A Solstice Reflection — Side With Love

When I was a child, I would spend part of my summers visiting with my mother’s family in the mountains of Lebanon. I remember sitting out back of the house we shared with our aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins - drinking tea and playing card games with mismatched decks. Some of my clearest memories are from our nights spent outside, because it was then I noticed things that I hadn’t quite picked up on before. The scent of the jasmine blooming around the front yard. The flicker and flight of the bats that lived in the mountains. The persistent, if not foreboding, sound of mosquitoes on the hunt for a meal around our heads.

There were reflections of life around me that, were it not for the darkness of night, I might never have had the privilege of knowing. Though I didn’t consciously realize it until years later, I learned an incredibly valuable lesson over the course of my childhood summers. Some beauty can only be noticed in the darkness of night.

As we approach the Winter Solstice, that lesson is just as true and important to our lives. On December 21st (in the Northern Hemisphere at least), we begin our shortest day and prepare for our longest night of the year. It is a turning point as we transition from fall, a time of harvest, to winter, a time of rest. And it celebrates a re-turning point, as we honor the rekindling of the light that warms our world in the increasingly longer days to come.

But before we re-turn to that light, our Solstice time can and should be an opportunity to relish the beauty of what comes alive in the dark. This longest night is a time for us to, as the poet Wendell Berry invites us, “find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.” In this longest night, we have the gift of time to deepen our awareness of what is always around us in the light, but soars and sings in the dark. During this longest night, we are given an extended chance to shift our attention and intention to appreciate the sounds, sights, smells, activity, and interconnectedness that only finds their fullest form in the infinite richness of the dark.

What comes to life when darkness falls upon us? When we are resting, what is walking around us? When we are quiet, what sings? When we are still, what soars?

When there is no light of certainty, what do you find in the dark of possibility?

graphic of horizon with trees and northern lights. text reads "Winter Light: a Solstice Celebration. Join in worship & wonder with UUMFE

Winter Light - A Solstice Celebration
Dec 22, 2021 at 8pm ET / 7pm CT / 6pm MT / 5pm PT

Join Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen and UU Ministry for Earth for Winter Light, a special Zoom service celebration of the Solstice.

This sacred gathering reminds us of our interdependence with Earth, life, and the universe. Enjoy an hour of music, reflection, ritual and meditation as we gather in the sacred darkness of Winter to honor all that life brings. Register now.

image of a horizon with conifer trees and the northern lights

This Winter Solstice, I am taking this time to consider those relationships and perspectives I can only know in the peace of darkness, in the quiet of my personal rest. Who are the people and communities I have never seen or encountered, but my life is dependent on theirs? What are the movements and celebrations that have deep roots in the rich and fertile night? Why do I only notice them when there is no distraction of light?

And as we turn again in the days to come, as the light re-turns to our lives, how do we keep noticing that which the darkness brings? How does this time of awareness and appreciation of what is alive in the night stay with us in the light of the day? How do we shape the growing light to ensure that what we have loved in the dark, what has loved us in the nights, is not diminished but honored as the darkness fades? How is our perspective forever changed by what we would never have known if it were not for our longest night?

The Side with Love Organizing Strategy Team invites you to join us in essential practices that sustain our work for justice - slowing, pausing, resting, and noticing what comes alive in the dark. As our team takes time off this season, a spiritual practice that helps keep us nourished enough to stay in the long haul movement towards collective liberation, we hope that you too are able to find the space to slow down and appreciate the beauty and possibilities of our longest nights..