Here’s One We All Share

How many times have I posted here about the frustration of working with people who are looking so hard for the ways we are alike that they completely ignore what is unique about me or my religion?

Today, however, we have something big in common. No matter what our spirituality or where in the Northern Hemisphere we live, we all agree that the night will be very long tonight and that tomorrow the days will begin to lengthen. Whether we celebrate Yule, Hannukah, Santa Lucia Day, Zoroastrian Winter Solstice, or any of a host of starry-nighted sentiment-strewn midwinter holidays, we all know that the sun is doing its biannual apparent about-face.

Some say that pre-literate humans feared the dark, chanting and banging on drums all night to bring up the sun. I rather think that if they knew enough to pick out the longest night of the year, they were surely celebrating the sun’s return, sacralizing an event they knew was pre-ordained.

So, just today, I will do homage to the One Light that we all hold dear, the source of life that the Egyptians variously called Aten, Kheper, Horus and Ra. Hail the returning sun, which warms the fires within us into a crucible of sacred knowing. Dua, hail and welcome, light and life and understanding. May we tonight make use of the nurturing dark to listen for wisdom, to plan for the year ahead, to ponder the mysteries of forgiveness and peace. May we welcome the sun in the morning with joy, with new resolve to create our world in its image of unyielding, unwavering love.