Winter Solstice

I’ve had an awareness of the Winter Solstice for as long as I can remember. I always thought of it as the shortest day of the year. And then it was December 22. Life moves on.

This week, I’ve heard it referenced in two other ways.

​One was that it was the longest night of the year. I supposed that goes along with the shortest day idea, but I’d just never thought of it in that way before.

​I also came across this way to think about December 21st - it marks the returning of the sun. I really resonate with this view.

Shortest day and longest night both focus on the moment - a snapshot in time. While I’m all about being present, there is something very finite in both of these views. Since they focus on a single day (or night), when it passes, the solstice just disappears and life just carries on largely unchanged by its occurrence.

But thinking of the solstice as the returning of the sun moves it from being an isolated event on a single day to a marker of the beginning of a cycle. It’s like a gift I can receive every day - as the light returns, how will I live into and grow in that light? And that I get to choose that every day is the gift.

As I encounter events in my own life, what would it be like to see them as gifts as well, as beginnings rather than isolated events that happen and disappear, leaving me unchanged? What if I get to choose how I will live in light of that experience going forward? How might I grow, or what new cycle might begin, because of it?