Hoo, Boy, the Dark is with Us Now

2024.

These few weeks since the beginning of October have gone on forever. 

I need to be with you, loves. And we–everyone who longs for hope–all need to be together. On December 14th, I offer one way to share time together gently. 

For all the reasons you know. All the fear and death and grief and separation and terror and threats and shock and shock again…you know the reasons. And since I wrote the first version of this page in 2020, the hits have just kept on coming.

Even and ESPECIALLY when the powers and principalities would divide us from each other and from our own hearts, we need to seek connection to our own deep selves, to the Divine, and to other beings. 

Most years since 2015, I have written about an antidotes to the frenzy of December holidays.

And yes, many of us will still be caught up in the secular and religious holidays of this season. Slowing down in the midst of frenzy is still a good idea, a necessary break, a balm for so many of us. 

In 2020, I talked about times of uncertainty and unrest. In 2024, I say to us that these are not times of uncertainty. These are times when clarity, conviction, and the healing presence of stable community are required. Not only that, but it is still true that as the light grows dim we naturally want to join our other mammalian siblings in rest. A moment, a pause, a kind of hibernation, a retreat.  

Not All Certainty is Pain

Some things remain and have since before the construct of clocktime existed.

Gaia, Earth, still makes Her beautiful, blue-green way around Sol, our brilliant, yellow star, each year. Each year they come close together in our winter. In the Northern Hemisphere, though, that closeness is accompanied by the slanting light and the deep darkness of the solstice.

The solstice remains a time that, no matter the frenzy and fear around us, we are welcomed into the dance of Gaia and Sol. We claim our birthright as the children of Earth and Starry Heaven. We welcome one another into the seeming slowing of time as the days shorten. This dance, in our blink-of-an-eye lives, is an eternal thing. An eternal dance, so many long ages in Gaia’s slow spin. We are part of Her, not merely residents in some sort of terrestrial neighborhood. So we attend to the seasons, however they show up where we are in this gorgeous marble seething with Life, this Earth of which we are a part. 

And this year, in order to do that, please join friends old and new to share lights in the darkness. Not merely the candles of vigil. But the lights we can find when all other lights go out. (Thank you, Galadriel.)

Hope is Kindled 

Hope — not optimism, but hope – is kindled. That is to say, it comes from the embers we have protected and tended, the small stores of fuel we have maintained, even from the fluff we have found lingering in our pockets in the middle of our life’s way. Hope is kindled. It starts from very small things. 

As you know, there is no magic panacea for peace and communion with other beings. God/dess knows we have seen far too little of it in 2024. Not even at the time of year when the holidays are supposed to be life giving and joyful. Peace on Earth and in our hearts, we are told. Light faithfully shared will get us through a dark time, we are told. The Light of life is returning, we are told. Community sustains us, we are told. 

These are the things–love, joy, hope, peace, light, communion with one another–our hearts require, aren’t they? Our hearts do not require the grasping pressure, terror, fear and fascism this year has heaped on us. Our hearts do not need the evils that mark our times and that are bearing down on us.

This season calls us in various ways–good ways. We hear calls to action. Calls to analysis. Calls to care for ourselves and those closest to us. And we respond to those calls. 

For one day, then, I call you quietly, sweetly, as persistently gently as I can, to brave the Dark with me.