Winter's path to heaven . . .

Sunday, December 21, 2025. It's Sol's day … the Winter Solstice is upon us – the shortest day and longest night of the year and return of the light. The new season usered in at 9:03 a.m. Central Time. Moderate Easterlies bring a warming trend to TulseyTown this week. Today in the upper 50's. The week ahead featuring 70's and mostly clear skies.

Cultures around the world have celebrated the solstice since ancient times. From the Roman feast of Saturnalia to the pre-Christian festival of Norse jól or Juul observed in Scandinavia, our ancestors honored the first day of winter in many ways.

Yin and Yang form the basis of much of Asian philosophies. According to this school of wisdom, one cannot exist without the other. These two seemingly opposite forces are intimately connected and complementary. Lao Tsu said the two arise mutually and are inseperable. Yin, he said, is the “mother of the ten-thousand things,” while Yang is committed to the duality of naming. We need times of darkness, quiet, stillness, healing, and rest, as much as we need activity, noise, and light. The sight of darkness, the feeling of Winter's cold are gifts of Yin. The name “solstice” and its placement on the calendar written by Yang.

Our meditation practice pulls both ways. From one perspective, it is a discreet activity, something we do. From another perspective, one that tends to emerge more clearly with time, it seems less something we do and more something we are.

Said Mrs. Blake of the poet:

I miss my husband's company –

he is so often in paradise.

Of course! the path to heaven

doesn't lie down in flat miles.

It's in the imagination

with which we perceive this world

and the gestures which

honor it.

– Mary Oliver, in House of Light, Beacon Press, 1990.