Today in Northwestern Montana. There will be daylight today for eight hours and twenty minutes, a full half hour less than in Belfast, Maine, where I thought I was pretty far north. In Belfast, the sun rises at 7 and sets at 4, while here, sunrise is around 8:30 with sunset just before 5, so the whole effect is a little different. Our day here begins in the dark in a way that is unfamiliar to me. Meditation at 6 happens in the dark, rather than in that fertile just-before-dawn light. Then the end is not quite so abrupt in the afternoon. There's usually a chance to get home before deep dark has settles on us.
I think of my friends in Edmonton, Alberta, where today is yet another half hour shorter than here. And in Washington, DC, where I have also lived, this shortest day will have nine and a half hours of sunlight, about an hour more than here.
I hope people in the parts of the world with less dramatic changes in the length of day throughout the year will forgive us northerners for getting obsessed with the sun's shifting attentions. The gathering darkness really makes us sit up and take notice! Will we have to keep living with this dimness and darkness? Is this permanent? How would life be if it were? Or, in a different frame of mind, what is starting to begin as we go into this womb-like time of darkness? When the world turns again toward the light, what that is new will be growing in our lives?
The long, dark nights have a womb-like quality, and the dormancy of the rest of the natural world around us suggests waiting... Pregnancy with what? Waiting for what? Change can happen in the time around the Winter Solstice. What will it be this year? How will life be renewed and refreshed as it emerges from the time of dark? This is why I love this season... fertility and change, the mysterious process of creativity bringing new ideas and insights into the world.
Happy Solstice to you! May there be blessings from this waiting in the dark as the world turns again toward light!
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