Winter Solstice Guided Meditation ~ December 21 2024

This is our Winter Solstice guided meditation and podcast for our weekly Inner Peace meditation. It is a beautiful day here.  It is cold and the Sun is shining.  I'm at a very lovely park in Tulsa.  There are parents out with their younger children. It is so good to see young children outside on scooters and swings and climbing all over the equipment rather than sitting in front of a screen!  This is a well cared for and safe park.  

We are now officially in winter in the Northern Hemisphere which means it is now summer in the Southern Hemisphere.  On the day of the Winter Solstice, the Sun appears to stop on its journey south through the sky.  Then it gradually begins its journey north over the next several days.  The winter solstice occurs at an exact time which is the time the sun appears to pause over the Tropic of Cancer.  Then each day following the Solstice, the sun will appear to be a little bit higher in the sky until the Spring Equinox.  Then we will begin our journey towards summer on the Equinox.

It is a beautiful day.  The sky is clear.  There's a breeze which is a bit cold, but not too cold for a walk.  And, I was up this morning in time to catch a photo of the Sun coming up over the house across the street.  That was great.

Unfortunately, in the midst of these holidays, we seem to have gotten ourselves into a bit of a political tangle.  That could be my understatement for the year!  I have noticed that humans tend to do this.  We tend to get into serious and very challenging messes like this when there is a problem with refugees or overpopulation anywhere on the planet.  The situation is made even worse when refugees are fleeing in large numbers from one country to another.  This has been a problem throughout our history, and we have not managed to solve it!

When we have refugees knocking at the door, and it doesn't seem to matter which country it is, we tend to get a little crazy.  Sooner or later we begin to feel threatened and then frightened and anxious.  When we feel this threatened, we have a tendency to move into very unpleasant sorts of behavior.  In order for us to solve problems like overpopulation, or refugees, or systems that are way out of date, we need to get much better working together.  

Here is the Good News!  There are people in government and in communities who know how to do just that. They have learned how to get people talking to each other, listening to each other, working together for the common good.  If we can get better at communicating rather than polarizing, name calling, and threatening each other, we could make progress.  We know from experience that all those behaviors exacerbate the problem! 

So we're in a bit of a tangle.  And, it is a very unpleasant tangle!  It has become a very difficult political tangle, primarily because we haven't gotten much better at working with each other.  And, there are people who refuse to consider any other solutions but theirs!  Now we are in a situation where

people can get hurt.  All kinds of people, young and old and everything in between, can get hurt.  This is a tragedy in the making!

This is a tragedy in the making because it is what happens when people refuse to work together for whatever reason.  There are tragedies that didn't have to happen or that could have been avoided.  And there are tragedies that were made worse because of choices people made.

A good example would be the Titanic.  This ship was supposed to be unsinkable, so the owners and builders decided not to load the required number of lifeboats!  Why bother to put enough lifeboats on the Titanic for all the passengers since it was definitely “unsinkable”.  Then there were people, immigrants, refugee people, on the lower levels, all crammed in below.  In many ways they were considered “worthless”.  Approximately 1,317 passengers died when the Titanic sank.  709 of them were 3rd class passengers. Three-quarters of those passengers perished.  It was very difficult for them to reach the upper decks where the lifeboats were stored.  The sinking of the Titanic was tragic, and it was made even more so by the decisions and behavior of human beings.

I'm not saying that life would have been any better if it had been easier for them to reach the upper decks.  The Titanic went down regardless.  What is tragic is the arrogance of the people who built the Titanic, who did not put enough lifeboats on for everybody.  And, they probably overloaded the steerage!  We keep doing things like that.  I'm not sure whether we mean to or not.  We are creating tragedies because we are not working out solutions together.

I am not intending to lower your spirits for the holiday, but I am asking for some serious consideration for ways that we as human beings can move forward together.  

What can we do?  

How can we learn to listen to each other better? 

How can we get better at coming up with better ways to solve problems.  Many people go to church, go to synagogue.  People go to spiritual retreats. People do all kinds of activities in an effort to become more spiritual.  I understand that because I've done that myself.  And, I've been very fortunate.

The reason I feel so blessed is because the spiritual teachers I have studied and worked with were very practical and very grounded.  One of my very early teachers in his professional life had been an electrical engineer. He was very knowledgeable and practical.  And, he taught from that kind of understanding.  Another of my early teachers was Murshid Samuel Lewis, the Sufi teacher who brought in the dances of Universal Peace.  He was very practical.  He was a gardener.  He was an excellent gardener.  And the plants that he put in, many are still growing at his house in San Francisco.  One thing Murshid Sam said in one of the classes was when anyone showed up at his door for whatever reason, he would bring them in, wash their feet, and feed them.  He would welcome them, and then he would try to find the best way to help them.  All of my teachers had that kind of heart.

In the Benedictine tradition, welcoming a stranger is a major pillar of that teaching and of spiritual practice.  Hospitality is a core value of the Benedictine spiritual practice.

What we have right now, what all of humanity has right now, is a big challenge to grow up a little bit, to become a little more spiritually practical. Our challenge is to close the separation between what we say and do in church, what we absorb and learn on retreat, and turn that into better listening and better systems of dealing with problems.  This is not easy for humans, especially when we feel threatened!  We can do this. We've done it before and we can do it again!

There's a place, a small town in Texas called Fredericksburg.  It is near a sacred mountain, a granite outcropping, sacred to the native people who live there.  The German immigrants arrived in 1836.  There were probably some Spanish people there already.  The German settlers were very ethical. They talked to the native people and made friends.  And, they made a treaty.  Those settlers and the generations that followed, kept the treaty.  It is one of the few treaties in the US that was kept!

Good for them.  That is an example of human being growing up, being mature!  Keeping our word!  That was a big deal in my family, keeping your word, taking care of your neighbor.  Nobody in my family was a preacher, nobody. I come from a long line of attorneys, farmers and ranchers, and school teachers.  So, I know that keeping our word can sometimes be challenging!

Being on this planet right now is a huge challenge! It is also a gift.  This is an Opportunity to Grow!  Earth is an amazing place.  Creation is amazing, every day, it is amazing.  Maybe if we paid a little more attention to Creation and how well it is working all the time, we might calm down a bit and do a better job!  Creation is amazing!  When I saw the Sun coming up over the rooftop this morning, it was just stunning!  The sky was clear. The air was crisp.  The world was gorgeous.

That is another reason I'm so glad to see children and parents outside!  Some of the parents were wrapped up, like me!  Children were taking off their jackets and tearing around.  It is a good day to be alive.  It is a good day to be on Earth!  Yes, it is challenging!  It is difficult, and we're up to it.  We have to be up for it because it is right in front of us!

I hope you have a wonderful holiday.  Hanukkah and Christmas are the same day this year.  Kwanzaa starts immediately after on the 26th.  We are incredibly Blessed and sometimes we forget.

I am deeply grateful to you, to everyone who listens to this podcast and reads my notes, and gets my emails, and makes lovely comments on Facebook!  Thank you.  Thank you for being here. Thank you for all you are doing every day to make our World better for Everyone.  

So, take good care of yourself.  Have a wonderful holiday.  And, let’s do a little better tomorrow.  Let's be a little more creative with all these challenges!  

And, remember to breathe.  Mary Christopher