© Rev. Susan Karlson
December 19, 2010
I went to the Winter Solstice Concert at St. John the Divine in Manhattan the other night as part of a midwinter treat for my family. For over three decades, Paul Winter has celebrated the Winter and Summer Solstice there. This year, there was an amazing Tree of Sound, full of gongs, timpani and chimes in the shape of a giant Yule tree. The Forces of Nature, a West African dance ensemble, recreated the flight of the cranes migrating from Africa to Eurasia with a fantasy interaction between women mimicking the cranes’ movements and the observing birds joining the women as they all danced together.
The lights dimmed as a Winter Storm re-enactment gathered behind, in front and all around us. The crackling sounds of a freezing, frightful winter’s night pounded on the walls and whistling through the air. Clouds of fog rolled in and it felt as if the cold entered through the gray stones of the cathedral. Viscerally, I felt the approach of Winter. My thoughts turned to our Winter Solstice Celebration this morning, “Plunging into the Darkness”.
People celebrated the Winter Solstice for millennia past and it captures the imagination still. Though we no longer believe that the sun returns because we hold a ritual, we participate in turning the great wheel of the seasons through our Winter Solstice celebration this morning. If spring doesn’t follow winter or the Earth is erratic in its weather patterns, it won’t be because we’ve offended the Sun—more likely, we will have inadvertently hastened climate change.
Sitting there in the relative darkness of the cathedral, my thoughts turned to people in this church and this community. I remembered people whose loved ones died recently or whose deaths feel new-sprung during this season of family festivities. I envisioned the chill that comes with loss and sorrow--joblessness, arduous moves to a smaller residence, mammoth or minor surgeries and injuries, mobility issues, diminished hearing and eyesight. I remembered, too, the cold, hard, frosty feeling of being unappreciated or unacknowledged at work, school, home or church. And also the cries of children struggling, outcast or lonely.
During the Winter Solstice celebration at St. John the Divine, the Dean of the Cathedral spoke briefly about specific concerns for the worth and dignity of all people—including youth who feel bullied presumably because of their sexual orientation or for other reasons and then see no way out of the pain except to end their lives. The first principle of Unitarian Universalism is about “the …worth and dignity of all people”. It is a core value that unites people from a multitude of faiths and continents.
The reality of working on peace and justice issues over the long haul can sting like a bitter wind of disappointment, shaking us to our core. During a winter of disillusionment, we have to admit that Congress seems frozen in its partisan tracks, forgetting the needs of those most vulnerable—those who really need a tax break and a living wage. There are people mistreated who come from other lands, cultures or religions and there are those who wake up bruised and battered from experiences that are a part of their everyday life.
Through our varied human experiences, we plunge into the darkness of a winter storm, teeth chattering, blowing into our hands to warm them and forgetting to put on a pair of long johns or extra layers when we venture out.
Most animals are keen on hunkering down (except the Staten Island turkeys that get front page news). Squirrels dart up and down trees, gathering the last fall remnant for their nests. Grackles cackle in the tree outside my window, the only birds making merry this time of year. Yet we of the human animal species seem to ratchet life up a notch or two, out of synch with nature and our own intuition, resisting.
In just a few days, on the Winter Solstice, the sun will reach its nadir and begin to steadfastly shine longer each day until the Summer Solstice. On the cusp of the Solstice, we stand still—readying ourselves for winter’s chill in all its many forms, physical, emotional, and spiritual.
This long climb up from all that darkness prepares room inside us for thawing out, taking stock, and tending to those people and things we’ve neglected in the past year, including those fresh shoots of growth inside us.
Inside the cathedral last Thursday evening, the fog gathered like a shroud around us, and a gong sounded behind us. As we turned to look, we saw the Sun Gong and heard it strike over and over as it ascended to the zenith of the cathedral sky. Acting out this Solstice, we participated in the age-old return of the sun ritual, internalizing the intermingling of our “innermost psyches” with what goes around us.
Winter Solstice is a time for hope and belief in the return of the sun and its warmth. Just yesterday, the Senate passed a measure to repeal the 17-year old “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law which kept lesbians and gays in the closet for fear of losing their military careers. It took 17 turns of the sun wheel to repeal a law that was meant to be a stop-gap measure to end discrimination in the military. Like Nature, the struggle for inclusion and human and civil rights is unpredictable and relentless.
The cycles of nature have their rhythms—heedless of human impatience. Wanting the dark days to be over will not make them pass more quickly. Light and darkness are part of a natural rhythm to which we attune ourselves. As the Sun returned in the ritual at St. John’s, a huge Earth ball moved forward towards the narthex and then rotated as if it was spinning on its axis in space. As it moved upwards, I felt a surge of joy and I thought of all the promise and meaning this year holds—elements of light and darkness—new babies, ornaments colored and hung on the tree by the children, people curling ribbons and sitting on the steps and in the pews singing carols, a member fixing a special meal for vegans and carnivores alike, holistic stories about our member, Alice Johnson who died recently and our secretary’s grief at the passing of Mildred Dolan, a cherished member and friend of this church.
I thought of people that I have observed really listening to one another, caring for one another, and understanding one another after a personal storm had set them apart. I have a newfound appreciation for the title of a book that sounded like an oxymoron when I first heard it—The Joy of Conflict Resolution. And I feel some of that joy that comes when you listen to the stirrings of your own conscience and strive to understand what is underneath the words and actions of another person.
The wonder of the Winter Solstice is not that the sun returns year after year to warm the earth. There is a promise in the turning of the seasons: that we will not always remain in the darkness any more than we will always bathe in the warmth of the light. To get to a place of joy we often have to plunge into the darkness and remain there in solitude for a time. In this quiet, dark place, strength returns, resilience brings us back to life and love. The earth spins, the sun shines in our sphere of the world and we emerge different than we were before the winter darkness descended. We do participate in turning the wheel of our own seasons of the heart.
While, ironically, the days grow longer as winter cold sets in let us hold this poem by Anthony F. Perrino in our hearts this Solstice:
“A gentle kind of madness
Comes with the end of December
A winter solstice spell, perhaps,
When people forget to remember—
The drab realities of fact,
The cherished hurt of ancient wrongs,
The lonely comfort of being deaf
To human sighs and angels’ songs.
Suddenly, they lose their minds
To hearts’ demands and beauty’s grace;
And deeds extravagant with love
Give glory to the commonplace.
Armies halt their marching,
Hatreds pause in strange regard
For the sweet and gentle madness born
When a wintry sky was starred.”
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