Winter Solstice is tonight...the longest night of the year. We consider all our animal friends, those living wild in woods, water or wind and the beloveds in human homes or fields.
By lynnbywaters
We live in times when it can be difficult to live grounded and connected to the earth that sustains us. Taking time to mark the seasonal changes has given us a new sense of gratitude and taught us to appreciate the darkness as well as the light.
Yule: A winter festival that was incorporated into Christmas and the Christmas season during the Christianisation of the Germanic peoples. An ancient Germanic pagan holiday centering around Winter Solstice, when the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial sphere and the Earth's equator. Since ancient times, people all over the world have recognised this important astronomical occurrence and celebrated the subsequent “return” of the Sun.
At the entrance to Newgrange, Ireland. There's an opening above the lintel of the doorway.
The sun shines through the window above the lintel along the passage at Newgrange on Winter Solstice.
A link to experience tomorrow's dawn live at Newgrange may be found with The Office of Public Works, Livestream Now.
Sharing with Saturday's Critters
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.Winter Solstice Deer by Rion Wang
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The Twelve Nights of Yule & The Mother Goddess (as shared on The Raven and the Mystic FB page in 2022, but I can't find it again)
The first night of Yule, or "Mother Night' ('Módraniht') is December 21st, as Solstice breaks, and ends on January 1st. - 'Twelfth Night'. Many mystery pre-Christian traditions observed the Mother Goddess as the giver and nurturer of life, and celebrated feminine ancestors on Yule Eve.
The Mother Goddess gifts the world with the newly risen Solstice Sun, on the longest night of the year. Our Celtic/Norse/Pagan ancestors created feasts and fires in gratitude for the Spring to come and renewed life in the fields and flocks.
The Lunar Calendar which many earth-centered societies followed left 12 days outside the Roman* calendar. These twelve days were considered outside of the old year and new year, a liminal space where they could connect easily with ancestors, the realm of the Fey, or when the gods walked the earth; unseen yet accessible.
The thirteenth day after the Twelve Days of Yule, began the new cycle, or New Year.
* In Roman tradition, these are known as intercalary days (days inserted into the calendar to line up with the Lunar Calendar) December 26th to January 6th. January 6 is also known as Old Christmas, the date it was observed on before Pope Gregory XIII chopped 11 days from the calendar and moved Christmas Day to December 25th.
Whichever you choose to follow or observe, these are also known as the Omen Days, where one can look to signs from the Natural World each twelve days to predict what the next twelve months may hold for us personally.
There is a wonderful, mystical feeling to these Yule days out of time. I have always felt their mystery, even as a child. Everything seemed somehow suspended, until the thirteenth day, when I could palpably feel the transition to the new cycle.
Blessed Yule days Wise Ones! How will you live them?
I first heard this tune while watching a great video about goddesses, "Goddess Remembered," produced by Donna Read in Canada, in three sections.
This documentary is a salute to 35,000 years of the goddess-worshipping religions of the ancient past. The film features Merlin Stone, Carol Christ, Starhawk, Luisah Teish and Jean Bolen, all of whom link the loss of goddess-centric societies with today's environmental crisis. This is the first part of a 3-part series that includes The Burning Times and Full Circle.
I think the other two segments are also on YouTube
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Happy Hanukkah! The sixth candle on menorahs is being lit tonight at sunset.
Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1615-17 Artemesia Gentileschi, Italian, 1593-1656
But I don't try to create any of these.
My friend Annelinde Metzner does create both poetry and music. Here is a link to her poetry as published recently in Women and Religion.
She introduces her poems along with some photos in this way:
For this post, I’ve collected five of my poems from the past ten years up to the present, which are centered around the people and cultures of the Middle East. Like the region, the poems are filled with hope and unspeakable grief.
One poem starts this way...
Convivencia
The three musicians on the stage-
the Trio Sefardi,
music of the Jews of Iberia.
Forced out of Spain in 1492, they spread to the diaspora,
France, Morocco, Turkey, Yugoslavia.
Drifting deep into the Ladino songs,
I blink and I’m walking a cobblestone street
in my Medieval village.
Children kick a ball, carry bread dough, fetch water.
