Happy New Year, Happy Hogmanay!

Wishing you abundance, cheer and rude good health in the shiny new year about to begin, wishing you many a festive beaker (or a noggin or a dram) too. Be warm and safe this evening, wherever you are, and whatever you are doing.

Let us remember the bright, beloved and courageous spirits who left us in the last year or three and went on ahead. Let us give thanks for them being in our lives and send them our love when we raise our glasses. Let us give thanks for each other too. Community matters.

Be wise, be wild, be blessed, be merry. Walk in peace, and may there be fine adventures on the road ahead. May every cup you hold this year contain a star or two and have a little light dancing in its depths.  May all good things come to you and your clan (or tribe) in 2021.

Thursday Poem - Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

Naomi Shihab Nye
(from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems)

Wordless Wednesday - Adorned

Winter Morning, Light

Sequestered (XL)

Sunday - Saying Yes to the World

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully. 

Norton Juster, The Phantom Toolbooth

Winter Rain

Merry Christmas

May the manifold blessings of light and community be yours!

Thursday Poem - Chains of Fire

Each dawn, kneeling before my hearth,
Placing stick, crossing stick

On dry eucalyptus bark

Now the larger boughs, the log

(With thanks to the tree for its life)

Touching the match, waiting for creeping flame.

I know myself linked by chains of fire

To every woman who has kept a hearth.

In the resinous smoke

I smell hut and castle and cave,

Mansion and hovel.

See in the shifting flame my mother

And grandmothers out over the world

Time through, back to the Paleolithic

In rock shelters where flint struck first sparks

(Sparks aeons later alive on my hearth)

I see mothers , grandmothers back to beginnings,

Huddled beside holes in the earth

of igloo, tipi, cabin,

Guarding the magic no other being has learned,

Awed, reverent, before the sacred fire

Sharing live coals with the tribe.

For no one owns or can own fire,

it lends itself.

Every hearth-keeper has known this.

Hearth-less, lighting one candle in the dark

We know it today.

Fire lends itself,

Serving our life

Serving fire.

At Winter solstice, kindling new fire

With sparks of the old

From black coals of the old,

Seeing them glow again,

Shuddering with the mystery,

We know the terror of rebirth.

Elsa Gidlow

Wordless Wednesday - Rooted

A Little Melting in the Village

Lighting the Centre (Happy Yule)

For my departed soulmate Irv, for Cathy and Diane who passed away this year.
May they journey onward in light, and may there
be brighter times ahead for all of us.
Merry Yule!

Advent Sun Wreath Circle, Week 4

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

When the journey you are presently on seems to be over, remember that there is no real end. There may be new journeys ahead; there may be journeys-within-journeys.  There is always something new to learn, always another gift to be be brought out into the world. Embrace each new cycle; welcome every twist and turn. It is how we know we are alive.

Sharon Blackie, If Women Rose Rooted

Seeing Red and Reindeer

Friday Ramble Before Yule

After a time of decay comes the turning point.The powerful light that has been banished returns. There is movement, but it is not brought about by force; thus the movement is natural, arising spontaneously. For this reason, the transformation of the old becomes easy. The idea of RETURN is based on the course of nature.The movement is cyclic, and the course completes itself. Therefore it is not necessary to hasten anything artificially. Everything comes of itself at the appointed time. This is the meaning of heaven and earth.
I Ching Hexagram 24 - Fu / Return (The Turning Point)

Here we are again at winter's 'still point of the turning year'. The ancient festival of Yule falls on Monday, and its observance begins at sunset on the night before, Sunday, December 20. This hallowed day celebrates the return of the light, and it is one of four pivotal astronomical coordinates in the calendar year, along with the summer solstice (Litha), the vernal equinox (Ostara) and the autumn equinox (Mabon). The I Ching hexagram in the first paragraph of this morning's post describes the occasion more eloquently than I ever could

Yule (also called Midwinter, or simply the Winter Solstice) is one of only two times in the  year (along with the summer solstice) when the sun seems to stand still for a brief interval. The word "solstice" has been around in one shape or another for many centuries, and it comes to us from the Latin noun sōlstitium, itself a blend of the noun sōl [sun] and the verb sistere [to stand still]. Solstice simply means "sun standing still". At the beginning of our wordy trek is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form *seH₂wol-, *sH₂un- meaning simply "sun". Of course, it is earthlings and our dear little planet home who are in motion, and not the magnificent star that lights our way.

December days are short and dark and cold, and there are dense clouds from horizon to horizon most of the time. Cloudless days are rare, blue and oh so beautiful, but they are the coldest days of all. The earth below our feet usually sleeps easy under a blanket of snow and glossy ice, although there isn't much snow here so far this year. Snow or no snow, there is a feeling of movement in the landscape, a clear sense that vibrant change is on its way.

