cultivating resilience for the year ahead

Sunrise from Beech Hill, Dec. 22nd

Time, in the days leading up to and away from the Winter Solstice, seems to stand still.  There is a feeling of stillness, outside of linear time.  Traditionally, these days were held as Holy days, a period where people stepped out of the regular rhythms of life.  We still have remnants of that in our culture today, when school and commerce pause for the period between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day for The Holi-days. 

To our modern thinking, it makes sense that there are periods bracketing the solstices, when the hours of darkness and daylight aren’t changing much because we are rounding the corner of our orbit around the sun, a concept not widely accepted until the 17th century.  It wasn’t until the 19th century that household clocks became commonplace among the wealthy.  It is easy to imagine then, that for most of human history there has been a sense of time standing still at the solstices, because there was no point of reference to tell you otherwise.  And the time period around the Winter Solstice brings all the anxiety of the unknown that comes with waiting in the dark. 

photo by Erinn Springer, for NYT

This liminal time in the dark is the period between the ending of one year and the beginning of the next.  It is Water time, the time when deep resources are being gathered and re-stored in order that Life has a reservoir of energy for the great push of Spring to come out of the darkness and into the sunlight with early signs appearing in mid-February.

This is the time of death (loss, endings, fear of unknown) and rebirth (birth, beginning, hope) simultaneously.  It is all mixed together in a particular type of chaos that precedes new life emerging.  On an individual level, we are happy for the less pleasant aspects of the year ending to be gone and we like to anticipate good things for ourselves going forward.  But the good things are not here yet. We have the sense that anything could happen and while we hope for good things, it feels a bit chaotic, kind of “iffy,” until things start to take form.  Once things start to come into form, we can organize ourselves around what we actually are working with, but that happens with the sprouts of the Wood phase in Spring, and we aren’t there yet. 

Photo by Mat Stapleton

In our time in history, we are in that liminal place between death and rebirth.  There is chaos in the loss of functional institutions and weather patterns that have been the framework of our communities and societies. New, stable institutions and weather patterns have yet to take form.  We are on the edge of our seats with anticipation, hoping for the best and fearing the worst.  In many places of the world, the “worst” has taken form as wars, violence, and the climate and ecological destruction which further amplifies our personal anxieties. The chaotic and iffy feelings of anticipation, fear, and hope mashed together resonate within all living beings in our time.  We are all hoping for the best and fearing the worst simultaneously.

The worldwide chaos factor amplifies our personal feelings of fear, uncertainty, and insecurity.  We resonate to it, effectively turning up the volume on our personal fears, uncertainties, and insecurities. Any areas of our lives that are in the liminal time between death and rebirth will feel more acute at this time of year and multiplied again at this time in history.  Personal situations where we find ourselves experiencing a time of an ending (such as leaving a home, a marriage, a relationship, a job, or a community), when we are feeling the loss but the rebirth has not yet happened, will feel extra stressful.  As frail humans, we each have a maximum capacity for the chaos of uncertainty that we can tolerate and process on any given day before we start to feel the impacts physically and emotionally. Our ability to tolerate the swirling chaos of fear and hope, that is the liminal, and to successfully navigate through to the rebirth phase, is what we call resilience.  At this time in history, we all need to cultivate more resilience.

The liminal time, in between death and rebirth, the swirl of loss and hope, is a period that must occur before something new is possible. The time of the Winter Solstice teaches us that.  We must journey through a dark chaos before we get to Life organizing itself into something viable on the other side. That is the way of things and it cannot be rushed because we find it uncomfortable. 

Our modern New Year’s ritual celebrations are mostly focused on hope and the possibility of good things to come. Unfortunately, they ring a little hollow and are a missed opportunity to build resilience.  In modern times, we have lost touch with the ancestral knowing of how to align with the energies generated at the great turning of the year, and to surf the tremendous force of the Earth swinging around the end of her orbit back toward summer. We have forgotten how to nourish our souls with solstice energy and build a firm foundation for hope and possibility, from which new Life emerges.

Nature tells us that there are death and loss, as well as hope and possibility in the chaotic, liminal time before rebirth and new beginnings. Death and loss are not acknowledged in our New Year rituals, rendering them incomplete and unsatisfying.  Intentionally incorporating time during our gatherings to acknowledge the year’s accumulation of loss, grief, regret, and sorrow is a great way to start.  A time for giving and receiving apologies and forgiveness.  If you are not ready to apologize and forgive, ask for help getting there. You might like to write each one on a slip of paper, read them aloud, and burn them.  It could be an outdoor fire or a candle.   Taking time to do this before moving on to the revelry and fireworks would help give meaning to the occasion because it connects you to the Cosmos, the greater movement of Nature. You are doing what Nature is doing, briefly, following her dance. This simple ritual will nourish both your soul and the world’s soul, because for one moment, when time stands still, we align ourselves with Nature and remember fleetingly that we belong to Her, and not the other way around. For one moment, balance is restored.

wishing you greater resilience and joy in the year ahead

Rockland Breakwater

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