bonfire

The Low angled sun illuminates our land with brilliant light,

Bathing the mundane, the everyday scene with exquisite beauty, with burnished gold for a fleeting moment.

sunlight low in the sky, reaching into dark corners that have been without light for many months. Piercing and illuminating the shadows with long sunbeams across the land, reaching into the unlit corners your homes, Creating great beauty, Spotlighting this fleeting and precious moment in time.

The cycles of our seasons, those contrasts of light and dark, winter and summer are integral to our existence. The autumnal earth tilts slowly on her axis, as the northern hemisphere moves farther away from the sun, bringing darker, colder, days, snow and winter.

The winter solstice, the day the earth stands still, and begins its tilt back toward the sun, is our time to welcome life and light returning. Know this: Even in winter, sleeping life is stirring deep underground in the roots and seeds, the hibernating creatures as they wait for their time to grow, to wake. when conditions are right – for spring.

You may doubt that the light, warmer days, and growing buds will come again now that we are deep into this season of cold. There is no way to rush or hurry the cycles of our lives or the order and timing of the heavenly bodies.

This is the time of Dormancy, resting fields, and fallow ground. This is the time to let your soul rest, your mind restore itself, regain energy beneath the surface, releasing what is stagnant and used up within, making room for fresh new ideas to emerge.

Even during playful, quiet or idle moments the mind and heart percolate deep below the surface of life and create new connections, new insights, and ideas that will come forth effortlessly when the timing and conditions are right.

So, Celebrate! Now is the time to welcome the light returning, the Earth tilting back toward the sun, toward growth and spring and new life once again!

On this Thanksgiving week, I invite all who read these words to offer gratitude and appreciation in your own way to the spirits of Earth, Water, Air and Fire for making our lives possible.

Thank you Earth for our lives and all of life. Thank you for our home, for the solid bedrock foundation supporting our physical lives. Thank you for providing everything needed to thrive and maintain our lives in health and wholeness.

Thank you for the variety and beauty of your landscapes, your mountains, forests, deserts, plains, all manner of living beings, Trees, insects, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, sea creatures, fur bearing four legged ones, all forms of vegetation, each an integral component in the web of life.

Thank you for your powers of restoration, your prolific growth, your creativity, the seasons and cycles of birth, life and death and birth again.

Thank you Water for our lives and all of life. Thank you for your flow, for nourishing the cells of our bodies with your life giving energy, for facilitating the flow and movement of energy throughout our bodies, Thank you for providing a home for all water creatures, from the microscopic plankton to all manner of fish, and aquatic life forms to the blue whale.

Thank you for sculpting the landscapes of our Earth into caves, valleys, canyons, coastlines, alluvial plains. Thank you for your beautiful and wild oceans, rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, for the underground aquifers that shimmer still and silent beneath the surface of the land. Thank you for our health, for nourishing every cell of every living being.

Thank you Air for our lives and all of life. Thank you for our precious breath, the breath of all creatures who breathe and those who absorb air to sustain their lives and health. Thank you for filling our lungs with your energy, for permeating us with your chi, or life force, for sustaining every cell of our bodies and blood stream with your oxygen. Thank you for carrying away airborne toxins with each exhale and cleansing our bodies in this way.

Thank you fire/sun/light for our lives and all of life. Thank you for fueling the web of life here on planet Earth. For fueling the growth and life cycles of all living beings here on our home planet. Thank you for making our very solar system possible, and all life forms on Earth we depend on for our continued existence.

Thank you to the flames keeping us warm in winter, for cooking our food, for bringing light into the darkness. Thank you for fueling our lives with passion and purpose and creative power, for mirroring to us our light and our brightness!

Shamanic Healing of Ames

Winter Solstice