. With a little optimism, I can find that it reinforces Solnit’s theme, allowing for the inevitable lags in social and behavioral changes.

This is Christmas week, in which many of us celebrate a birth that occurred more than 2000 years ago, while others celebrate pre-Christian holidays that occur at this time of year. It’s a time for joy, taking inventory and preparing for a new and, we hope, better year next year. Setbacks occur. Rise to the occasion like the morning sun.

Bleak Weather

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Dear love, where the red lillies blossomed and grew,

The white snows are falling;

And all through the wood, where I wandered with you,

The loud winds are calling;

And the robin that piped to us tune upon tune,

Neath the elm—you remember,

Over tree-top and mountain has followed the June,

And left us—December.

Has left, like a friend that is true in the sun,

And false in the shadows.

He has found new delights, in the land where he's gone,

Greener woodlands and meadows.

What care we? let him go! let the snow shroud the lea,

Let it drift on the heather!

We can sing through it all; I have you—you have me,

And we’ll laugh at the weather.

The old year may die, and a new one be born

That is bleaker and colder;

But it cannot dismay us; we dare it—we scorn,

For love makes us bolder.

Ah Robin! sing loud on the far-distant lea,

Thou friend in fair weather;

But here is a song sung, that’s fuller of glee,

By two warm hearts together.

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