Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice ~ What seeds will you be planting on the shortest day of the year?

The long nights of winter ~ when all life sleeps beneath a wintry night blanket ~ precious seeds cradled within the earth… sleeping …. waiting for the sun to return.

Sipping a cup of  earl grey, watching geese fly overhead and thinking about the ebb and flow we call life. I’ve been enjoying this holiday season on a deeper level …  letting gratitude and hope flow over and through me like a river.

I find myself giving more attention and focus to things that are really important and making deeper connections with mother earth. The best gifts of this season are family and community. A season to forgive and mostly to love each other and turn the wheel once more.

Mosaic mandala of reflected light ~ pulling me deeper into to the circle of life.

I live my life
in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, poet and novelist (1875-1926)

“Everyday Goddessing  is about sharing magical techniques and sacred wisdom with other beautiful Goddess women. I believe that within every woman there is a goddess, a wise woman, beautiful, creative, powerful, with a deep soul, and that everything we need and are looking for is already inside  each of us.” – Rose Arizmendi

Happy Winter Solstice

Quote for the day;

“So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!”

–   Susan Cooper, The Shortest Day

Winter Solstice

December is the darkest month of the year and many of us experience sadness and depression as the days grow shorter and the nights longer. On the Winter Solstice, it’s as if the earth holds it’s breath during this time of transition between dark and light, cold and warmth, shortage and abundance, life and death.

The cold, dark, gloomy days may make us feel that the darkness is ever closing in, tightening it’s grip on us, yet the wheel of the year is now turning toward the light, so gather your loved ones close, read stories to one another, light candles, celebrate with song, food and give thanks for everything you have.

“Stories are medicine. I have been taken with stories since I heard my first. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act, anything — we need only listen.” -Clarissa Pinkola Estes