Wednesday 22 December 2021

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Winter Solstice Dec. 22, 2021



This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
 
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
 
If you remain generous,
Time will come good
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
—John O’Donoghue

I am reading John O’Donoghue’s work at the moment and opening to his radiant world view.  On the darkest, longest night of Earth’s trip around the sun, he warns us about losing our ‘hesitant light’, and to ‘remain generous’.  

Don’t doubt that, especially in the darkest of times, our light shines — burns — within. And therein lies the miracle, the beauty and brilliance of powering light into the darkness, which I believe we are being asked to do right now.  

But, it is the time to be slow, he reminds us, until the bitter weather passes.  It seems so obvious. But not to the majority of humanity apparently.  Rather, we hustle and bustle, consume, combust, careen hither and yon, to-ing and fro-ing, doing the ‘Countdown to Christmas’ shuffle.

 Mea culpa.  

We must take the cue from our Earth mother.  In the northern hemisphere she has closed her beautiful eyes to ‘lie low’.  Nature. Is. Never. Wrong.   It is only our hubris that would convince us otherwise.

I sat around a bonfire last night on Solstice Eve.  The sparks flew into the air above the circle of humans who heeded the call to come together to celebrate community on this auspicious date.  We offered our songs, our poems, our hopes and dreams, amid tears, laughter, and an abundance of love.  The White Feather travelled from hand to hand around the circle.  It circled once and then again.  

I was touched by the candour and vulnerability.  Male and female, elders and youngers, even a babe in arms joined in presence.  And ‘presence’ was the other quality that I felt so intensely.  No one was pretending.  Each one offered his or her gift with intent and purpose.  There is something about the dark that encloses us, brings us together, pulls us into the vortex of heart space.  

This is where we are being asked to live from now — our heart space.   Are you feeling it?  We are invited to say no to fear, that crippling, binding emotion that holds us down, and to open to love.  No to blame and guilt  Yes to vulnerability and compassion.  As O’Donoghue suggests, ‘remain generous’.

Our planet is pining for this upon our ‘midnight clear’.   We are the ‘angels bending near the Earth’ if we will wake up to this truth.  We are not here at this critical time by accident, nor just for the ride.  We are crew.
We are the Ones.  
Let us show up and ‘touch our harps of gold’.

And you will find your feet 
again on fresh pastures of promise
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.






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