Day Sixteen 2016

Today is the winter solstice. The shortest day of the year and the longest night. Winter solstice is officially the first day of winter.  In this season of cold and dark, when things seem their bleakest, what would cause the ancient people to celebrate?  Because long before people celebrated the birth of Jesus, they knew that this day, this time of darkness and longest night was the worst that it would be.  From here on the days get incrementally longer, and in six short months we will be bathed in summers light.

I am trying something different this winter solstice; I am marking it down as darkest point of this year, the bleakest, the saddest.  This is the lowest point in my mourning.  Starting tomorrow I am willing it to get better.  Maybe not in leaps and bounds, but incrementally.  I choose to celebrate whatever tiny minuscule good thing that comes my way tomorrow and each day afterwards.

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”

― Albert Camus