Winter Solstice Post

I am a deep student of the Medicine Wheel of life, and Winter Solstice falls in the North of this powerful mandala.  This direction speaks of the deep stillness of earth, and a vast night sky that seems to make an endless night. The winter night sky is so present in the deciduous forests now, where the summer before the cathedral canopy of leaves gave us only peaks of sky in the breeze..   Now the branches of the bare trees seem to etch into the winter night lifting our gaze into the dark immensity.  The stars grow brighter, more present.

Each direction of the Medicine Wheel has a perspective or way of seeing.  The North is the Power of Presence to – but dis-identification with – the material world inlcuding all our roles and activities.  It is a time of deep Being accentuated by the 3 days of stasis around Solstice where even the movement of the Sun stops.  Out of this deep stillness, doing once again arises. Arising out of being, it is reconnected with source once more.  This is the Nature of Creativity, cyclical endings and new beginnings with Presence holding and molding it all.

Solstice is the true solar New Year of our hemisphere as understood through the Medicine Wheel.  It is the moment of death, dissolution, releasing, letting go of the attachment and activity of the past cycle and subsiding into the stillness… The arising of a new impulse from this ground of being, into form, follows in its natural timing.  Below is a hymn I received that expresses this archetype of  rest and renewal.   The music is uploaded on the media music page.

Deep in Winter’s Silent Night
The Light of the New Year is Born
And all of the Stars Shine with all of their might
To Remind us of our Home.

With Sillouetted Branches raised
Into the Vast Night Sky
Firm Trees with arms held up in Praise,
In Reverence Abide

Throughout Winter’s Long Dark Night
Life is held deep in the Ground
To Center, Restore, and Renew
So New Growth be Heaven Bound

So into the Winter lets all go
With Faith and Hope and Love
To receive the Wisdom of the Night
And the Promise of the Sun