Winter Solstice Prayer

So much colour from an urban garden. (Plus a dried orange, not from the garden.)

Here we are at the cusp of Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere. I have been thinking about darkness and light, and the movement of winter energies. In traditional Chinese Medicine, winter's element is water. How often the metaphor of water comes with talk of creative “flow.” Winter’s medicine is inward time. Making our life circles, in cycles, in waves: resting and dreaming, brewing, percolating, moving slow beneath the frozen earth, cold sea. Like sea lions and arctic whales, or the iron red rivers that have moved since the last ice age through the stones beneath my home.

May you be nourished.
May you be peaceful.
May you be safe
and the long road smooth.
May you know homecoming

and rest within it
with love like an old tin cup
to drink cool sweetness
from a well of creation.

May you know wholeness
in mind and body
and be freed — with all beings —
from the causes of suffering.

With affection and best wishes to you and your loved ones, in these holy days.