Category: Balance

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Solstice Sunrise(s)

The balance of light and dark invites introspection and contemplation. The pre-dawn morning is the time when I capture and record my inner thoughts. These are the moments of the day reserved for nurturing awareness, cultivating gratitude, and setting intentions. This is sacred time.

On the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, we have an opportunity to bow in gratitude to the teachings of the darkness and turn again towards the gift of light. However, it was December 20, the day before the solstice, when the sunrise captured my attention and this poem tumbled out.

Solstice Sunrise

As the veil of night lifts

And sky lightens,

Oranges and pink shade the horizon,

Pale grey blue overhead.

There is no fanfare

To celebrate 

This auspicious day,

The shortest of the year.

The land and the critters feel

Gentle, subdued and sleepy.

Noone stirs in my house.

Perhaps we are meant

to greet this pale sun

with a soft smile

before pulling the covers high

And retreating to dreams

Until the sun has climbed higher.

The next day, on the winter solstice, I actually did sleep until after the sun had risen well above the horizon. It was the first time in weeks that I had not been awake to witness the transition from night to day. I was sad to miss that special time but I was grateful for the extra sleep. 

Re-reading this poem after watching this morning’s sunrise, I realize that I had suspected a sleep-in was coming. While it was not at all intentional, it seems the solstice was meant to be an opportunity for me to snuggle deeper with thoughts and dreams. That is the magic of the pre-dawn morning. That is the wonder of living in harmony with the rhythms of the earth. The sun, the moon, the critters, the plants and the body are teachers.

This morning, the sun rose behind a heavy curtain of clouds. The sky was shades of purples and grays. I made note of the imbalance of light and dark. I gave thanks for the circumstances that have brought me here, to this place and time on the earth. I set an intention to honor the swinging pendulum between balance and imbalance in my life.

Whether you are in the north greeting the light or in the south welcoming the dark, I hope that the shifting solstice energy offers you an opportunity to meet the season with deepening awareness, gratitude and intention.

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The Call of the Horizon

The horizon beckons to us all. So why should I be surprised when our dog, Karma, off her leash, heads to the woods? She is obviously pursuing that tree line at the far end of sight. I don’t blame her. I would go there too. On this day with fresh fallen snow, I too would like to be the one to make the first tracks. Of course, she will find that she is not the first one. Others have been through the field and forest already; Deer, turkey, and fox have been awake for hours. Their tracks will tell stories of patient and attentive walking. They are likely looking for food or shelter or both. There is food here. It may be a little harder to find under the blanket of new snow. There are hiding places. They may even be better hidden now that the weight of the snow on the branches curves them toward the ground. I imagine that the critters walk through the woods with keen awareness of potential dangers and opportunities all around them. Karma will follow all of these scents like I read a book, with curiosity, excitement and disregard for the rest of the world. In her absorption, Karma will forget about the horizon and attend to the tracks below her nose.

She will not hear me calling to her — and I will not follow her.

For today, I will not follow the call to head straight for the horizon. I have other things to do this morning. There are breakfasts to make and a lunchbox to pack. There are words to be written and a commitment to be kept. There’s a meeting to prepare for and others to schedule. I suppose that attending to these details of my life is how I follow the tracks below my nose. With my head down, I am attentive to the needs and call of the moment, taking only the step that is in front of me, and then the next. This attention to what is here, no matter how stimulating or mundane, is a practice and a discipline. When I am doing it well, focused on the people around me and the work that is mine to do, I feel grounded and in alignment with my place and purpose. But to maintain that sense of right place and purpose, I need to remember to look up too. There is always a beckoning horizon. Noticing it and, potentially, even yearning for it, provides balance. Some days, I will even take a running leap or a few deliberate steps towards it. But not today. 

Today, I will follow the tracks beneath my nose. I will tend to my work and my home. I will feed the slow and steady fire in the wood stove as well as the one in my heart. I will be here when Karma’s adventure turns her towards home.

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Honoring the Dark and the Light

This post is adapted from a message originally shared at Durham Friends Meeting (Quaker) on November 24, 2019. I hope that it may it be of use to you as well during this dark and stormy season.

When I first began to think about the opportunity to bring a message to you all, I was drawn to the idea of playing with the imagery of light. After all, we speak often of the light as in “I am holding you in the Light” and “the Light of God is in each one of us”… This imagery of Divine light is evocative. With this word, Light, we are able to name the unnameable, to capture the essence of God in a word that we can hold in our hearts, tend with our sacred imagination, honor with our prayers and actions, and name when it washes over and through us…The Light pulls me into the open and seems to invite clear seeing. The Light calls me outward to witness the Divine in the world around me, including in each of you.

