I am devoted to redeeming the miracle, magnificence and fecundity of the dark, so I am always a little sad when winter Solstice arrives in the Northern Hemisphere. I might not feel that way if our summer Solstice were all about celebrating the return of the dark. But it isn’t. You know it isn’t! And that hurts because we are so out of balance, we don’t even recognize our obsession with light.

We are born from the dark, we dream in the dark, there is even safety in the dark, and our wisdom, our ability to communicate, our ability to do anything including typing on my keyboard so I can share words with you, all of that rises from the dark within us, that universe inside that we tend to ignore. Besides,we spend half of our lives in the dark. Light and dark share equal opportunities for generating aliveness.

Remember, too, light without shadow blinds us – and overheats the planet…

David George Haskell in his book: Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction says on page 373: Daylight is a mask. When the veil of a glowing daytime sky falls away, it reveals stars of such abundance and brilliance that our senses and imaginations are unearthed into a huge and humbling cosmos.  Those few words – huge and humbling cosmos –  elicit tears from me – the joy of recognition, a resounding YES. We humans need humbling by the cosmos and urban light pollution makes that very VERY difficult!

So today, close to dark, I take myself for a solo stroll in a nearby, familiar park. I know I have to make an artful prayer to honor this great turning of the year. Taking few materials with me – a few white beans and a beach pebble I had painted – I trust nature will provide my other artmaking materials. I’m not sure where to go. I think about traipsing up a knoll I love, but don’t. I think about going to the spot where friends and I had made a glorious full moon nature mandala in the spring, but I don’t. As I wander, I think about going to a grove of trees, made special by hosting women’s circles there with a dear young woman friend who died a year ago from cancer. But I don’t go there either. Instead my feet veer off the paved path to a little used trail that I used to visit with a kid friend of mine. She always alerted me to subtleties I wouldn’t have noticed without her! My body follows my feet and suddenly there it is. I know with certainty that a bench made of wood – sodden and darkened from recent rains – blanketed by leaves in all shades of light was THE spot. Contrast between dark and light was already there. All I had to do was … well you can witness the process in the photos.

Here are the accompanying words, flowing out now as I relive the experience.

Winter Solstice Wisdom 2023

As dusk darkens,
the moon glides into greater brilliance.
Have you ever noticed
that the darker it gets,
the brighter lamplight appears?

Nighttime sparkling glory
simply obscured
by sun’s daily dawning.
But it’s easy to forget
that Sun pulls a shade,
closes a blind,
draws the drapes
blocking our awareness
of who we are and where we are
even as
she makes our lives
possible.

May we re-awaken to the true nature of life,
full of paradox:
remember light needs the dark
so we can see.