At the end of a troubled year, and after COP21, what is the meaning of light in the darkness, of solstice, of the return of the sun, of stretching more light into these next coldest months of the year? And in these troubled times, how do we become light in a culture clinging to the darkness of ignorance, anxiety, and fear, walking blindly toward an abyss? Can we point our lights toward a new path for the human journey?
“Hope is about what is not predictable, what we see in dreams but is not yet realized, what we believe can be true even against the weight of the evidence. Hope is how we choose to live in this dance of darkness and light, in which we are gifted to be conscious participants. It is who we choose to be in the world, how we decide to act.”
One of the longest essays we’ve ever posted here. I hope you will take time for a long, reflective, contemplative read, then share your thoughts with us and our readers.
Tags: christmas, climate change, COP21, enbridge, indigenous environmental network, light in the darkness, the great turning, winter solstice
This has been a sacred time of year just about as far back as we can find traces of human culture. Through millenia when people were far more connected to the natural rhythms of our planet, cultures have acknowledged the moment when the longest darkness begins to relent to the lengthening light, a perennial dance […]
Tags: christmas, new creation, winter solstice, yin and yang
Fostering Ecological Hope Today from Margaret Swedish: Impermanence is written into creation, an ongoing process of unfolding since the igniting of the Big Bang. We are all in that process. It is dynamic, vibrant, fecund. We experience impermanence in a profound way here in the northern hemisphere at this time of year. Darkness fills more […]
Tags: carbon methane release, christmas, climate change, global warming, impermanence, industrial technological society, permafrost melting, winter solstice
Fostering Ecological Hope Today from Margaret Swedish: [This is my last post until after Christmas.] I find it odd how we have divided into good and bad this notion of ‘light in the darkness.’ It is a strange western construct. Since without darkness there is no light, darkness must not be a bad thing, but […]
Tags: cassini-huygens, christmas, light in the darkness, meaning of the human, saturn, winter solstice