On this long night of Winter Solstice, take time to stir the embers of your heart. Each of us has traveled a long way on this earth, spinning and rotating to this farthest point away from the sun. Now is the time to begin your return. You need only feed the flame hidden in the embers of your heart, give it oxygen and fuel to burn bright. In this volatile world, you may feel stripped down, raw, singed by feelings of sorrow, hurt and fury. Don’t squelch your sentiment or cast your sympathies into the pitch black. Never let your heart grow cold. Cradle your feeling, rock back and forth between grief and gratitude, ache and equanimity. Know that, just like the earth’s spin through space, everything pendulates between expansion and contraction, positive and negative, darkness and light. Find out how, underneath it all, your grief and love can coexist side by side.
Let this long night prompt you to love more, to be true, to take the necessary step toward healing. On this winter solstice night, connect to your heart’s aspiration, your heart’s deepest calling. Sometimes it takes darkness to remind us how to be tender, more humane, more caring. On this winter night, be as solid as the maple, as fluid as the mountain stream. Have the courage of the tall pine. Go into the dark and let the glow from your hearth radiate outward. Cast your prayers far and wide to help mend the wounds of the world.
