Winter Solstice Winter Moon
It’s here! It’s here! No. Not Christmas. The Winter Solstice. It’s my favorite holiday of the year and one I anticipate with eagerness. We hit the solstice moment at 11:11 am here, the time when the tilt of the earth begins to move ever so slightly back toward the sun, a move that, at the end of the next six months will once again light up midsummer.
A friend, Tom Crane, has an interesting take on the Winter Solstice. He sees it as a form of the story of the prodigal son. For him we return “home” each year to this spot, this fulcrum between light and dark, and receive a glorious welcome from what he refers to as our high-self. The high-self bids us come inside for a feast. At this feast, Tom goes on, we dine on the fatted calf of our own gathered treasures.
Yes. A recurring feast in which we invite our multi-form selves to dine on the wonders of which we have become aware in our own home. This is a life-affirming read of the Winter Solstice, one that takes the eternal return and gives it a personal meaning. More. The personal meaning it gives acknowledges the positive accomplishments within, not the material achievements without which carry their own reward.
And, let me add a bit. An important transition for me has been metaphysical. That is, I began a long while ago to push away spirituality based on the transcendent and sought it in immanence. That’s a move away from God above and without to incarnation.
In this incarnational understanding spirituality comes from within us and from the world around us. So, patching together the recurrent astronomical event, the Winter Solstice, with the notion of the high-self inviting us to dine on our own gathered treasure, is a ritual acknowledgment of the move from transcendence to incarnation.
And such an understanding is not without precedence. The Christmas story is, too, an incarnational story, the story of the divine found and acknowledged in one just like you and me. It is such a story pegged in recurrence to the Winter Solstice. At this level of understanding I celebrate Christmas, too. Of course, the Christian version links the divine within to a high god without who has to validate our divinity, then save us when we deviate from it. That seems unnecessary at least.
The high-self (I like that formulation.) is the sacred within us and it always invites us to celebrate the richness that we are. We are our own Three Kings, magi–that is invokers of magic, who bring the gifts that we then offer to the world.
So this long solstice night I invite you to go down and in, find the inner sanctuary and within it, the inner banquet table, and sit down to a feast of the very best that you are and that you have to offer the world. The high-self welcomes you home.
