I’ve opted to say this year “Happy All The Holidays!” when wishing people well.
It seems more fitting to me…
until I begin to consider what is a holiday for the Earth, the planet on which we all spin together.
Holidays, after all, are what humans have created to commemorate some story we tell ourselves, something we want to remember, something pivotal to a particular group of humans. We create rituals and expectations around those stories and remembrances. They are important, right?
But what is important to the Earth?
It all keeps going on.
And yet tonight there is a definite shift…the proportions of darkness and light change. Beginning tomorrow and each day after that until the Summer Solstice here in our northern hemisphere, we know we begin gaining moments of light…but how deeply do we sense this?
Tonight is a pivotal moment. We pivot. And our ancestors noticed. They felt it, sensed it, often more than just the changing of darkness and light, I suspect.
I often need a calendar to remind me of the pivot.
Hmmm.
I was amazed to discover on a voyage to Hawaii that some of our ancestors could navigate the massive Pacific Ocean by tasting the water, remembering by taste what continents and islands they were near based on what flowed into the water from those land masses, so different in each place.
Happy All The Holidays. All that’s important to each one of us, all of us on this Earth together noticing by sense or by calendar or by weather app that the darkness/light ratio is flipping. And will do it again in six months. And then again….
Or maybe the better greeting is simply ‘happiness’…one word a friend often says to me when we look at old photos from generations gone by, where even moments that were once painful now from a long distance feel differently. Each moment simply a moment in a much larger fabric. Happiness. The long view. Full of ‘moment by moment’ and pivots all at once.
I hope you can join our circle tonight.
Winter Solstice Zoom Party
hosted by Penny Costilla
TONIGHT – Thurs, Dec 21
6:30pm ET
offered by donation…$10-20 suggested
RSVP appreciated
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86501049196?pwd=M09nenVwU3RPWUNsN3dZSUw4QXNQZz09
Meeting ID: 865 0104 9196
Passcode: 215933
And I got a preview last night of Josiah’s drums he’ll invite us to use Jan 1 — wow! Thanks to those of you who have already registered. Details below and more coming, the long view.
Brian Shircliff
* donations for our drop-in programs help us pay our rent, and we know $10-20 could be too much for someone…all gifts welcome, from the change you found on the sidewalk today to a check if you won the lottery…no one is ever turned away for our drop-in classes…all truly welcome!
