There is something about the days getting shorter that thrills me. The thought of darkness, stillness, and hibernation ruling our psyches and lives gives me full permission to dive deeply into the realm of soul.

Being still enough to hear the small voice that connects us to Source, the infinite, is, for me, the profoundest honor of being a conscious being. We get to stop, listen and commune with God/The Universe/The Cosmos. What a privilege. What a miracle. What a true gift.

Musing on the symbols and ideas of this time of year - miracles, light emerging out of the darkness, giving presents - we are given many opportunities to go within and meet up with the miracle that WE are. The GIFT that we embody. The LIGHT that can only be known because of the darkness.

In the Greek myth of Persephone and Demeter, this time of year is when Demeter is still wandering the earth unsure about where her daughter Persephone has gone. All she knows is that she has lost contact with her, and her heart breaks for it. This can be seen as part of our own journeys - that time when we may have lost contact with our own innocence, full potential and possibility, and all we can see is darkness and confusion. But what Demeter, and our own ego selves don't know is that Persephone is indeed in the Underworld - a place of death, stillness, stasis - and yet in this place she is separating from all of her past ways of being, and being enthroned as a Queen. She has become sovereign over her destiny. Her ability to live with, and stay with Hades (death, stasis, stilness) allows her to remake herself with more power, grace and a new destiny.

As the Level 3 of the human psyche, the wolves and the planet moves into this deepest time of hibernation (Winter Solstice is the 21/22), I want to leave you with an appreciation of the hibernation that we are all living on some level, and with a poem that I wrote last year at this time.

Winter Solstice.

Here comes the light.
Here comes the sun.
Gather your wisdom, your selves, your deepest parts,
Turn toward where you are headed
and know that you have everything you need
to make the journey home.

Spring calls you like a whisper.
Persephone rustles underneath us.
Demeter mournfully wanders still in search of her potential.

Take a moment today, that very same moment that the earth takes to be still,
and ask...
What call still whispers in me?
What rustles underneath my consciousness?
What search is unfinished?

Bury your answers like a bulb in the soil.
Light a candle to show you the way.
Something indeed has been born today.