Returning to Light
On ritual, attention and the intention of the season
I have a Solstice window. Each year as the sun returns northward the morning light beams through my window radiating its light and warmth to me. Sitting on my couch, I note the light returning.
Perhaps it predates us stretching into a mysterious past - the celebrations and trust embodied by the human weal manifest across time and cultures in the season of our darkest nights.
From my own childhood. Memories that serve like ritual, that still spark something deeper, recalling them as our family moved with where my dad was posted.
My parents would often test a few churches, sometimes with us in tow, until they settled. The specific denomination -what is mainstream Protestant, often Methodist but others- was not what mattered most. I could not dare to guess what distinguishes them all which never seemed too important. The details of their services, liturgies, and their hymns may have varied. But that’s not what flickers in my memory. All our churches had a candle light service for Christmas Eve.
As seasons shift we mark the depths of our darkest night together. We share what starts as a single flame then spreads one by one until the whole sanctuary is lit. We probably sang Silent Night most times and it was always moving, participatory and communal. Pushing back the night. Preparing for the Light to come.
Not so far from here, at Mesa Verde National Park near Cortez, Colorado, Sun Temple sits atop Chapin Mesa. Built by the Ancestors of Puebloan people almost 1000 years ago, it’s one of the largest ceremonial structures they ever built. From a viewing station at Cliff Palace across the canyon, the winter solstice sun sets between Sun Temple’s two towers while at the bottom of the canyon, a fire pit catches the first rays of its sunrise.
We don’t know what rituals they used to welcome or call the light back. But they tended to its return with purpose and diligence. The Celts marked this moment too. Their Yule logs kept burning through the depths of darkest nights to bring back light and heat as the world turned toward still distant spring.
From the sanctuaries of my childhood, I still am struck by that steady effort of carefully sharing my neighbor’s flame then turning purposefully to ignite the next - until the entire church was lit in warmth and purpose.
Attention - the word at its root, means to stretch out, to reach toward, to notice and take interest in. We tend to the movement of seasons, and pay attention to this moment of time. Marking change, measuring cycles that we live inside.
Deep into the past, across times, and continents people have taken special notice - a time for steadfastness and shared endeavor. In the Book of Changes, or I Ching, Fu is the hexagram associated with this time of year, that moment noticed by people across time and culture - when the light begins its advance.
Fu means Return, and the image shows a single yang line advancing beneath five yin lines. The moment after maximum darkness, the first stirring of light and energy underground. Not dramatic, not heroic. Just the cycle turning back. Like thunder beneath earth movement hidden but gathering, preparing to emerge.
A time for steadiness and purpose. Community coming together in shared faith and a compulsion to tend to the growing light.
If ancients carefully built monuments tracking their movements through time to help move this cycle toward spring, or if it was more practical, an agricultural calendar to help them plant and thrive more effectively, is less the point than the intent and attention given to marking it.
At root that word “ritual” means to properly perform a custom or observance. Ritual connects us with purpose, and that connects with what we value and what matters.
In the progression marked by Celts or Puebloan people, in ancient China or in U.S. churches - there is a recognition of the different purposes in the seasons. A time for preparation, a time for inspiration, for action, and this time, for reflection then return.
Winter Solstice marks the intention and attention we give to that space between a guarded rest and preparing for action, when the light begins to grow again.
Now as winter settles in, a frozen world with the nights still long – it is not yet time to rush towards spring. It is time to acknowledge the steady movement of the purpose in each season.
Darkness is nothing, it is not a state or force of its own: in physics it is simply light’s absence. Darkness is just waiting for the advent of light. In his moral analogies Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King reminded us that darkness cannot dispel darkness, only light can do that.
In the Jewish tradition, Hanukkah – the Festival of Lights – celebrates a particular historical moment - the rededication of the Second Temple. Yet it too invites participation in tending light through the darkest season, one more candle lit each night as family gathers, the darkness is dispelled by growing brightness.
The season - Solstice, Yule, Christmas, Hanukkah - reminds us that now is that moment, when it takes collective effort to tend the embers, to help welcome back and share a flickering light trusting that together we will watch it grow.
We celebrate as we pass now through the darkest nights, sharing the warmth we bring. With attention and intention, marking our time with ritual, we advance toward warmer days, toward light and spring.