Wishing you all a blessed Winter Solstice my friends!

On this day, may you embrace the natural darkness and may it serve to protect and nourish the seeds of hopes and visions you have for the future, just as the blessed darkness provided by the blanket of leaves and soil protects the seeds that were sown on the winter winds.

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Here are some insightful thoughts on the darkest day of the year from Dana Driscoll

"The period of time around the winter solstice, when the light of the sun is weak and our days are so short, is a period of difficulty for many. Darkness is something that we fear in industrialized cultures; it is something that we work to drive away through our own inventions and ingenuity. We instinctively feel the need to light up our lives every waking moment–our houses at night become as bright as the sun, the various screens projecting intense light, keeping us up and wired late into the night. If a room’s lights aren’t bright enough, we call them “dim” and see this as a deficiency, working to make them brighter. Even as I’m walking down the streets of my town at night, motion sensor lights blind me as I walk past people’s houses on the sidewalk. Consciously, automatically, and unconsciously we are continually working to drive away the dark–and in the process, fighting the natural cycle of the seasons.

For a moment... let’s consider an opposite approach–that is embracing the darkness this time of year.

...The seed needs dark soil to spring forth. The roots cannot be exposed to light without damaging or killing the whole plant. Potatoes go green in the light. Maybe we are the same. The roots of our being are found only in the times of darkness: within ourselves, in our dreams, in the promise of a new beginning, in the quietude that can only be found in rest and open time. We need the darkness as we need the air to breathe. Blessings to you on the upcoming long night–may your spirit soar."

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(I took that picture in the early morning as the sun rose partially obscured by a dark thunder cloud filled with life giving rains and pregnant with the life giving super charged plasma that enriches the air and soil with nitrogen, picture taken from the front of our home in southern Ontario)