Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
This Friday, December 19th we are delighted to offer the Deep Rest Winter Solstice mini-retreat to help you slow down and savor the gifts of this time of year as we wait for the tipping point of darkness to light in the northern hemisphere and from light to darkness in the southern.
I love the quiet invitation of this time of year to descend into stillness. There is a primordial invitation to listen in the heart of the fertile darkness. Imagine the ancient Celtic people – over 5,000 years ago – constructing the many stone monuments that still dot the landscape of Ireland and beyond, aligned with the solstices and equinoxes.
At sunrise on the morning of the Winter Solstice, a light illumines the passageway into the interior chamber of Newgrange. It is a passage tomb, meaning it was a way to honor the dead. But the illumination within also points the way to new life. It is powerful to feel our connection to them by pausing and listening for the gifts this time of year brings.
This reflection is excerpted from our Sacred Seasons online retreat for the Celtic Wheel of the Year:
The Winter Solstice is another profound moment of pause and turning in the great cycle of the year. In Galway our apartment windows face east and south, so one of the great gifts I experience through the seasons is watching the sun make her pilgrimage across the horizon from summer solstice to winter solstice. It is quite a long journey, and on December 21st she will rest at her point furthest south, appearing to stand still for three days before making the return journey again in the long walk toward summer. It is a rhythm of journey, pause, and return, again and again. It reminds me a great deal of walking a labyrinth and the way we follow the path inward, pause and receive the gifts at the center, and then begin to move more fully out into the world carrying the light that is growing.
I love winter, especially Irish winters which are so rainy and grey, conducive to lighting candles and making a cup of tea. I adore the bare branches that reach up to the sky, their stark beauty, the way they reveal the basics. I love the quietness of winter, fewer people outside.
When we recognize that spring and summer always lead to autumn and winter, in our own lives we will perhaps not resist the times of releasing and resting that come to us.
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
-Wendell Berry
This poem speaks to me most pointedly about what embracing the darkness means. It does not mean carrying a light into the dark, it means walking right into the darkness and exploring its landscape so that our other senses become heightened and attuned to the sound of seeds jostling deep beneath the black soil, to hear the slow in and out breath of animals in hibernation, to feel our own heartbeats and the heartbeats of those we love, to experience the pulsing of womb-sounds within us just before the water gets ready to break.
Winter invites me to rest and contemplation, to making time for quiet walks in the few hours of light. The God of winter invites me into a healing rhythm of rest and renewal, of deep listening in the midst of stillness, of trusting the seeds sprouting deep within that have been planted. There is a harshness to this winter God as well, winter speaks to me of loss, it is the landscape of my grief in all its beauty and sorrow.
The God of winter is also the God of breaking through into the heart of that dark season with the glorious illumination of the Christ child. We too are invited to ponder what is incubating within us and how we are bringing the holy to birth in our lives.
Join us Friday, December 19th for our Deep Rest Winter Solstice mini-retreat. I’ll be co-facilitating with Carmen Acevedo Butcher and Te Martin who will offer their gifts of contemplative wisdom and music to help us receive the invitation of stillness and rest.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
PS – If you are in the southern hemisphere here is a reflection on the Summer Solstice.
