What the dark holds, and the light
A conifer tree is silhouetted against a dark sky.
This moment in the turning of the seasons is so very potent, such a time for nourishing and meaningful connection. So let us sit together for just a moment, around a fire perhaps, huddled for warmth while we speak what’s most true to one another.
The longest night is here, tonight. The winter solstice calls to me every year, but especially this one. I feel in my bones almost desperate for a moment to pause, to rest, to honor the deep and weighty dark. I am pulled down to the earth, pulled to lay down in the soil and let the moss and damp leaves cover me.
This feels right. So many animals are settling deep into their dens, having already stocked away precious resources; resources carried in their bodies and burrows. We are turning toward true Winter.
At the same time, the bright and colorful lights and the festivities of the season call me, too. I want to be surrounded by those I love, eat good food, listen to stories, and celebrate the traditions that tie us one to the other.
And, I see the urgency of empire, violence, and pain. All around, dear ones and strangers are grieving who and what’s been lost to them; others are fearful of what’s to come.
How do we hold and honor it all: The light and the dark, the need for rest and for movement, the growth and decay?
The beloved Mother Trees can be our teachers. As I look to them, I remember so many possibilities. They show me the centerpoint, the hub, the heart. They are teaching us how to be a being which can guide and protect, nurture and teach.
Beyond gender, beyond ideas of connection and kinship tied solely to reproduction, they remind us what it means to live as one part of a whole - how to share, and receive, to live and to die.
To be a Mother Tree means to be one point within a vast and infinite web of convergences. It means to live fully into the dark and the light. To be nourished from the light above and from the rich and teeming dark earth below.
I invite you, if it is right and supportive, to take some time today, tonight, and over the next little while to spend some time with the dark, and with the more-than-human world. Most of us already spend so much time immersed in light. Perhaps this season can be an opportunity to turn attention to the deepest dark, that of the earth below. The earth from which all life arises, the dark that holds us before our lives, and long after. What does this dark hold; what can it offer; what, if anything, does it need?
And, just as the longest night ends, the light returns. It is a seed held within the belly of the earth. Let us honor them both.
This solstice, I honor the trees and their plant kin whose roots search through the soil for nutrients to take up and to share. I honor their branches reaching into the sky, leaves turning light into sugar that feeds us all, and sweetens our lives.
As the year turns, I honor the dark and light within and around you. I’m immensely grateful for you, and for the bit of the precious life that you spend here with me, in the trees.
Tonight I’ll gather with a small group to honor and celebrate the solstice, and I’ll read a special poem. Here is (most) of that poem, for you!
Winter Solstice, by Rebecca Parker
[…]
Let there be a season
when holiness is heard, and
the splendor of living is revealed.
Stunned to stillness by beauty
we remember who we are and why we are here.
There are inexplicable mysteries.
We are not alone.
In the universe there moves a Wild One
whose gestures alter earth’s axis
toward love.
In the immense darkness
everything spins with joy.
The cosmos enfolds us.
We are caught in a web of stars,
cradled in a swaying embrace,
rocked by the holy night,
babes of the universe.
Let this be the time
we wake to life,
like spring wakes, in the moment
of winter solstice.
