This morning, I treated myself to a humble and reflective solstice ceremony involving journaling by candlelight. Journaling by candlelight is a practice I am growing to love on these many grey and cold dismal mornings we’ve been having. But today, being the feast the the winter solstice, called for a more ceremonial journaling. As a way of honoring and welcoming back the light and signaling my openness to receiving that light, I laid that which was no longer serving me down onto the pages of my journal and, one by one, visualized them being consumed by the light.
This simple ceremony was not something I could justify with my mind…it was something that my soul felt it needed to do. It was symbolic…but at the same time, it validated the needs of my soul…something I have vowed to do more of in this next natural cycle of the seasons. When I finished, I felt released of a lot of the darkness that I had been carrying with me.
These acts, of course, are as simple as making up your mind to shed certain thought patterns or behaviors. I could just as easily have made a mental note to stop these toxic and limiting thought patterns. But by physically and symbolically releasing them, I felt I’ve made a more powerful statement both to myself and to the Universe.
My ‘ceremony’ ended with the reading of and meditation on a poem I came across in John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us. It is one of his poems/blessings for beginnings and I think it fit so perfectly for this winter solstice.
For LightÂ
Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for;
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life.
In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.
That our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.
That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.
When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.
That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The mystery continues to dwell,
glimmering in fugitive light.
When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight might find a window.
When we become false and lost
That the sever noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear.
When we love, that dawn-light
Would lighten our feet
Upon the waters.
As we grow old, that twilight
Would illuminate treasure
In the fields of memory.
And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
Of a found world.
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