*The final 30 minute practice for December, a light yin practice to relax your nervous system, is available at the end of the post for paid subscribers.
As you read this perhaps you are also honoring the day of Christmas in some way. Some may be joyful and others grieving. Or perhaps, like me and so many others, maybe you are both and so much more.
Just a few days ago, on December 21st, I joined with a group of community members in the gorgeous historic War Memorial building in Shepherdstown, WV for a Winter Solstice celebration of light and dark. This was once a yearly event that began in 2010 as an opportunity to honor an ancient tradition, to raise money for local families, and to bring together community on a cold, dark day in December. It began in the little studio space on the second floor of Jala Yoga’s first studio location in Shepherdstown, but with our stuido capacity of only 22, we relocated to the War Memorial in 2011. This year was the first time I’ve held this event live since 2019. That year, I was grieving the loss of a friend to breast cancer, feeling lost in a new kind of grief wilderness. And perhaps like you and most of the world, I was completely unaware of the wilderness that lay around the corner in the new year.
We talk about driving out darkness on the Winter Solstice, yet darkness is no more a problem than light. It is not the darkness that creates the wilderness that we might fear, the crippling anxiety, the grief, or the “crappies” (as Kate Bowler wisely expressed in her recent podcast). In fact, it’s often the glaring light of reality that does so. This year, I contemplated darkness and light a lot and pondered the middle ground—the shadowy region between each and how to live there.
Darkness in metaphor has as much capacity to drown us as light in metaphor does. And what will drown us has nothing to do with not having the lights on, long nights, religious affiliations, sexual orientation, race or any other ways we as a species have learned to categorize “darkness.” I think it has a lot more to do with the disease of hatred, of extremism, of casting one another aside, of crippling despair, fear of and for the world, faking it with toxic positivity while dying inside. All of that lives as much in the light as it does in the dark.
Isn’t this a post on Christmas Day and haven’t we been talking about hope, you might be wondering? Yes, true. I want so much for Christmas magic each year that I will bend myself in two to keep traditions and recreate all the sparkly joy I felt as a child for my own children. But what does any of it even mean if on this day or any day we have so much of the overwhelm, the grief, the heartache and fear, that there’s no way to see past that gloom?
Kate Bowler mentioned something that was illustrated to me perfectly on the night of Solstice. She says that we talk a lot about living in the present, pausing to be with the moment, as a solution to falling into a dark mental or emotional pit. What about, though, when the present is way too much to live in? Instead, we sometimes need a remembrance of some beautiful past and an imagination for the future.
Winter Solstice was a day permeated by profound grief for the day as it was—my friend Victoria’s birthday, a day we should have been attending a giant 40th bash for a spectacular woman with a magical laugh. Instead, we prepared to float candles on various rivers and lakes in honor of her life. I spent the day ruminating and, as another dear friend says, couldn’t “put those thoughts in a drawer and slam it shut.” As I stood in a packed room of beloved Solstice participants, I found the past, present, and future instead. I let myself feel the “crappies”—Vic isn’t here and that is the worst thing for a lot of people, a series of glitches made the start of the night exceedingly frustrating, and my lengthening to-do list was causing me to lose track of any peace I’ve cultivated. Then, I remembered—we hadn’t all been together for 3 years and that last night here was so special with and gave each person there a little something to look back on when having that many people in a room was impossible. And then I imagined. I never would have believed we’d be back in this room together what with closing Jala Yoga and all the ways the world has changed. What else might I not be able to envision that’s waiting for me? Waiting for our community? What beauty might this night produce for some child who comes through Children’s Home Society or what hope might it give to Vickie’s family?
A little past, present, and future merged and somehow that was enough to put the rest of it in that drawer and slam it shut for a bit.
I’m not suggesting anything with this post but I wanted you and you and you to know that if you’re living somewhere between the shadows, feeling a little lost in the present today, want so much for magic but can’t find one internal spark for any of it, I feel you, friend. The “crappies” can pretty much be just that—crappy. And if you’re nostalgic, grieving, overwhelmed and exhausted—I hope for you, and for me too, that we might find our toward the imaginative and curious, and that somewhere between it all, you get to burrow into the dark to rest and rise to find enough light for that path ahead.