2022 the year we learn to listen to love

Week 51--in which we sit beside the ancestors in the dark--and something miraculous happens 

Friends, soul writers, mystics, witches, and lovers of prayer,

Note: Our Winter Solstice celebration with Rabbi Tirzah and Emma Kupu was Sunday at 2pm Eastern. You can still register and receive the recording. 

Wednesday, December 21 marks the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. This is an ancient moment, when the turn of the wheel of the year acknowledges the life-giving miracle of the light that will grow and grow, until it is Spring.

Solstice, the apex of the sacred calendar, was honored for thousands of years before any of our patriarchal religions arrived on the scene.

And it calls to us still.

On Wednesday, the pale light of dawn will enter a small opening at Newgrange, a mysterious mound constructed by Neolithic farmers in the Boyne Valley in Ireland a thousand years before Stonehenge or the pyramids in Egypt were begun. Its construction and purpose and antiquity boggle the modern mind.

For just 17 minutes the yellow light of Solstice dawn will snake its way along narrow corridor walls illuminating ancient symbols as it moves, until it reaches the furthest wall. When the light recedes, the corridor will stay dark until the next Winter Solstice morn.

What did our ancestors know that we have forgotten amid the commercial frenzy of the holidays of our time?

Even if we can’t quite access their full wisdom, our bodies remember. Our bodies, born of the Earth herself, know instinctively that this is the time to enter the dark, the womb of the Mother, and open to receive the gift of the returning light. It’s not an accident that wildly divergent religions around the world celebrate this time as the time of their god. Their divine birth.

But the story is older than any of those religions.

No one owns this moment or the fullness of the story. Except perhaps the Sun and the Earth! They know. And they now invite us to be still and watch and wait for the seed of the dawn.

I received this prayer a year ago as I was preparing for our Winter Solstice celebration. When I revisited it this year, it felt even more perfect. I will open our celebration with this prayer.

In 3 Days
©Janet Conner
a winter solstice prayer received by Janet Conner on 12-12-21 just before the Capricorn Solstice

In 3 days, the light will pierce the darkness
as light has since the beginning of time

In 3 days, the seed of a divine child
will be planted in a divine mother

And the story of life begetting life
will be told once more

It may be told around Yule fires
It may be told around Christmas trees
It may be told with Shabbat candles
It may be told in mosques and churches, temples and fields

But none of these places own the story

The story came first
This story is the most ancient of all stories
This story is the story of life

In 3 days, an invisible new life will nestle into your womb

In 3 days, she will, oh so gently, begin to sing her song—a song you have not heard before

In 3 days, a precious seed
of your sacred medicine—

Medicine you and you alone
can present to the world
will begin to speak

She may whisper in your ear
She may walk across your dreams
She may appear at your window
She may rustle your hair

You may look in the mirror one day and—oh!
You may pick up your journal one morning and—oh!
You may be stirring a pot,
folding clothes or staring into the fire

And oh! you realize

You—you—are a divine mother

You—you—have received a secret gift

You—you—will soon give birth

Because

You—you—are carrying a divine child

A child who asks you to care for her
until she is ready to fly, fly, away

In 3 days, on the precious eve of Winter Solstice
the ancient story of the magical return of the light
will be told once more

Are you the one telling it?
Are you the one hearing it?
Are you the one receiving it?

Are you the magician?
Or are you the magic?

Or are they the same thing?

Ignite Your Soul's Power for 2023

We gathered Sunday, December 18 from 2:00-3:48 PM eastern for 108 minutes.

Don't be concerned if you couldn't be with us live. The event has been recorded and available for all registered members within 24 hours along with additional bonuses from Emma, Tirzah, and me.

to sitting in the dark with the ancestors  

Janet

website: janetconner.com

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