Deer in the Woods
All of heaven and all of earth coordinate at the Winter Solstice. Gregge Tiffen (Winter Solstice: The Christmas Story)
What I would exhort you to, what I would give as a gift to you, what I would lay down a soul for, would be for your awareness to recognize that this is a personal event for your life. It is the time that has been set up on this planet for you and Heaven to be with each other without interference. Gregge Tiffen (The Winter Solstice: Giving To Yourself – December, 2007)
With the daylight shortening as we move toward the Winter Solstice here in the northern hemisphere, the longer nights can seem to reflect the darkness of violence happening around the globe. It’s good to remember that our friends to the south are experiencing the longest light of their year. So it is with our awareness that as so much of humanity is expressing itself in dark ways, there is also much light, much love, much joy, and much hope for a brighter tomorrow.
It seems that we’ve drifted in our understanding of this season. …the time … for you and Heaven to be with each other without interference. Breathe that in for just a moment. Breathe a breath of gratitude for the gift. May we put our attention on the light and live in awareness of love as we pray for peace to break out all over the globe.
As I enter this Solstice time, I feel deeply blessed to not be engaged in much of the busyness that has come to define this holiday season. I’m grateful that on cold mornings with a warming fire in the woodstove I can look to the woods out back through the eyes of a heart that knows no separation from my tree relatives, from the rock beings, the winged ones, or from the four-legged creatures of all sizes that dwell or pass through this sacred place. My heart knows this as surely as it knows my oneness with the unseen Life that thrives here.
I’m tuning in to the sacredness of this time, to the station of Nature’s beauty, and to the bubbling of old and new deep inside. At the same time, I observe so much and so many in the world who are unable to do so.
Divisiveness and angst have intensified exponentially in recent years. So too have the opportunities for personal growth and evolution, individually and collectively. It is on those opportunities that I want to focus my attention this Solstice time.
One of the sources I turn to at Solstice is Gregge Tiffen’s writings about this sacred time. I find the message below a gentle reminder of the choices I can make moment to moment in all the days of winter solitude ahead and beyond this winter into the spring:
Prelude (Winter Solstice: The Christmas Story)
There is nothing I can give you which you have not got; but there is much, very much, that while I cannot give it, you can take.
No Heaven can come to us, unless our hearts find rest in today.
Take Heaven
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.
Take Peace
The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see, and to see, we have only to look, I beseech you,
Look!
In the quiet there is tranquility. May your life move and radiate in that unity and your heart sing the hymn of peace to all mankind.
And so, at this time, I greet you not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with prayer that for now and forever the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.
In the Christmas Story, we are told that the inn was full. And, yet a receptive place for the birth was found. And so it is for each of us.
We too need to empty and make ourselves receptive to the new. Solstice is a time to declare one cycle complete, making way for another to begin. It is a time to embrace the realm of spirit and turn our backs on the material world, if only for a brief time. It is a time to bless and release all who have crossed our path in this cycle, knowing that those who are meant to return will be there in the new one.
And, perhaps most important of all, it is time to let go of who we were in the cycle that is completing. The ‘you’ of that cycle is complete as well. And a new you of your design and making awaits.
We need not wait for the day of Solstice to take Heaven, to take Peace, and to Look at the radiance in the darkness within and without. Let us take them now and allow the potency of this time to fill us. This is our time to empty. This is our time to embrace seeds of the new; to be receptive.
As our planet celebrates her birthday, my prayer is that I align with all my relations such that my comfort, my safety, my Life is not at their expense. This is my prayer for Solistice, for the year ahead, for Gaia, for Life. May this be our song of Joy to the World with ALL of Nature singing in harmony with one another and with the Heavens. Hallelujah!
Let us honor Mother Earth by taking time to reflect the gifts of the time when heaven and nature sing as one. May we each sing along in our own unique and harmonious way.
Icy Rio Grande River - Del Norte, Colorado