The holiday season is now upon with all its divergent energies. The winter solstice has arrived and the season is suspended in a balance. Nothing is actually reversing in the physical world. The earth is still on its 23 degree axis, spinning more or less around its own magnetic poles. It still moves through space on its elliptical journey around the sun. All amazing facts we've learned about our world. Other planets in our solar system continue to do the same at their own rates, on their own tilts, each one reaching out with its gravitation pull to affect each of the others. And yet the effect here on earth is that the days get shorter and shorter, finally reaching a nadir, a point of stillness for a pause of some days (which isn’t really a pause, just that the increments of change are less than a minute), until slowly, almost imperceptibly, the length of days begins to increase again - first by a minute, then two, three, four. Our experience of it is quite dramatic, that the days get shorter and shorter and then reverse and get longer and longer. Yet the movement of the planets continues forward in an elliptical pattern.
And into the still point in the seasons, all over the world our various cultures and religions have plunked down the pagan Solstice, the Christian Christmas (even though Jesus was apparently born in what we know of as July), the Jewish Hanukkah, and the African American kwanzaa, all brightening the darkness with light and celebration that serve to distract us from the night. I sometimes feel the frantic activity around the holiday season is akin to primitive peoples going out with drums and noise-makers, fires and sacrifices, to reach into the inky darkness and will the light to return by desperate wanting and sheer volume.
These movements of the planets that change our days and nights remind us how vast are the forces of nature that create the conditions for our lives.
The effect of all these celebrations is a great coming together of friends, of families, of communities. Gift giving binds us together with generosity and gratitude. Cooking and breaking bread together, creating complex meals with sumptuous Yule logs or pecan pies or decorated Christmas cookies please the senses and create an atmosphere of plenty and contentment.
While we can easily see how all the celebrations get thrown out of balance by the need to make profits at Christmas and the greed that can overwhelm the nobler forces of the holidays, it’s perhaps helpful to come back to what we love about the holidays and keep the twin wholesome qualities of generosity and gratitude in mind.
We are grateful for many things - our families, our friends, our communities, our pets, our homes, our safety, our earth, air, water, food, for the gifts, for the celebrations, for moments together. We offer those we care about presents, celebrations, song, colored lights, invitations. We make donations to organizations in order to help brighten the lives of beings around the world, to ease the suffering, to comfort and help sustain. Our caring in this season and throughout the year is why this world works as well as it does. And it does work as well as it does.
It is up to each of us to offer our hearts and compassion and generosity and caring to the world - near to us and far away. The beautiful thing is that we want to do that. Our hearts are tender and responsive and can be moved by the plight of our friends and neighbors and also by those on the far side of this round earth tilting on its 23 degree axis, spinning around its magnetic poles, and flinging itself through space on an elliptical journey around the sun. Millions and millions of people are giving and sharing, comforting and caring, raising our voices in song, cooking meals, decorating cookies and homes, giving clothes and money, greetings and love to as many beings as we can during the stillness of this season and then later throughout the year-long mystery of movement. It is the best of us. And we can feel that quality of love and good will spilling forth from us. We can feel it especially strongly in this suspension, this stillness, this emptiness, this vast space of being.
That emptiness allows us to open to spaciousness, to include more and more beings in our widening hearts, to contemplate the idea of good will to all.
For nestled in the heart of all religions, all celebrations, all contemplative practice is the strange and beautiful, uplifting and transformative notion of good will to all and peace on earth.
I wish you all a beautiful holiday of connection - first with yourself and then in ever widening circles, with all beings.