The Joy of Darkness—A Winter Solstice Service

First Reflection

On Saturday, yesterday on the day of the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, Mississauga enjoyed eight hours, 56 minutes, and ten seconds of daylight. In Buffalo, enjoyed marginally more, slightly less than five more minutes, a benefit, you might say of living south of here, one of few in these troubled political times. We Americans can take all the light we can get right now.

I’m sure you’ve noticed, maybe even agreed with, the prejudice that seems built into the binary nature of the English language. Light and dark. Good and bad. The Normative. It’s really baked in, and its really problematic, describing everything from beauty standards to morality. It’s a way of thinking that enabled human enslavement and continued oppression. It’s way of thinking that persists beyond any individual and their beliefs, structured into our systems of social and economic and political order. But “Only in darkness is the moon’s dance so clear. There is mystery woven in the dark quiet hours. There is magic in the darkness. Do not be afraid. We are born of this magic.”

Winter Solstice is not just about the return of more light, however, because Solstice operates not by binaries or duality but by cycles, and no part of the cycle is bad.

All parts are necessary. All parts have their gifts. The dark is a time of seed planting and of resting, of introspection and memory, inviting contemplation of our pasts and our ancestors. Today, your day will be three seconds longer, tomorrow a whole eight seconds! It’s still really dark, and we should settle into the darkness and its gifts. “So, do not rush the coming of the sun. Do not crave the lengthening of the day. Celebrate the darkness. Here and now. A time of richness. A time of joy.”

Ellen Newman reminded me, and others, that for many years this congregation held a Winter Solstice Service, part of your past and perhaps one day part of your future. And you would sing a song called “The Dark” by Mary Grigolia. Here is some of the wisdom from that song: “Oh, the darkness takes courage, the darkness takes time. Living in the darkness takes a different state of mind. The darkness knows healing. The darkness knows change. Oh, Mother Darkness I return to you again.” Even as the light returns, let us lean into the dark and its lessons and comfort.

Second Reflection

Light and dark. Good and bad. The Normative. It’s really baked in, and its really problematic, describing everything from beauty standards to morality. It’s a way of thinking that enabled human enslavement and continued oppression. It’s a way of thinking that persists beyond any individual and their beliefs, structured into our systems of social and economic and political order. It’s what makes a story about a black Santa Claus just that extra bit special or strange or unexpected. Add in a gay Santa, and some of our heads our spinning—let’s hope with delight rather than something murkier or gloomier.

We think in these oppositions, but much in nature does not really work that way. As my son was born, I watched the second hand of a clock on the wall cross the 12, the hour and minutes hands straight up. He was born as one day became the next, no pause between one and the other. The solstice is like this, too. Day becomes night becomes day. The longest night turns into the shortest day and then a shorter night and longer day follow with no break. It is we who must break, we who make a ceremony to mark this transition, because it is meaningful to us—to observe the change, to notice it with attention, to hold it with reverent care as one of the things science can explain but still remains a profound mystery.

We make the moment meaningful, because we must.

In just a few minutes, Ellen will lead us in the Bells of Norwich Sacred Circle Dance, another UCM tradition past ready to make a return. The song commemorates the Anchoress Julian, who lived a life of seclusion and prayer in a cell attached to Norwich Cathedral in Norfolk, England. You may be familiar with her prayer, that came to her as a vision, she claims: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” Sometimes this seems like a strange prayer to me, sometimes a cruel one, when the world is burning and so many of us suffer for no good reason. But this is what Julian learned in her seclusion and contemplation, that the sins of the world are necessary that we might truly know the deep necessity of Love. And while it was the sinning of individuals and the Love of Jesus she meant, I think this can apply to the social sins we endure and our individual and collective efforts to end the harm that follows. Maybe that just sounds like Christianity rephrased as Unitarianism, and maybe it is.

But Julian offered us more in her theology, a strangeness that goes beyond a Christian faith. Her seclusion and contemplation led her to know Jesus as our mother, Jesus still the Son of God but also our Mother. How marvelous! Genders and roles sliding into and eliding with each other, showing in another way the failures of our binary thinking. And what most matters is not the divisions and the wrongs, but the Love—of a deity for its creation, of a mother for her children, of the Earth for the creatures that share and emerge from her body, all the elements the same. What matters is Love, thriving, healthy generativity, system-wide flourishing. Return and turning. Not a feeling only but an overwhelming manifestation of abundance and plenty, surrounding embracing filling and fulfilling. May we celebrate Love as we celebrate the solstice, a return to the light. May it lead us to awareness and compassion. May it ever be so.

Rev. Rita Capezzi