Photo by Ilja Tulit on Unsplash
This is my first Substack mail-out. I’ve been wanting to start it for a while. A friend recently emboldened me to go for it. In the new year, I will be writing in a more intentional way. For now, this is just a small note to close the year. (You are receiving this email because you were on an old mailing list of mine, or we are good enough pals that I figured you’d like to be added – but, of course, if you don’t fancy being on yet another mailing list, please unsubscribe).
Today marks the Winter Solstice. My feet are on Welsh soil. Darkness already lingers in grey skies of laden clouds. In past winters, I was overly occupied by the damp cold, which permeates the body and sinks into one’s bones, that I missed the magic this season gifts.
The veil thins, reality obscures, and the imagination plays. Other realms reveal themselves, if only subtly. In the corners of our eyes. In the shadows of our dark waking hours. In the flickers of flames of candles and fireplaces. In the leafless limbs of trees caught in the winds and rains. In the heavy, heady smell of wet rot and soil in the making.
Winter asks something different of us to other seasons, if we are listening. Other parts of ourselves awaken, if we allow them to.
This year, I have been listening. I have been allowing, or rather, attempting to surrender to the season: to rest, reflect, slow down, craft and create, to allow my story mind to weave into the world. Yes, this has historically been a season to be endured, to huddle through in bundled layers awaiting the spring thaw. But I wonder if our human history of spending winter around the fire, in groups, passing the time by making and mending, crafting and conversing, singing and storytelling, until the days become longer and warmer, has shaped who we become at this time of year.
Certainly, today’s world wants something else from us. There’s an inner conflict between a couple of centuries of conditioning and many millennia of becoming. For me, at least. For many, I suspect.
Is there a liminality that exists between them? A space where we can occupy both without feeling that conflict? A way to be in today's world while honouring ourselves as living beings caught in the ebbs and flows of the seasons along with the rest of life?
These questions have been quite central for me this year. A focus of my work has long been dissolving the myth of separation: to dispel anthropocentrism and embrace the entanglement. For me, this has long existed in quite cognitive ways. More recently, I’ve been asking how I embody and feel this. How I not only preach the “good news” but live it as just another creature woven into the world in its continuous creation.
I write this note as a reflection of sorts, but also as an invitation to feel into seasonality and meet the world at this time.
Happy Solstice. Enjoy the magic. 🕯✨🍂🔥
Recent thought-wanderings:
Art, Imagination and the Tension of Making Money | Being Dragged through the Dark by a Star
Im sooo happy and proud you went for it! Can’t wait to keep enjoying your beautiful writting 💛
What a lovely start, Rachel (welcome!) ... and timely. I was just feeling the slightly claustrophobic press of oppressive clouds and clinging damp. I do need to shake myself out of the slough. I'm on my bike tomorrow for a run to the market and I'll add some gratuitous extra winter miles to snap myself out of it. Looking forward to seeing what you bring to this space. There are some interesting voices here. Catch up in the new year. Barrie