the dark week
We have entered the darkest week of the year. My body and mind are well aware. It has not been easy, lately, maintaining my connection with the light and with lucidity and with sanity. The world has become very blurry.
But it is less than a week until the solstice! I feel about the solstice the way some people feel about Jesus, I think, or about giving birth. The solstice, the day the light wins out over the darkness, constantly becomes more holy to me. My lungs are tight with the anticipation of it. Solstice is my Christmas now. The longest night of the year will see my home and heart filled with the people I love. We will eat bread and cheese, we will drink sweet wine and crisp beer, and we will consume music and laughter. We will banish the darkness with firelight and revelry. We will be ancient and young and beautiful and greet the sun as he conquers the moon.
When I think about this week, I get goosebumps. I feel the need to be very intentional about this week. I want to mark each day with ritual, to prepare myself and my environment for the shift that is coming.
Friday night was the full moon, and the night the moon is closest to earth during the year. At midnight I sat cross-legged on the floor of my room with a glass of wine and a circle of candles around me. I burned incense and crushed rose petals between my fingers and meditated on the goodness inside of me, concentrating on giving my good self to the universe with love.
Tonight I am going to a Christmas party with some of my favorite people where we will cook together and drink the beer my boss makes himself. (I think there is something incredibly holy about making your own beer.) It is a good way to begin this week of darkness, I think, with friends and with the creation of good things.
I need more ideas, though--actions, thoughts, and rituals to carry me through this week, to the climax that is solstice. Goodness will be arriving all week long; Israel comes on Wednesday, Eric on Thursday, Tat on Friday, and the Light on Saturday. I will be lighting candles and incense, readying my house and body, and preparing food and drink throughout the week. I may make an effort to create more, to channel the darkness I feel bearing down on me into a pressure that squeezes goodness out of me, instead of sapping my strength.
Give me your ideas, please. How can I celebrate life this week as I prepare to welcome the light? What totemic rituals do you use in your celebrations of beauty? How do you channel the universe into your soul in order to better spill out her goodness on those around you?
3 comments:
Find some really fresh greens for a salad. I was at a farm party last weekend (it was a christmas party but with a bunch of young farmers all trying to make this dream a reality, that we can make or grow good food that other people will enjoy and can financially support ourselves or our families doing it). Someone brought a mustard greens salad with blue cheese dressing. It was absolutely delicious. I'd never had mustard greens and they are spicy, peppery and make your mouth tingle. Another lady at the table said how good it was to have GREENS in the WINTER and how your body just craves them. So I think you should splurge and find some good fresh greens and celebrate somethings still grown in the winter (with the help of greenhouses) and how refreshing they make your body feel as you eat them. An Eating Meditation. That is what I suggest :)
Israel... like as in Israel Cilio?? I don't know you.. haha but I know him. I read your blog because its linked to Phil's anyways I was just curious
ha, yeah, israel cilio. you know phil gray? and israel too? that is very strange to me! nice to meet you, carley. israel is in my house right now so i will go ask him about you.
Post a Comment