Being the Light of Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice is the date in the Northern Hemisphere when the day is shortest, and the night is longest. Throughout the fall, the darkness has come sooner each night, and the dawn has been later and later. Even though we know intellectually the sun will rise again, something deep in our mammalian knowing takes nothing for granted and feels happiness and joy when the light reappears. I find myself smiling for no apparent reason in those moments. There's ancient magic in that.
 

The day/night of Winter Solstice is a liminal time. It is the moment between nights getting longer and nights getting shorter. It is the moment when movement seems to stop, like the pause at the end of breathing out before we begin to breathe in.
 

There is an old trick which uses this principle. If you are wanting to steady your hand for taking a picture or shooting an arrow, you breathe out, and in the pause before you breathe in, your body becomes still. Nothing interrupts the connection which forms between you and what you are aiming at. In this same way, during this one day between seasons, even the heavens seem to pause before they begin moving again. This gives us an opportunity to stop, to pause in all of our busy doing, and just for a moment be who we truly are, tuning in to where we are and who we are with, and truly being present to the interconnectedness of it all.
 

Just as there are deeper, more complicated meanings to the endings and transformations of Fall, so too it feels that our connection to light is much stronger. The more we are broken open, feeling the old break into pieces around us, transforming with a smash into new pieces of what has been and what can be, the more we seem to move into the darkness of the unknown and seek for the light.
 

Setting aside the manmade hullabaloo of Christmas and New Years for a moment, there is a natural rhythm to this time of year. What people readily notice and are most annoyed by in the Northern hemisphere, is the lack of light. We get up in the dark, we get home in the dark, and even if we have some time out in the light, it's often disrupted by weather. At times, it can be almost as dark at midday as at night due to storms, drenching rain, or fast falling snow. This brings on the annual experience of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which is a depression linked to the change over into the dark season.
 

Some other things we notice but often misdiagnose are the lower energy we seem to have concerning just about everything, which makes it even harder to keep up with demands or to care about anything which isn’t time critical. Or our desire to eat things we wouldn’t normally or even gain weight as if by osmosis. All of which is exacerbated by the amount of doing we’re doing, sleep we’re not, and carbs/sugar/caffeine we crave in order to make up the difference. We think this is a personal failing, lack of self-care, or something off we can rebalance with just a bit more of...well, something once we have enough time to figure it out. But the slower pace, the need to rest, to be fully present in ourselves and take stock of all which has been and is now, is seasonal and something we’re meant to lean into, not stimulate away.

                                                                     - Unknown