In three days, we will go into the dark. We will begin the three days leading up to the December Solstice, Midwinter, or Yule, in the Northern Hemisphere. That first day of the three, I have invited you—and I invite you now—to make a day of retreat. A day of renewal. Let it be a day of re-turning towards your Deepest, Wisest Self. Let it be a Preparation Day for the deep darkness without which the light cannot return in strength.

The Winter Solstice always makes me think of its foil, Midsummer. When I preach around the Summer Solstice, I often talk about strength. Strength and brilliance, and how at their peak, it portends the laying down of power. At the height of things, we see the lengthening shadow, the need for relinquishment.

And so here, in my last blog post before Yule, I am thinking about Midsummer. I am thinking about how the darkness, the deepest moment of the year, portends the light. “Seek Me in the light in the darkness, and seek Me in the darkness itself…” Both are true. The light in the darkness, and the darkness itself.

So some thoughts for you to consider as the three days before and the three days after come and go, and then we come to the Full Moon of Christmas!

• What happens when you listen intently for your own wisdom?
• If you practice divination, what does it have to say to you at this time?
• As we pass the Solstice, what are the powers, the strengths you can imagine taking up again? What have you laid down in the past, what has rested, that now can be renewed?
• Or what are new powers, powers of age or circumstance, you didn’t have before, that you hear turning over in the close and holy darkness of Earth?

I will not have a blog post next week, but there will be one for New Year’s. Next week, my family celebrates Solstice and then my wife and I will go into discernment for our year to come. Blessings of the close and holy darkness, the close and holy darkness, the close and holy darkness. So many blessings.