Hosting the Dark
The Solstice, making magic in the dark, and adding to my constellation of celebrations
Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. In the morning, I attended the funeral service of a friend from graduate school who passed away unexpectedly last week. As I sat in the pew, my cheeks wet with tears, I watched my friend’s husband and children file into the church, and I felt a sharp sense of this being the darkest day of the year in more ways than one.
When I got home, I ate a big bowl of chicken soup for lunch and hunkered on the couch with my cat. At mid-afternoon, I enjoyed a neighborhood walk with a dear friend and her sweet pup. The sun was brilliant and bright and the sky a cloudless blue, and I chose not to wear sunglasses. I wanted to gaze upon as many rays of the sun as I could before the longest night of the year descended. I like to imagine I can store the light inside of me and perhaps draw on it as the evening gathers in.
Long after the sun bid us adieu, I lit some candles and hosted the dark. I enjoyed reading about the Solstice in the beautiful Winter Energy zine I recently received in the mail and perused the journal prompts for the month of December. I plugged in our Christmas tree and enjoyed a new-to-me squash custard tart recipe and read a few poems from Women in Praise of the Sacred, an incredible anthology of poetry written by women from 2300 BC to the present day. I adore this collection. The anthology includes women from different spiritual traditions and from all over the world, and letting their powerful, gorgeous words sink into me allows me to feel connected to something big and ancient and sacred. When offered such a stunning feast of words and experiences as this anthology does, I feel free to choose whatever speaks to me and let it stay with me forever.
I have always loved Advent, Christmas, and New Year’s celebrations. These are the holidays of my childhood, and in many ways, feel rooted in my Catholic upbringing. I still love these holidays. And, in recent years, having discovered that the Catholic Church is no longer the best fit of a spiritual home for me (while respecting those who find resonance within that tradition), I’ve found myself feeling the freedom and the desire to explore and expand my spiritual practices. For me, one of the most joyful parts of the process of reclaiming my personal spiritual path has been deliberately reconnecting with and experimenting with different traditions and rituals, from ancient times to present day, and reflecting on what feels true for me, what feels meaningful in this moment.
During the course of this beautiful journey, I’ve found myself gravitating towards the Winter Solstice as a day to include in my constellation of celebrations at this time of year. For me, the Solstice has become a meaningful opportunity to pause, meditate, reflect, and connect with what I think of as a thin time. The winds coming from the North, the evenings falling faster, and alongside these shifts in temperature and light, a sense of the spiritual world being nearer than ever. During the Solstice, I can sense more than ever the “Big, Good Thing” that Frances Hodgson Burnett describes in The Secret Garden:
Mrs. Sowerby answered. "I never knowed [magic] by that name but what does the name matter? ...The same thing as set the seeds swelling and the sun shining made thee a well lad and it's the Good Thing. It isn't like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called out of our names. Th' Big Good Thing doesn't stop to worry... It goes on making worlds by the million—worlds like us. Never thee stop believing in the Big Good Thing and knowing the world's full of it...The Magic listened when tha sung the Doxology. It would have listened to anything tha'd sung.” It was the joy that mattered.
Folklore, spiritual texts, poetry, all savored by candlelight, are bringing me joy this year. When I read such things, when I get quiet and breathe, I can feel the hope, the hardships, the desires of everyone who has ever come before me, as if they are sitting in the same room. As I listen to the stories that have been told around the fire for thousands of years, I feel a little more awe, more groundedness. As the darkness carves out space for all the parts of ourselves that we fear to face (and encourages us to look these things straight in the eye), I find myself full of gratitude and peace, knowing that everything is closer to the surface at this time. Fear, yes. Uncertainty, of course. Wonder. Desire. Beauty. Mystery. A connection to all who came before, all who walk beside me now.
In Katherine May’s wonderful book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, she defends the cold, dark time of year that we enter into with the coming of the Solstice. Winter, she argues, is both seemingly inconvenient and truly vital. She explains:
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”
The dark can be frightening. And it’s where most of the magic happens. I made this reminder (below) for myself four years ago when it felt like so many plans I had were withering and I found myself desperate to believe that something joyful could come from the personal winter I was facing. Here I am again - proof that life is not linear, but seasonal - and these words from my past self are bringing present me some groundedness and hope in this current season of wintering.
What if the things that are currently tucked away for the winter have secrets in store for us? I am trying to lean into the notion that the seeds I am planting now, in the dark and cold, are unseen but living still. Then in the first few Secret Garden days of spring, when my heart longs for warmth, they might just burst forth from the ground, proof that beauty can explode into being from nowhere, and announcing that all long, hard things shall pass, even our own darkness.
Just this morning, I read an article about plants in winter in the Old Farmer's Almanac that says "While all seems dormant above ground, a natural and amazing process of adaption is happening well below the soil. The roots continue to develop and thrive, keeping plants fed with stored up starches until warm weather returns."
Friends, I hope that you can find nourishment enough in your own winter and soak in the sun when you can, in hopes that it keeps us company in the dark. My wish for us all is that we can trust that what's being made in the discomfort of the dark will eventually emerge in the days to come, ready and radiant and as real as we dreamed.
Friends, as a reminder, I am discounting monthly and annual subscriptions to my Substack newsletter by 30% through the end of December ($3.50 a month, with the option to cancel at any time, or $35 for the whole year)! You can find the link to the discount here.