Winter Solstice in Northern Latitudes
Bottom image: as the earth moves in an elliptical orbital path around the sun, marking each year, this orbit with the axial tilt creates the changes in seasons we experience in the northern and southern latitudes. This tilt, combined with the orbit, is also why we have the winter and summer solstices. In the northern hemisphere, Dec 21 is the longest night and the shortest day as the north american continent is tilted away from the sun, with days getting longer and longer as the earth slowly turns on its axis to gradually tilt back toward the sun. Bottom image also from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt
Moment of Mind
My favorite days of the year are the ones that mark passages and changes of phases: solstices and equinoxes. A friend of mine expressed surprise recently when I asked what they were doing for the solstice. They were a bit confused, was this a pagan ritual or something?
I explained that well yes, sure, it can be. I didn’t go into the history that there were peoples conquered by Roman Christians in the 300-400s (so a little less than 2000 years ago) who lived in the country, respected the land, and practiced any faith that wasn’t Christianity at the time – such as animism (relational valuing of land and all on it as kin) or believing in multiple dieties. I’ve explored some of this in my own attempt to retrace ancestry and understand how trauma handed down intergenerationally could have led white people to become modern oppressors. Some of my Northern European Celtic or Gaul ancestors were likely amongst this group if we were to stretch back far enough. That’s probably shared – if forgotten – among most people with European heritage north of Italy. These indigenous ancestors were taken over and assimilated after Christians, despite having been previously persecuted by the Romans, outlawed paganism (see Britannica on the Roman Conquest for more info)
And, I said to my friend, it doesn’t have to be specific to a culture or spiritual practice. It can be as simple as recognizing and welcoming the coming of more hours of sunlight. Celebrating seasonal changes isn’t specific to one group. Indigenous cultures around the planet have many unique ceremonies. As someone who tends a small plot of land, I am continually checking in with everyone who visits it – birds, insects, mammals, rain, sun, wind, etc. Celebrating happens nearly every morning – not only on the solstice.
Ceremony can be a form of mindfulness. In a ceremony we may direct attention to create intention – inviting in a quality of experience. We may also cultivate a daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal and even annual way of expressing gratitude for countless supports we received from the rain, the wind, the sun, the earth, the air, and everything as it composts and feeds new growth. This feels particularly important on the eve of the challenging year that was 2020.
Ceremony can also be a form of expression, where through a series of one or more intentional actions – a lighting of a candle, a writing of words and then release of them through burning or tearing the paper they are on, a song sung, a body moved in dance, a creation of food and sharing of it, a gifting of support to someone or to the land you are on, a simple waking early to watch the sunrise or finding a spot to watch the setting sun, a placing feet on the grass….anything can be chosen and engaged with purposefully.
Thought is the putty that we get to mold life with. While much of what shows up in the mind is simply the brain in motion – generating predictions in case they are useful…there is also a being here who can use awareness as canvas, and wield thought like watercolors.
At this moment, words are showing up…in a way none of us can really explain…and travelling into these hands and are being typed onto this screen for your eyes to read and your brain to create – as a prediction – just before you read them. That simulation power is also why it feels strange if a sentence misses the last .
You are creating all day, every day.
I invite you to celebrate something small today, to let go of something from this past twelve months, and to welcome the expanding moments of sunshine ahead with me.
Love for your Inner Science Activist Nerd
One of the areas I explore regularly is that of implicit bias – basically the regular errors our prediction making brains create based on social conditioning. Racism, sexism, ableism – all the various ways we may marginalize or oppress people begins from having learned it in the society around us when we are children. It’s in social media, television, movies, news, institutions like school, the people elected into office, sporting events, our peers and our families. I want the unseen to not only be uncovered, I want to integrate it. Bias becomes a tool of oppression when it is judged and feared, rather than understood and managed. Biases are not permanent, as recent research indicates, they can and do change – as social norms change, as our understanding shifts.
Making the implicit explicit is a form of mindfulness – it’s noticing when assumptions, expectations, stereotypes have taken over. The author of Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People (I haven’t read it yet), and one of the researchers who created the Implicit Association Test has a new website called Outsmarting Human Minds. I invite you to go and explore either of these websites as part of uncovering what might be hidden. The second link will take you to a video showing visual illusions so you can quickly “see” some of the tricks of prediction your mind does just with visual informat
Get Your Park Groove On
Okay, so we can’t really go to Stonehenge at the moment. And every year, a non profit films the sunset and then sunrise of summer and winter solstice. Below is sunrise and by the time you get this email you can click on the image and it will take you to the youtube channel and replay the sunset.
Researchers have dated stonehenge as being created roughly more than 5,000 years ago – more than 1,000 years before the numerous tribes and bands of Celts were there. However, before the megalith stones, between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago, giant pine totems were erected in the area possibly to celebrate a hunting ground of large aurochs (wild cow ancestor) (Ghose, 2013) by indigenous communities. The site has a natural spring making it a popular location for many animals (Ghose, 2013).
Ghose, T. (2013) New theory on why stonehenge was built. LiveScience, https://www.livescience.com/28881-stonehenge-hunting-ground-discovered.html
| Thank you dear reader for exploring how to support your human system in what continues to be a roller coaster of a year. Thank you for writing in with questions, comments and sharing your insights. Thank you for continuing to claim your steps on your growth and emotional capacity processes. Thank you for exploring the magnificent life that you are. I look forward to more explorations in 2021. Much love, Tia |
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