A Winter Solstice Poem & Meditation

I found this poem about the shortest day, and the longest night of the year. It evokes the essential energy of ritual from far away times and traditions, a remembrance of our innate understanding that ritual maintains the known rotation of the world on its axis.

Sink in to this beautiful poem.

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive,

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us—Listen!!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,

This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!

Poet: Susan Cooper

Your 2023 Winter Solstice Meditation

Every year, in honor of the promised and delivered return to the light, EHI creates a Solstice experience, sometimes a live, online meditation, other times, like this year, an offering for you to do in your own Solstice ritual.

You can listen to the Winter Solstice Meditation here:

May you acknowledge, honor and release darkness.

May you honor, acknowledge and embrace your extraordinary, beautiful light.

May the releasing of darkness bring respite and peace.

May invoking your light bring blessing and balm to your heart, your life and your Be-ing.

Peace. Peace. Peace.