Here, in Maine, we are in the season of darkness. The days have been getting shorter since the fall equinox. By Samhain at the end of October, we had entered the darkest stretch of the year, with darkness growing each day. Until the winter solstice on December 21, the amount of light that shines on our hemisphere will continue to decrease. My body responds to the darkness in a few ways. I sleep longer. I crave warm, heavy, sweet foods. I get cranky and weepy more often. The double whammy of dark and cold saps my motivation for exercise and social engagement. Maintaining either requires discipline and intention – both of which seem to require a ridiculous amount of energy to summon…But there’s another aspect to the darkness too, where a certain spaciousness and timelessness creep in and a different capacity is opened. I chop piles of vegetables to make big pots of healthy, hearty soups and stews. I sit by the fire for long periods and read or write or knit or sit in contemplation. Those long nights of sleep invite interesting, thought provoking dreams that merge past, present, and future for a few hours. I wake up a few hours before sunrise. As night fades and day dawns, I know that God is here, in the Darkness, too. The Dark calls me inward to witness the Divine mysteries that lie beyond seeing and understanding.

It feels important to name that our culture has distorted the concepts of light and dark in myriad ways. The value judgements that have been assigned to light and dark have had profound negative impacts on our relationships with ourselves, with one another, and with the earth. As an amateur naturalist and a writer, however, I am compelled to reclaim the words and the powerful imagery that they carry. My desire to name and embrace the Light and the Dark nudges me more deeply into the indescribable fullness of the Divine existence that I witness and live within every day.

For the next few minutes, I’d like to invite you to join me with a Beginner’s Mind to consider the balance of the dark and the light in your own life. Allow yourself to consider each of these questions as a meditation.

What does that mean that the Light of God is within you?

Do you see the Light as a candle that flickers and dims according to the amount of air that it is offered? How do you carry it? If you shield it from the wind, are you obscuring the light?

Is the Light within you more like a campfire? Do you feed it slowly and steadily with branches of courage, hope, resolve, and rest? Does the fire ever dwindle to a pile of embers?

Is the Light within you like the sun, consuming itself as it casts its light and heat in service to all living things?

How do you greet the Darkness in yourself and around you?

Is it a cocoon? A place of transformation and safety apart from the world?

Is the Darkness like a cave, a place of respite during a storm or the heat of the midday? Or is it a place to be avoided, full of unknown dangers?

Maybe the Darkness is a void, absent of time, space, light and being?

How then do we consider the moon which casts a reflection of another’s light into the darkness?

This season is an opportunity to befriend the darkness and embrace the beauty and the mystery that dwells there. If you are an early riser, resist the urge to turn on the lights when you first wake. For a few minutes – or a few hours – allow your pace to match the pace of the waking earth. Notice the way the darkness recedes to the gathering light. Notice the presence of God with you and in you through this transition. If you are a night owl, turn off the lights a few hours before you go to sleep. Become familiar with the shape and shadows of your house in moonlight and starlight. Your pace will slow to help protect you from bumping into walls. As it does, notice the still and guiding presence of God within you and surrounding you.

In this season, let us hold our Friends in the Light. Let us also sit with them in the Darkness.

Let us give thanks for the light which offers clarity and the darkness which nourishes faith.

Let us give thanks to the Great Mystery that weaves them both together.

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Morning night, morning light

I enjoy the darkness of the early morning. It has a nurturing softness. In the still-dark house, I move slowly and intentionally through my morning routine. Before too much movement or thought shakes the dreamy sleep from my head, I turn on the coffee pot and roll out my yoga mat in the living room for 20 minutes of gentle yoga and stretching. This quiet, prayer-full moving meditation invites my breath to slowly and gently waken my muscles and my mind. In the still dark morning, the monkey mind is still sleeping and the demands of the day have not yet arrived. I am not only surrounded by silence and stillness, I am filled with it as I fill my lungs with each breath. I set my intentions for the day during this quiet interlude between night and day, sleep and wakefulness.

With a bow to the rising sun that is still not yet peeking over the horizon, I roll up my mat and move to the kitchen. The coffee is ready. As I pour a cup, I notice the light coming from the chicken coop. I just put a light in there a few days ago. Chickens lay eggs when there are 12 hours of daylight or more. In our region, on this side of the equinox, 12 “daytime” hours is achieved with an artificial light on a timer.  I can only smile as I stand in my dark, quiet kitchen, looking through the dark, still yard to that beam of light. The coop is probably bright and noisy as the hens and rooster shake off the night in their own way. They will be stretching their wings, chattering and mingling about. I wonder if they are noticing that one of their friends spent the night outside. (We couldn’t find her when we closed up last night.) I will let the chickens out to explore the yard after it has gotten a little lighter. The rooster will crow to let me know when it is time.

Still moving gently through the dark, I take a shower and get dressed. Coming out of the bathroom, I hear my son stirring upstairs, heading to his shower. That is my cue that the day is arriving. It is time for me to move out of the transition zone and into the morning too. This time, I turn on the light as I enter the kitchen. I will make breakfast and pack lunch boxes. By the time I am done, there will be enough light outside to take the dog for a walk and let the chickens out of the coop so they can spend the day grazing. The day has arrived and I am ready to step gladly into the light.

