May the "Light of Winter" bring you many blessings

Almost as if they knew what today marks, the cloudy skies broke and the sun shone in celebration of Winter Solstice (Celtic "Alban Arthan"). According to the linked blog posting, the Anishinaabeg celebrated Winter Solstice in a manner and time of the return of the sun, which happens a little while after today. According to me and what I see about me at this time of year, America and many other countries would better serve their citizens and others living within their borders if the prevailing cultures were a little more tempered with pagan elements.

Winter sunrise

Photo by J. Harrington

The ancient Celts

"did not take the return of the Sun for granted, and in addition they were suffering much more under the hardships of severe winter weather than we do today. For an agricultural society, whose survival depended mostly on crops, the return of the Sun was not just a matter of casual celebration, it was rather a matter of life or death."

The Anishinaabe celebrated a

"winter ceremony where you got together and you feasted. It’s the beginning. See Anishinaabe counted years from winter to winter…abi’aboon to abi’aboon. When you talk about last year you talk about nishkwaaj abi’aboon (the one that just came by) and then next would be minaawaa bitiboon for next winter. And this year, the present winter, is abi’aboon. The beginning of winter for us really is—or the New Year—is the full moon after solstice. When the sun starts to come back; the coming back of the sun after it stood still. After the sun starts coming back, then we know the next moon is really the New Year because we went by the moons rather than anything else. So the full moon was the New Year; that’s when you held a ceremony, feasted and sang, talked about it, talk about why we’re having it."

A writing course I took at The Loft years ago taught me a little about the idea of a Lakota "Winter Count." I'm sure you know that the Lakota and the Anishinaabe are separate and different Native American cultures. I had not thought about it until I started writing this post, but their individual cultures share an approach to counting time similar to that followed by we Judeo-Christian, Anglo-Saxons and our Gregorian calendar, that of measuring a year from Winter to Winter. Perhaps we still have access to much of the pagan wisdom needed to live closer to nature and provide for a thriving future for our descendants, all we have to do is burnish it some more. May Santa leave us all burnishing kits and the wisdom and energy to use them.

burning stored sun light

Photo by J. Harrington

Many of us have come to believe that our celebration of Christmas has become too commercial and has drifted, or been pushed, too far from the original meaning of the season, just as many of us have come to believe we can no longer continue to abuse nature as we have during the Industrial age. It's wonderful to know there are alternatives we can follow if that is what calls to our hearts and souls.

As we leave an age marked by our consumption of the sunlight stored in fossil fuels and enter a new age based on energy produced directly by sunlight or indirectly by sunlight created winds, it might be wise for us to take the return of the sun less and less for granted. Our knowledge of our dependence on it returns just as it returns, each day and year, light and energy to us.

Winter Solstice Chant

By Annie Finch

Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,

now you are uncurled and cover our eyes

with the edge of winter sky

leaning over us in icy stars.

Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,

come with your seasons, your fullness, your end.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Winter Solstice Eve #phenology

Tomorrow is the shortest day, longest night, of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. A few weeks later, days grow longer again, but by minute increments. It will be several weeks after that before we know if today's pre-Solstice thaw is in addition to or instead of our North Country's traditional January thaw. If current near term forecasts hold, we may get a very untraditional Christmas rain this coming weekend.

'tis the season to light one candle

Photo by J. Harrington

Presents are piling up around the tree. I think most (all?) of my shopping is done, in large part thanks to abundant assistance from the Better Half. Christmas around here is both Christmas and the Son Person's birthday. Christmas ends at noon when the birthday officially begins. I'm looking forward to some down time next week. That's when I'm going to focus ("Do or do not. There is no try!," as Yoda firmly informs us) on writing down some personal goals for 2017. Whatever they turn out to be, their essence will be seasonal and organic instead of simply numeric. They'll probably involve poetry, photography, writing, Minnesota, trout, fly-fishing, water, local food, community and economy and lots of the other topics that show up in these postings. I'm thinking that the overriding goal will be along the lines of tightening linkages among and increasing focus on those themes. For example, do I want to concentrate enough on photography to create and sell greeting cards with my photos on them? Maybe Santa will deliver some presents that will help sort out some priorities. I do know I don't want to spend the next four years focused on a defensive battle without spending more time enjoying what we're defending.

light more, if you can

Photo by J. Harrington

In anticipation of next week's activities, I'm rereading Poetry As Spiritual Experience. Solstice Eve and a few days before Christmas seem like the right time to do so. It became clear that I was following a path intended for me in these times as these words came into focus:

"As spiritual poet Robert Bly described our time: "... the impulse for reverence endures.... Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry."...

"Robert Frost said that poetry doesn't so much tell us anything new, but reminds us of things that we need to know but forgot."

A little further on, I reencountered The Prayer of St. Francis. The last time I had read The Prayer, it was in Kent Nerburn's book Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace. For this season of the year, and these times of our lives, I'm grateful to have rediscovered such wonderful companions. I hope you and yours find such wise and caring companions now and in your futures. (And, I would be severely remiss and violating the spirit of this season if I didn't call to your attention this story of Nerburn's: The cab ride I'll never forget.)

Making Peace

By Denise Levertov

A voice from the dark called out,

             ‘The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.’

                                   But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.

                                       A feeling towards it,

dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have

until we begin to utter its metaphors,

learning them as we speak.

                                              A line of peace might appear

if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,

revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,

questioned our needs, allowed

long pauses . . .

                        A cadence of peace might balance its weight

on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,

an energy field more intense than war,

might pulse then,

stanza by stanza into the world,

each act of living

one of its words, each word

a vibration of light—facets

of the forming crystal.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.