I remember singing this round sometimes with the Sahara Peace Choir when I was a member (many years back). In case you haven't the slightest idea why it's called Sahara except that it isn't the desert, the choir is a blend of Abramaic names of two women - Sarah and Hagar, the two mother lines of Judaism and Muslim belief systems. (Sarah was Abraham's wife, Hagar, her handmaiden who had Abraham's son, Ishmael.)
And here is a bit of background of the Abraham Jam. I enjoyed the video that is about their coming together to make a short documentary. But their story is more interesting than just that. Check out their site as well. https://abrahamjam.com/about/
A Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian walk into a concert hall…
What may be mistaken for a stand-up comedian’s opening line is actually Abraham Jam, a trio of internationally-renowned musicians who have teamed up to create art strengthened by diversity.
Abraham Jam–composed of Billy Jonas, David LaMotte, and Dawud Wharnsby–features three “brothers” from the three Abrahamic faiths. Jonas, LaMotte and Wharnsby have performed extensively over the last few decades in their individual careers.
“Harmony is better than unity,” says David LaMotte, who helped create Abraham Jam. “We don’t have to be singing the same note to cultivate peace, we can sing different notes that are beautiful together.”
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Today's quote:
“Weakness, fear and hopelessness died.
Strength, fervor and courage were born.”
From Annelinde's poem, quoting Malala Yousafzai in her birthday address to the UN Youth
NASA posted this to Facebook from James Webb telescope.
Sunday April 7 evening, an event to kick off eclipse gatherings. After all, all these tourists arrived in San Antonio and Austin and had nothing to do waiting until the next afternoon. But this event was more than just a time filler. The YouTube live coverage let me snap a few photos off the computer.
This is Maria Popova, a young genius editor of The Marginalian Newsletter. She was the MC for various talented creative people who gave their own poetry or that of famous others. Maria also gave a wonderful historic narrative of astronomy as it developed. The Greeks, for instance, didn't have the word for science (and she told when it was adapted) but the Greeks left all these musings to philosphers.
My stills from the video of several presenters:
Please skip the first 42 minutes before the actual program starts. It's fun to scroll through the presentations (IMHO).
Please skip the first 42 minutes before the actual program starts. It's fun to scroll through the presentations (IMHO).
I woke up late this morning...well, I decided to let myself go back to sleep because I could. Retirement lets me do this a couple of times a week.
And that's when I dream. Today it was delightfully involved, but fleeting in memory.
Then I read a few poems, here on blogs, or as newsletter in my email. And in between the lines, I kid you not, were fragments of my dream.
It was as if the memories were triggered not by the meanings of the words I was reading, but by the space in my head that enjoys poetry. It's probably that creative place, where dreams, sculpting, and poetry all merge. I am serious. This experience was delightful, so I read more poems.
And the dream was how I had a neighbor who had hired a catering crew in a food truck, to do a wedding reception I think. The neighbor lived in a house next door (not next to my apartment now) and the food truck people (4-5 of them) needed a place to sleep until the next day when they would be cooking. I met them, and showed them a menu that I'd picked up in Gainesville FL, where they were from, and even had that experience of meeting one and hearing her name, then forgetting it and asking what it was again. The rest of the dream had to do with finding beds and bedrooms for them all, and apparently I was magical in creating spaces for everyone.
And then in Browning's Sonnet #43, between those familiar lines, and a couple of other poems, which had beautiful wording...slipped the dream back into consciousness. How do I Love Thee, Let Me Count the Ways.
Speaking of consciousness, I'm reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and enjoying his concepts of adaptive un-consciousness, and talking with all my friends about some of the experiments that psychologists and others did, which were included in the book. They know I'm creative and interested in exploring all those things about the mind.
When pottery students sit around a table working on their designs, we pondered the difference between mind and brain!
The geese coming at me...imagine doing chair yoga on the second floor of the Lakeview Center, looking out at Lake Tomahawk. Then against the backdrop of mountains in the distance, suddenly about 20 Canada Geese are coming right at me, as they change from v-formation and plan to land. They don't all come straight down, rather turn in one direction or another to flap wings and slow themselves before they gently splash down. I stared at this phenomena rather than tilting my head as I breathed deeply. In the space of half a breath I had a transforming experience...looking into the eyes, wings and huge bodies of these creature of air, land and water. I won't forget it.
