@laura-f, I love your humor! Funny about running into Ollie North. I used to work in DC and would often see Ralph Nader (usually with a scowl on his face). Also once saw Newt G. standing in front of the Brookings Institution. Funny story -- a few years ago I was at my local Whole Foods, in their health and wellness section of the store. I felt someone standing very close to me, looked to my left and saw a green parka that read, "U.S. Senate." Then I focused on the face of Orrin Hatch. We were both looking at the digestive supplements.
Wanted to share a beautiful solstice blessing/poem a friend shared online. It reminded me of the things we have been talking about here:
Winter Solstice Blessing ~ John O’Donohue
1
Somewhere, out at the edges, the night
is turning and the waves of darkness
Begin to brighten on the shore of dawn.
The heavy dark falls back to earth
And the freed air goes wild with light,
The heart fills with fresh, bright breath
And thoughts stir to give birth to color.
2
I arise today
In the name of Silence
Womb of the Word,
In the name of Stillness
Home of Belonging,
In the name of Solitude
Of the soul and the Earth.
I arise today
Blessed by all things,
Wings of breath,
Delight of eyes,
Wonder of whisper,
Intimacy of touch,
Eternity of soul,
Urgency of thought,
Miracle of health,
Embrace of God.
May I live this day
Compassionate of heart,
Clear of word,
Graciousness in awareness,
Courageous in thought,
Generous in love.
John O’Donohue, Irish poet and philosopher
“Matins” (Morning Prayer)
From To Bless the Space Between Us
https://johnodonohue.com/
Photo: © Ann Cahill
@cc21 Thank you for bringing John O'Donahue to us. His poem reminds me of this poem that soothes my soul and brings me into the sacred:
There is an elemental love in the universe by which name we know each other and encourage ourselves to live.
There is a silver river that connects everything from which some part of us never leaves.
There is a mercy making its way up through the ocean of the earth to the shores of our feet.
There is a music so sweet it is almost unbearable that is composed between the ear and the heart which reminds us.
There is a diamond-glint, a seed of longing in ourselves that recognizes the potential absence of gravity in another.
There is part of us that says it is never too late to be reborn on the in breath each morning.
Somewhere there is a basket that contains all our failures. It is a big basket. It wants to know what to do with these. Mercy has no use for them. -- Stephen Levine in Breaking the Drought
Thank you @coyote, @vestralux and everyone who has posted here.
This thread is a gift.
I am participating from Australia, where our beloved earth burns fiercely around us. It is our summer solstice today. I burnt some ancestral incense, which generated white smoke - considered healing and beneficial here, and envisaged an earth that heals, balance, and a global collective that cares for each other and the earth. Vestralux, I must have absorbed a little of the wisdom in your post! Thank you all - I wish you all the most beautiful of holidays, and increasing sunshine.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Thank you for posting those pieces. Very poignant. They reminded me of a poem I wrote in early 2016, when the chaos and darkness brewing in the collective started becoming palpable (its since been published in a journal). Now that so many of us will be deliberately banishing that darkness tonight, I feel like we are enacting my final stanza:
A Natural History of the Mind
I create islands in my mind
spontaneously
according to random whims.
I conjure biomes and terrains,
raw landscapes
of saw tooth mountains cross-cut
with indiscriminate rivers
ejecting boulders and dragonfish
over basalt cliffs to a primordial ocean
by the second,
lands where strife unfolds
in its unremarkable forms
of predation on winter-stricken highlands
and hunger
on drought-dead plains
swept with dust,
low and abiding,
unfurling headlong
before the rain.
Then
I imagine lava rock teardrops
tossed across the sea like
accidents,
where the goatherd tends a flock
on clubmoss
among tortoise shells and pine cones
as salt dissolves
cairn stones, atom by atom,
cobbled haphazardly
atop a battered headland
beside a sun-bleached femur
above the gorge, where, now,
eyes open at dawn to dust
and light
shot through with the swell, the crash, the flaming edge
of time’s shore.
A nice NPR Winter Solstice story featuring a picture book.
Ok, my candle is lit. I had to do it 3 hours early at 5:19 because at 8:19 I will not be in a space to.
The candle should last a few hours. The southwestern most point of light in the US is holding the sacred space for the solstice, the winter, the coming months and 2020 and all of us!
Blessed Yule!
My candles are lit and I am sending love and light into the world, praying that our highest powers heal our world and bring us justice and peace. In my meditation before lighting the candles, I saw a light in the darkness, then I saw a few faces illuminated by the light, then gradually there were more and more faces in the light. It is a metaphor for our world during the coming months as we move into the light again. Love and peace to you all.