Throughout the day, I will touch back into the morning’s stillness that is stored in the muscle memory of my body, mind and heart. It remains closer and clearer on some days more than others. I appreciate it when it is close, but the outcome is not the point. I just get to tend the practice with care and love each morning and strive to cultivate the same degree of intentionality throughout the day… And I get to share it all with you. May my morning reflection invite you to pause and embrace the dark and light of your own rising day. May we join together in stillness, gladness and gratitude for a new day.

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Roots and Rocks

On a well worn trail, roots and rocks seem to rise above the surface at unpredictable intervals and angles. They have been exposed by the compaction of soil caused by footfall and water. By keeping human travelers to one narrow pathway, impact is consolidated into the sacrifice zone that is the trail.

This sacrificial zone is both a challenge and a benefit to the trees and bushes that grow in close proximity to the trail. The trail corridor reduces canopy competition, giving each individual plant increased access to sunlight. However, the roots that get exposed by the trail bed have to work harder to extract water from the compacted soil. They are also more vulnerable to the insects, hooves, and vibram soles of passersby.

The runners and walkers who travel the trail also have a challenge and an opportunity. A single moment of inattention or distraction can send a person rolling downhill when a toe gets caught on a rock or root. As reminders to stay aware and attentive, these obstacles become opportunities. They provide an opportunity to concentrate thoroughly on each moment, movement and place. For today, this rocky, rooty obstacle course is my mindfulness training.

But it’s not really the ground directly underneath or in front of me that matters. Even as I take a step, I need to be anticipating the next one. At a stroll, I can safely look a dozen meters ahead, scanning back to the near ground with each new step. At a slow run, I can only look 2 meters ahead or less. It seems a fitting metaphor for the way that I move through life. When I am moving along at a clip, I can attend only to that which is immediately in front of me. If I am not careful, I am liable to be surprised when I suddenly notice changes in terrain, scenery, or company along the trail. I remain alert and acutely present  to the near ground. When I am walking the trail at leisure, I have a little wider perspective. I am inclined to develop expectations and anticipation based on what I have glimpsed up the trail but I am in no hurry to arrive there. I am content in each step. Relaxing into the place and my pace, time and thought dissipate and I feel myself melt into the forest landscape.

Neither the hustle nor the saunter are good — or bad. I am not making a judgement, just noticing that they are different and they require different responses from me. At either pace, the only way forward is one careful step at a time.

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Gratitude and Responsibility

In early August, I celebrated the midway point between the summer solstice and fall equinox with a dozen folks from Renewal in the Wilderness. We gathered for Lammas (a.k.a. Lughnasa, Harvest Festival) next to a Community Garden overlooking a meadow with waist high grass and insects and birds of all colors and songs. Standing in witness to this abundance, we recognized summer’s bounty as well as the fading light and withering stalks that served as a reminder that a dormant season was arriving. We discussed the infinite web of connection that binds us to past and future, death and birth, light and dark. And we offered gratitude for being here to receive it all. We gave thanks to the exploding stars that give us iron to course through our bloodstream and to the biome that lives in our gut to keep us healthy. We gave thanks to the four-legged critters who bless our homes with joy and fur and to the ancestors who saved the seeds of the sweetest corn from generation to generation so that we could enjoy crisp, sweet corn that evening.

The gratitude that I shared that day has been echoing in my mind and heart ever since. I gave thanks for my children. They are kind, engaged, and curious individuals: they are also tethers to the future. My commitment to nurture and nourish my own children is simply part of my commitment to nurture and nourish all life — and the land and water that will sustain it. Simply by their presence, my children guide me into right relationship with the world around me, always moving towards just and compassionate action and words. I am grateful for the daily reminder to notice and honor my responsibility to the wider web of creation.

I had never thought of gratitude and responsibility in relationship to one another before but, since that Lammas celebration, I have often noticed them nesting together and guiding my actions as I tend to the myriad details and relationships that appear throughout each day. I have been repeating a vow articulated by Joanna Macy in Active Hope. The affirmation captures my sense of responsibility to this time and place and clarifies my intention to live in an honoring and sustaining way.

I vow to myself and to all of you:

To commit myself daily to the healing of our world and the welfare of all beings.

To live on the earth more lightly and less violently in the food, energy and products I consume.

To seek support and guidance from the living earth, the ancestors, the future generations and my brothers and sisters of all species.

To support one another in our work for the world and to ask for help when I need it.

To pursue a daily practice that clarifies my mind, strengthens my heart, and supports me in observing this vow.                                  

   – From Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone

As we approach the fall equinox, I am paying close attention to the internal and the external rhythms. I am curious to see what new awareness arises internally as the season comes to balance between dark and light, warm and cool. Whatever emerges, I am sure I will be greeting it with gratitude and responsibility.

photo credit: Thomas Steele-Maley