Sunlight is a scarce quantity here in winter, and we look forward to having a few more minutes of sunlight every single blessed day after Monday - until next June when sunlight hours will begin to wane once more. The first few months of next year will be frigid going, but hallelujah, there will be sunlight now and again, and blue sky too.

I build a fire in the fireplace downstairs with an oak log from my favorite grove in the Lanark highlands, and I think of the ancestors and their seasonal rites. Huddled together for warmth in their caves and bothies, they would have fed the flames burning on their open hearths and lighted tallow candles to drive the dark away. They would have watched winter skies hopefully for signs of the sun's return. They would have rejoiced when the earth's northern hemisphere began to tilt back toward the star that dances at the heart of our solar system.

Beau and I will have a quiet Yuletide lunch with a dear friend on Monday. We will take a long walk in the woods and leave small gifts for our wild kin, parcels of grain, apples, suet and seed. Then we will return home to candlelight and mugs of fragrant tea, to clementines, cider and gingerbread cookies. We will look out as night falls and give thanks for the fruitful darkness and the returning light. My beloved will be here with us in spirit - he always enjoyed celebrating the solstices and equinoxes, and he loved our Yule festivities most of all.

On Monday evening, a radiant first quarter moon will grace the sky, and this year's winter solstice will be something special. On that night, the planets Jupiter and Saturn will seem so close together that they look like a double planet. Such an event is known as a "great conjunction", and Monday's occurrence is the closest conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn since 1623. Look for the two planets together, low in the western sky until an hour or so after sunset. 

Happy Yule to you and your tribe. May the returning light grace your life.

Thursday Poem - At the Winter Solstice

Owl hoots three times in the far woods,
fair warning for all small creatures
scurrying to their burrows.

Are we not still and always
those crouching figures
who flee the heavenly alchemy?
Three times in the crackling air,
Owl hoots for us.

*
Wind plays the drums of snow...
staccato taps,
crescendo off the roofs,
flourish of shuddering branches.
Ice snaps its castanets,
its daggers.

Atonal music of the darkest days
needs the most fearless,
subtle listeners.

*
Those strumming flamenco
fingers of sunlight
are a long time away from now.

Now we go comforted
in dreams and ceremonies,
flaming our star-speck candles,
raising our voices against that other music,
drowning out the forever
at night’s heart.

*
Look up! The wheel is turning.
The spectacular crowd of stars,
the tangle of dimensions
jostle for our attention.
Salute the birth of everything holy.

Dolores Stewart (Riccio)

At Yule, we celebrate the triumphant return of old Helios, the ascendance of light in the fertile darkness of winter. This morning's offering was written by the late Dolores Stewart (Riccio) and published in her exquisite Doors to the Universe. It is posted here with her kind permission. She was my friend, and I miss her. Yule was one of her favorite celebrations in the whole turning year.

Wordless Wednesday - Icing

A Winter Holiday Reading List

This morning's post is a personal tradition of sorts, a list of written materials about the winter holiday season and the return of the light to our world. Many of these books are out of print, but they can sometimes be found in used book shops, and they are often happy campers in your local library.  May this list be a light in your window or a fire on your hearth, bringing warmth, comfort and festive spirit to you and yours this holiday season.

No Yule interval would be complete without reading Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence in all its exquisite entirety. The five books are: Over Sea, Under Stone, The Dark is Rising, Greenwitch, The Grey King and Silver on the Tree. Also, at least four of my late friend Dolores Stewart Riccio's delightful Circle novels take place at (or near) Yule, and I will be reading them this year too - all  are highly recommended. After being absent for some time, Teresa Ruano's Candlegrove has come back to light, and I am delighted. Her web home is a treasure trove of folklore and customs about Yule and the winter season.

Christmas Folklore and Superstitions, A.R. Bane

The Oxford Book of Days,  
Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens

Echoes of Magic: A Study of Seasonal Festivals through the Ages,
C.A. Burland

The Book of Christmas Folklore, Tristram Potter Coffin

Lights of Winter: Winter Celebrations Around the World,
Heather Conrad and DeForest Walker

Medieval Holidays and Festivals: A Calendar of Celebrations,
Madeleine Pelner Cosman

Christmas and Christmas Lore, T.G. Crippen

The Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around the World for the Winter Solstice, Carolyn McVickar Edwards

Christmas, A Biography, Cynthia Flanders

The Magic of the Winter Solstice: Seasonal Celebrations to Honour Nature's
Ever-turning Wheel, Danu Forest

A Calendar of Festivals: Traditional Celebrations, Songs, Seasonal Recipes and Things to Make, Marian Green

