Winter Solstice Celebration and a poem: “Samhain, a Celtic Winter Song.

 

 

 

Dark mysterious season,

when the light doesn’t

quite reach the ground,

the trees shadow puppets

moving against the gray of day.

 

I think over the past year

praying there has been a

kindling in my soul,

the heart opened, warmed

and the juiciness of life is

more than in the loins–

a stream of forgiveness

slow flowing through the tough fibers

not stopper’d with an underlying

bitterness

but softened with compassion.

 

This season of constrictions,

unusual emptiness,

brittle like dried twigs

desiccated by hoar frost

just to be endured.

 

I wrap myself in wool and

watch the migrations–

first tender song birds which harken

back to summer,

then Sandhill cranes,

legs thin banners

streaming behind white bodies,

lost against a snowy sky.

 

They lift off to a middling cosmos,

while I, earth-bound,

can only flap the wings of my shawl,

poor plumage for such a flight,

and wonder about my own destination.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017  (“Samhain” published in “Pitcher of Moon”, 2014, Amazon.com)

“The Divine is preceived and experienced in many different ways by individual and religious groups.  Orthodox religions have codified their own approaches to the Divine in diverse ways.  Many have been helped and encouraged by such approaches, but others have not,  feeling their personal mystical experiences can not be so defined.”

     —-from “Celtic Devotional”, by Caitlin Matthews,  Fair Winds Press, 2004.

I am one of those who have found, over the years that religion has not been helpful or encouraging.  For forty years, I have ‘gone against the tide’ of my brother’s Christianity.  I found it abusive, misogynistic, deadening.  But perhaps that is the fault of my siblings, not Christianity.  This to me is not worthy of emulating.   If this is Christianity, I want no part of it.  And I don’t think their God wants it either.

The Winter Solstice falls upon December 21th, at 11:28 EST, Thursday to be exact.  This is the year’s longest night.  We celebrate it with lights, candles and a roaring fire in the wood stove.  We include prayers and an expression of gratitude above all else.  It has a particular signifance to us that prepares us for the new year.  It opens our hearts and eyes to the beauty and peacefulness of the Winter season.  It allows, demands a stillness that only such a fallow season can bring.  It calls for a mindfulness that centers us, a looking back at the past year and an anticipation for the new one coming.

Instead of the tinsel (which I like…) and artificial trimmings we gather magnolia leaves, nandina berries, holly and fir boughs.  We decorate the four mantels with these gifts from Nature and when they dry out and lose their ‘life’ they give the gift of heat as we stuff the woodstove with their bounty.

There is so much more mystery in the Cosmos than we can imagine.  A time to dedicate ourselves in gratitude,  to show a random gratitude to those ‘wise’ ones, relatives who are gone but not forgotten, to settle down in thought and silence. To await another season of rebirth.  To wrap ourselves in the wool of love for each other.

The Light can not be truly appreciated without the Darkness that surrounds us in this season.  Each season of the year provides us with many doorways  for fresh spiritual revelations and a personal response.  I am glad that after so many years of conflict, my hsuband and I have found this pathway.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

 

For Frank Hubeny:

Merry Christmas!

Clach Mhullinn….home

 

Merry Christmass to All who follow this holiday.

Jane