“Live in each season as it passes; breathe air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. “ Henry David Thoreau
Today is the Winter Solstice. The shortest day of the year. A time when the sun appears at the lowest point in the sky and seems not to move for several days before and after the Solstice. Following the Winter Solstice, the days grow longer and the nights shorter.
Ancient Mother Earth, “our oldest ancestor, “ now rests. At the harvest and All Hallow’s Eve, she has born new life to sustain life. Now, at the Solstice, she is renewing, and dreaming and, "if we mirror her cycles, it is time for us to quiet our lives and dedicate some time for our renewal, for reverie."(Jean Forest in Inner Tapestry, 2003) This is the perfect time for writers to go inward. To renew the Deep Voice and to dig down and harvest the words we have longed to share.
As Joan Borysenko says, in Pocketful of Miracles, “The Seasonal rhythms correlate with our own body rhythms…. Our dream life and inner life grow more insistent in the winter darkness…. The old year is put to bed, one’s business is finished, and the harvest of spiritual maturity is reaped as wisdom and forgiveness.”
Exercise:
Sit back, and give into the darkness of the season.
Light a candle and study its glow. When you feel transformed, begin a piece, without forethought or plan. Write like you talk, as Method Writing would call it. Write for ten minutes without stopping. As you write, hear the darkness and quiet around you. Take it in. Put it into words.