The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals As Solar Observatories,
John L. Heilbron

Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth's Seasonal Rhythms Through Festival and Ceremony, Richard Heinberg

Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, 
Ronald Hutton

The Winter Solstice, Ellen Jackson

The Dance of Time: The Origins of the Calendar: A Miscellany of History and Myth, Religion and Astronomy, Festivals and Feast Days, Michael Judge

The Solstice Evergreen: History, Folklore and Origins of the Christmas Tree,
Sheryl Karas

Perpetual Almanack of Folklore, Charles Kightly

Sacred Celebrations: A Sourcebook, Glennie Kindred

Beyond the Blue Horizon: Myths and Legends of the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets, F.C. Krupp

The Ancient Celtic Festivals: and How We Celebrate Them Today,
Clare Walker Leslie and Frank E. Gerace

Celebrations Of Light : A Year of Holidays Around the World,
Nancy Luenn and Mark Bender (Illustrator)

The Winter Solstice: The Sacred Traditions of Christmas,
John Matthews and Caitlin Matthews

Rituals of Celebration: Honoring the Seasons of Life Through the Wheel of the Year, Jane Meredith

Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Clement A. Miles

Yule: A Celebration of Light and Warmth, Dorothy Morrison

Christmas Folklore, Cory Nelson and Kyle Pressly

The Provenance Press Guide to the Wiccan Year: A Year Round Guide to Spells, Rituals, and Holiday Celebrations, Judy Ann Nock

Sacred Origins of Profound Things: The Stories Behind the Rites and Rituals of The World's Religions, Charles Panati

Yule: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for the Winter Solstice,
Susan Pesznecker

 Celebrating the Winter Solstice, Theresa Reel  
 
The Shortest Day: Celebrating the Winter Solstice,
Wendy Pfeffer and Jesse Reisch

The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year,
Linda Raedisch

Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide,
Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling

Keeping Christmas: Yuletide Traditions In Norway And The New Land,
Kathleen Stokker

When Santa Was A Shaman: Ancient Origins of Santa Claus and the Christmas Tree, Tony van Renterghem

How To Celebrate Winter Solstice, Teresa Villegas

The Fires of Yule: A Keltelven Guide for Celebrating the Winter Solstice,
Montague Whitsel

The Wicca Cookbook: Recipes, Ritual and Lore, Jamie Wood

Advent Sun Wreath Circle, Week 3

Sunday, - Saying Yes to the World

You really don't have to lose everything and travel to a remote valley to discover that the world is always rushing forward to teach us, and that the greatest thing we can do is stand there, open and available, and be taught by it. There is no limit to what this cracked and broken and achingly beautiful world can offer, and there is equally no limit to our ability to meet it.

Each day, the sun rises and we get out of bed. Another day has begun and bravely, almost recklessly, we stagger into it not knowing what it will bring to us. How will we meet this unpredictable, untamable human life? How will we answer its many questions and challenges and delights? What will we do when we find ourselves, stumble over ourselves, encounter ourselves, once again, in the kitchen?

Dana Velden, Finding Yourself in the Kitchen: Kitchen Meditations
and Inspired Recipes from a Mindful Cook

Artfully Suspended

 

Friday Ramble - By the Winter River

The north wind brushes snow away from ice on the river, and clouds of displaced snowflakes swirl through the air like confetti.  Light flickers through nearby trees and everything sparkles: river, snowdrifts, whiskery branches and frozen weeds along the shore. The scene is uplifting for a crotchety human in December's middling pages. She longs for light, and the sunshine is a shawl across her shoulders as it comes and goes through the clouds and the mist over the river—it's like honey in her cup.

Cattails, sedges and wetland grasses fringe the tributary all the way along, their stalwart toes planted in the frozen mud, and their withered, dessicated stalks swaying in the wind. The plumes and spikes outlined against the sky are pleasing when one can actually see them, their artfully curling tops eloquent of something wild and elemental and engaging. So too are the frosted fields, fences and trees on the far shore, the cobalt hues of hoarfrost, snow and ice, the golden setting sun painting the river, the diaphanous veil of cold vapor floating  above everything.

There are no caroling birds by the river, and there is silence for the most part, but this week, she remembered the river singing in its exuberant springtime flowing, last summer's great herons motionless in the reeds at sundown.  She thought of Vladimir Nabokov's memoir, "Speak Memory". On another day, that might have been a good title for this post written in the depths of winter.

The world around her is a manuscript written in wind and light. How on earth is she going to fit sky, tempest and dancing snow into one 5x7 image?

