A Winter Solstice Prayer

The solstice is nearly upon us, the time when the worlds of dark and light hold their breath, waiting for that moment when the balance shifts and the light begins to return. The sun herself stands still, rising and setting in the same place on three consecutive days. Sol - the sun. Stice - standing still.

When the tide turns and ingress and egress of night and day change places once again.

And it's time to celebrate! It's easy to think that it's only the light returning that we're celebrating - something very akin to the Christian story; something about the birthing of a new hope, a new year, a new opportunity for new things to grow.

We will rise before dawn on the morning of the solstice - to greet the sun, rising again for another year. That's Hay Tor on the horizon in the picture above, and Hound Tor four pictures below - both wonderful places for the greeting of the sun on any day. And as almost everything on our planet relies on the sun for it's life - why would you not greet the sun - on this and every day!

We'll most likely be at Scorhill Stone Circle again to drum the dawn, as we were last year.

But along with the celebrating of the new, I'd like to celebrate the old; the darkness, the cold, the opportunity to rest, the potential spaciousness of the short days and long nights - if we just let them be spacious.

I'd like to honour with my gratitude what dies in order that life may continue; all the composting leaves making next year's soil, the things with which we fill our bellies, the endless (so far - luckily for us!) interwoven, interdependent cycle of life-death-life.

To take the opportunity that holidays bring to be quiet and appreciate, as well as party and participate.

To remember The Sacred In All Things.

The lives other than our own, going on around us (perhaps seemingly unrelated) which are part of a web of relationship and reciprocity which we need to remember if we are to survive as a species. If our planet is to survive our new ways of being, our constant clamouring for more.

May we remember who we are in a world  made up of that which was created by The Divine - and that which was created by us. 

So may it be.