Christmas Morn and Birthday Thoughts

Christmas is also my birthday and my Mom sent me exactly the right book, Fifty Days of Solitude, by Doris Grumbach.    She has heard me say so many times how much I long for more solitude, more time to just think, go down into the rich and creative world I love so much inside my own mind...but today I am basking in the richness of the many unexpected and heartfelt birthday messages from new and long term friends.  Feeling the love and remembering the sage advice that the more you love the more you have love.   So, solitude... Just when you have the answers, the answers change.  That's my birthday lesson for 2011.  I have no answers, I'm just a witness.

Winter Solstice

 Today is the celebration of the turning of the season and symbolized in Celtic tradition by the waxing sun Goddess Grian, who rules the light half of the year.  The baking and eating of sweets is a tradition that honors Grian to insure the "sweetness" of the year to come. There are many traditions, customs and ways of celebrating this changing of the season. A juicy book to guide your own celebrations is The winter Solstice, by John Matthews.  For me I think mostly of Winter Solstice as a time when the energy of growing things is focused on the feeding and deepening of the roots.  It is a time to travel inward to bring out inner strengths. Every year my soul sister and I get together at this time spending the whole day celebrating what we've come to understand about the lessons of the year that was and plan what we want to create for the year that is beginning. This is always enhanced and enlivened by the traditional drinking of the scotch.  May your day be filled with sweetness and light.

Gratitude

Some people look for the magical, the extraordinary moments of life in travel or some new adventure or encounter.  I look for it in the everyday ordinary moments of daily ritual, of the close circle of daily life.  I usually find it there.  Today was no exception.  Today the magic and my gratitude is in the love, inspiration and generosity born in friendship.  The open hearted soul feeding exuberance of friends sharing who they are, what they know, and the kick ass possibilities in what they can do.  Thank  you, Kim, for many things, but today for helping me launch my first blog.  Let the adventure begin.