Thursday Poem - Winter Light

It's a milkiness poured from
a great glass bottle,
a carafe of blanc de blanc, iced,
a light shot with pale gold,
opalescent blue,
the distillation of pearl . . . .
In this icy light, the ghostly fronds
of ice ferns cover the glass,
as the sky descends,
erasing first the far blue hills,
the cornfield hatch-marked with stubble,
coming to our street— the sky flinging itself
down to the ground.
And the earth, like a feather bed,
accumulates layer on layer. . . .
The snow bees are released from their hive,
jive and jitter, sting at the blinds.
Down here, under this glazed china cup,
the minor fracas of our little lives
is still under the falling flakes.
And the great abalone shell of the sky
contains us, bits of muscle, tiny mollusks.
These winter nights
are never black and dense,
but white, starlight
dancing off the land.
And then the luminous dawns,
the pearled skies full of hope
no matter what else we know.

Barbara Crooker

Wordless Wednesday - Touched

Sequestered (XXXVII)

The colors of a winter morning

Advent Sun Wreath Circle, Week 2

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Tonight, I walk. I am watching the sky. I think of the people who came before me and how they knew the placement of the stars in the sky, watching the moving sun long and hard enough to witness how a certain angle of light touched a stone only once a year. Without written records, they knew the gods of every night, the small, fine details of the world around them and the immensity above them.

Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating... It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.

Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World

December Light

Friday Ramble - Counting Winter's Bounty

Over and over again, the village freezes and thaws. Every puddle in the park seems to be talking to the sky, sometimes clouded and grey, sometimes clear and blue. Encountering sunlight is always engaging this late in the year, particularly in a pool of melt water.

It is mild enough for Beau and I to be outdoors for hours, and we potter along at a snail's pace, talking with the trees (especially the beech mother in the park), listening to crows conversing over our heads, counting cones on the old pines in the woods.

This morning we returned home with our pockets full of fragrant seed bearers in all shapes and sizes, happier with our gathered abundance than we would have been with bags of glittering coin. My companion has no pockets of his own of course, and he makes use of mine.

Long walks cannot uproot our grief, but they soothe aching hearts in some small measure. We walk for miles, and the beloved who has gone on ahead is never far from our thoughts. Wherever he journeys, we send him our love. May his trail be easy and filled with light.

Thursday Poem - Waiting Game

Just as it seems the weather could not be
greyer or more dismal than November,
December comes along with wreaths of frost
and hangs on every tree the ragged crepe

of black leaves mourning for the wasted year.
But I have seen these funerals before,
and so I think of you, my dear old love,
of breathing ground, of sleeping roots and bulb,

the simple garden of our gathering years.
No matter now how fast and furious
the bitter dark comes on, I am not fooled.
I've witnessed resurrection every spring.

The winter birds are round and boisterous,
jousting for seeds at feeders with snow hats,
The ice man melts his fingers on their hearts,
Small miracles with wings beguile us now.

Dolores Stewart Riccio

Wordless Wednesday - On the Edge

Now We Are Two

Yesterday marked the first anniversary of my husband's passing from pancreatic cancer. Irv took his last  breath and departed the earth at 9:23 AM on November 30, 2019 as I held him, and it seems like only yesterday that he left us. 

To say that life has been painful without my soulmate is understating things and then some. Grief and sadness are here for keeps, and I am getting used to that, albeit slowly. I loved Irv more than life itself, and I always will. It is difficult to wrap my mind around the notion of years of life without him, and flourishing without him is probably not in the cards. Just surviving is hard work.

For many years, I was married to a guy who had a razor-sharp mind, a dry wit, a fine sense of irony and a great laugh. The world was an endless source of delight and wonder to him, and he never wearied of its grandeur and its beauty. He was passionate about trees, rocks and rivers, fields and fens, birds, bugs and woodland critters, sunrises and sunsets, full moons and starry nights. He loved this island earth deeply, and he loved rambling its wild places. Ramble we did, hand in hand and all over the place, packs on our backs, notebooks in our pockets and our beloved doggy sidekicks trotting along with us. I could not have had a more wonderful companion if I had written him into being myself, and I could not believe my good fortune. I look back on our life together with amazement and gratitude.

Now it is Beau and I who wander the eastern Ontario highlands together, in the flesh anyway. Cassie and Spencer traveled beyond the fields we know some time ago, but they are here with Irv, and all three are walking right along with us. There will be five of us on the snowbound trail this winter, but some of us won’t need snowshoes or leave paw prints in the white stuff.

I stroke Beau's silky ears and hold him close. I keep putting one foot in front of the other and breathing in and out. I tell myself that Irv is no longer in pain, and that I will learn to live with this broken heart. There is a small measure of comfort in knowing that we will walk these hallowed hills forever, and that our canine companions will be with us. A fine untrammeled wildness dwells in our blood and bones, all of us.