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Welcome! This is a place to share how we celebrate & deepen our relationship to Nature. Here you will find stories, images, & ideas about wilderness, human nature, & soulfulness. Drawing from the experiences of everyday living, the topics on this blog include: forays into the natural world, the writing life, community service, meditation, creativity, grief & loss, inspiration, & whatever else emerges from these. I invite you on this exploration of the wild within & outside of us: the inner/outer landscape.



Friday, December 15, 2017

Winter Solstice Ruminations

I am smitten with the winter solstice: that underdog holy day which gets so little attention.

The longest night of the year indicates the turning point toward the return of the light; my heart summons me to my own inner night. I am grateful for this time to reflect, to ponder, to partner with the darkness on this sacred evening. In so doing, I become a bringer of the light, finding the gems that shine within my belly (something my yoga instructor says with flourish and eloquence) and bringing them forth into the world.

Each of us can do this: honoring the darkness, celebrating the eventual coming of the light … as we sit in the calm center of who we are!

To sit knitting, warping and weaving on my loom, becoming mesmerized by the flames on the burning candles around me, making collage, reading, meditating or writing, walking on the darkened beach at low tide … ah!; these, for me, are the bliss and gifts of wintertime! No matter how chilled I get in the wind, rain, and near-freezing temperatures on hikes and walks, nature restores me on the inside, and I know I can cozy up, hibernate, a while in my home, finding the warm center that also lives in that wintertime darkness.

As I get to know and inhabit the darkness, I also come to know and cherish the light; we need both to be whole.

I relish the longest night of the year!


Winter Solstice 2017 is on the 21st of December … May you find and inhabit your peaceful inner place, shine your light in the outer places, and remember that we all need one another’s gifts of spirit!



(a version of this was posted in 2011)





All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2017 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."