Merry Christmas!
Wherever you are and however you celebrate the Yuletide, may you delight in uplifting moments and be blessed with bountiful inspiration during these coming days.
We have just crossed the threshold of the winter/summer solstice when, as the old ones say, the veil is thin. The frontiers between the darkness of the underworld, the middle kingdom of human endeavours and the riches of the heavenly world, gathered as one in Yggdrasil, the Tree of life, coalesce – dimensions flowing into each other, to briefly reveal a unified world, albeit fleetingly.
During this auspicious time, I work with my bespoke version of the Twelve Holy Nights. In Scandinavia, there are two series of Twelve Nights, the first before Christmas, starting on Saint Lucia (13th of December) and ending on the 24th of December, and the second starting on the 24th and ending on the twelfth day of Christmas.
This year I have decided to work with the lunar calendar and to align the middle point with the winter solstice rather than Christmas. It so happens that my first series of nighttime vigils of transfiguration was completed on the day of the new moon. The second series, twelve nights of contemplation on the unseen, will end on the first full moon of the new year, the wolf moon, rising precisely on the 1st of January.
The almost perfect alignment of solar, lunar, astronomical and Gregorian calendars is unique, gifting us with precious times for listening, in silence, stillness and solitude, to what is seeking expression through us.
So far the harvest has been copious and enlivening, just as I like it. An astonishing artistic project is slowly emerging as I play with my colour box and discover new ways of capturing the oblique and penumbral light. Imagine my surprise, beloved friends, to discover my nascent talent for designing stained glass windows!
More on this in the coming months. For now I leave you with one of the poems that graciously floated in during my nighttime vigil.
The Stillness of Mountains
Discard your chariots of fire
And deck the modest tricycle
Of scripture, tradition and experience.
Glide gracefully across the mountain range.
Salute the solitude of mountains,
Siblings separated from each other,
Standing still in eternal silence,
For they hold up sheets of ice
For the Word of Love to pace
The depths of lonely valleys
Turning barren rocks into greening pastures.
Listen to the winds of imagination
Roaring over sharp edges and jagged rims of intelligibility,
Piercing the dullness of repetition,
Breaking the spells of predictability,
For they carry fresh words
To tell the ancient story,
Bringing it alive,
Again and again:
Sermons on the mount that ground us in the new reality.
2 Responses
Thank you Nicky.
Merry Christmas to you and wishing you a great year ahead full of love, light and new growth.
I always felt December 21 was the new year………the return of the light
Love
Robert
Dear Robert,
There are various options for celebrating a New Year. In the Celtic Calendar, the new year starts on 1st of November, after halloween, the winter season being from 1 November to 1 February. As a child I could never understand why we sang “in the bleak mid-winter” at Christmas if winter was supposed to start on 21 December according to the astronomical calendar. And then there is the meteorological calendar to add to the confusion. And I have no idea how people in the southern hemisphere experience the turn of the seasons.
Maybe all these options and ensuing confusion are an invitation to decide what works best for us, personally, as you have told us. The return of the light remains a good marker.
Much love,
Nicky