This is one of the big ones in life for most people. My son, Tai
Rogers is celebrating his 40th year today. I've posted about him
before, so won't go through it all over. But here are the links, so you
can see the photos that I've kept on my external hard drive, as well as
here on blogger In 2013. And in 2014.
Some of the older links no long are active. Tai received his M.F.A. in ceramics at Indiana University, taught for a year, then spent a couple of years as the manager of the metals and woodworking lab at Indiana University. He and Kendra moved back to Colorado a couple of years ago, and he now is working with high school students near Mesa Verde park, to help them graduate and go on to college.
I wish him well as he moves into a
more settled part of his life, both in career and maybe soon in
housing. I know he and Kendra are looking for a permanent home these
days.
What shall a mother say when a son turns 40?
Something different? Something more monumental than an ordinary wish for
a birthday? I'm afraid I don't know. I'm looking to use some poetry
to send him.
Each person is an incredibly sophisticated, subtle, and open-ended work of art. We live at the heart of our own intimacy, yet we are strangers to its endless nature. Each of us needs to travel inwards from the surface constraints and visit the wild places within us and answer the question: Who are you? Who are you behind your role? Who are you behind your words? Who are you when you are alone with yourself? Who are you before you slip back safely behind the mask and the name by which you are known during the day?
If you can awaken the eternal beauty and light of your soul you will break through the prison of certainty and bring light wherever you go.
Recorder music by...(ask someone his name, I don't remember)
Annelinda Metzner was author of all the music and poetry, and also the M.C.
Rebecca Williams shared readings
Unfortunately I had coughing, so had to leave...nothing like missing hearing something because someone coughs at the wrong moment. But I watched from the lobby!
He was surprised to see the gray clouds, for the sunrise was clear with blue sky, and he assumed, as he always had, that the sky moved as the sun moved, east to west, yet here the clouds came, traveling west to east, and he thought of the trajectory he imagined his life took, of birth to death, infancy to old age, and he wondered if he had missed something, if the winds moved differently than he supposed, if death also traveled toward life, if there were more currents than he could imagine; and if imagining itself, setting a distinct course, one he planned in advance, kept him from seeing, if he were at this moment actually growing younger, at the same time he grew older; if he was in fact moving in ways he could barely sense, into another life, into other worlds.
This poem gave my existance one of those tugs, (paradigm shift) and I thought, I could look for another current, perhaps one coming sideways, or maybe I should think of how I move sideways. The first thing I'm paying attention to is how much mess I can make by spilling things, or not seeing quite what's where I'm stepping. I just clean up and keep on moving, but I am thinking "sideways."
I love that this poem doesn't say anything about where that different direction might be, and actually is looking at becoming younger. I'm not so much interested in that concept, but see that it's also possible.
My friends Annelinde Metzner, Susa Silvermarie, and Kim Hughes are going to perform an afternoon of poetry and music today. I'm recovering from my pottery ventures/adventures. Going to enjoy myself, as well as work the sound board at the UU Church in Black Mountain for this program. “THIS FIRE” POETRY AND SONG SUNDAY DECEMBER 7TH 4 PM UUCSV BLACK MOUNTAIN
An afternoon of original poetry and song with Annelinde Metzner, Susa Silvermarie and Kim Hughes. Sunday December 7th, 4 PM at the UU Black Mountain, 500 Montreat Road. Call 669-2293 for more info.
Celebrating the release of the We’Moon Datebook and Calendar for 2015,
which features poetry by Annelinde and Susa. A donation of $10 is
suggested.
Annelinde and Susa will present some of their
inspiring and insightful poems, with songs by Annelinde unforgettably
interpreted by soprano Kim.
Annelinde Metzner is a Black
Mountain poet and composer of feminist and Goddess-centered works. She
produces multimedia concerts promoting her vision of a world where all
women can be creative, safe, valued and loved.
Spoken word artist Susa Silvermarie
is a widely anthologized writer, known both for her original work that
delights the senses while calling the spirit, and for her engaging
performance style.
Kim Hughes sang 'leading lady' roles
in NYC, such as Madame Butterfly, Tosca, The Marriage of Figaro, and
Funny Girl. She is a sound healer and spiritual counselor as well, with
a private practice in Black Mountain. Kim has been “fortunate to sing
with Richard Shulman, Marina Raye, and now the wonderful composer
Annelinde Metzner.”
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