Untitled Light
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Just love Hudson Gardner’s work and how he captures how I’m feeling right now as the summer sun fades into shadow and the rapture of light sheds its skin.
Making the Darkness Luminous: Celebrating Winter Solstice with My Family
by C. Hawk Croft, guest contributor
“Yalda Night” (photo: S.Ali.Al Mosawi/Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons)
“”[W]hile we can’t stop the earth from turning, we can choose to experience each revolution so deeply and completely that even the dark becomes luminous…”
—Starhawk, in The Spiral Dance
At first glance, it might seem odd to spend the longest night of the year celebrating the return of the sun. It’s dark. The days are short and cold. The warmth of the summer sun seems hidden in the fuzziness of your memory as you sit huddled around the wood stove, wrapped in a blanket and wearing two pairs of old, faithful socks.
For many of our Pagan ancestors, this was the essence of the winter solstice mystery.
A Jewish Holiday, Once Every 28 Years
Trent Gilliss, Online Editor
Rushing to take my children to school yesterday, I witnessed a gorgeous scene of a group of several dozen people — young and old — congregating in front of the entrance to the Sabes JCC in St. Louis Park. The morning light was in full bloom, still a nip of cold in the air, and traffic unusually quiet. I paused and watched and then remembered this piece in the Times about Birchat HaChammah:
According to the celestial calculations of a Talmudic sage named Shmuel, at the outset of spring every 28 years, the sun moves into the same place in the sky at the same time and on the same day of the week as it did when God made it. This charged moment provides the occasion for reciting a one-line blessing of God, “who makes the work of creation.”
Reflecting on the awe and physical majesty of this planet every 28 years seems to be an act I should replicate every day. I’m glad that small group reminded me to stop and look at the sun.
