winter_solstice ovenbird I am at home here at the solstice where the light is scarce and made more beautiful for its backdrop of darkness. If my life, in its entirety, were poised anywhere on the wheel of the year it would be here, where the sun struggles to triumph over the cold night, and the mind engages in a psychic battle for the soul’s salvation. I’m comforted, somehow, by myths that celebrate the return of the sun while simultaneously foreshadowing death. To pretend that everything is light is to deny the depth that darkness allows. The Christ child is the son/sun born to bring light to dark souls of mankind, but the wise men bring myrrh, a resin used in the anointing of the dead. The carol “We Three Kings” has a refrain that celebrates the “star of wonder” with its “perfect light” but the fourth verse sings of the dark gift of the third king: Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb. We’ve done a poor job, in our North American Christmas celebrations, of making space for the gloom. We flood the season with light. We make it harried rather than hushed and holy. We busy ourselves in ways that make quiet reflection impossible. We want the season, with its parties and food and noise and laughter and family skirmishes and too many useless gifts, to feel decadent and opulent. We want to forget that this story is always and forever on its way to a stone-cold tomb. I can’t forget. It isn’t in my nature. And the parties that offer too much of everything feel like a lie told to get children to sleep. There’s too much light. I would rather have one small candle that makes space for shifting shadows and provides an opportunity for my eyes to open to their widest extent, than a world I have to squint into. Let the solstice tell its tale of darkness. It’s time for the sun to sleep. 251221 what's it to you? who go blather from