I came into the room this morning and met my family with Solstice Greetings and a “woo hoo we made it!” Up here in the north the days get longer from now and even though perceptible difference is a few weeks away, the relief that the direction is clear is palpable. Solstice means the pause or the stopping—the perception the sun stops and turns. We have an ancient relationship with this turning. And it is such a model for how miraculous change comes to be (the original miracle, the return of the fertile summer conditions that sustain and fuel life).
As we find ourselves in challenging times when we crave significant change sometimes we spend too much thinking about the result of change and not the beginning of it. And though we’ve been sold the idea that there are magical solutions that bring about instant change and peace and a better you, most of the work behind those moments is the work of the solstice. The energy of the stopping then moving towards the next. But first we must figure out how to arrest the progress in one direction. The ancient ones knew this. Not to just celebrate high summer and harvests, but to linger in the moment of the reversal. To build monuments that held the light of that last moment before the new was born. The sacred pause at the end of the trajectory that precedes all incremental change. That’s the blessing of the Solstice, particularly Winter’s Solstice.
As I write this story of the time of great replacement and re-weaving of the ancient knowledge into the Christian faith, I feel like it was a solstice moment for humanity and that maybe we are in the reversal of that moment towards the change we need now.
What do you want to be beginning now? What steps can you imagine taking incrementally, moments by moments each day to harvest joyfully, magically later? For me it’s this work. The moment by moment of constructing and imagining this story. It’s also acting more collectively and becoming more and more conscious of the magical mycelium-like links between each other and the rest of the planet that we don’t even know how to name well yet. But we will. And I’m celebrating the beginning
I hope your season ahead is filled with meaningful moments and pauses of celebration.
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I appreciate you for being here with me now.
Much love,
Susie
Hi Susie and happy Solstice to you! I love the idea of a pause before the turning and I feel fully in it right now. From illness to wellness, from alone to all one, from procrastination to creation. I’m enjoying the dark, briefly, and my joy is in the new beginning I’m starting to surrender to now.
Btw, I’m excited to start my subscription to Saints and Stones. I hope you got my payment, though I may have made it a gift to myself. Anytime I get words from you, I’m happy, so send them soon!
All love,
Be