The Solstice, Advice for Earthlings, and a Poem

Winter Solstice: a 25-second time-lapse, from dawn to dusk, in Fairbanks, Alaska

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A lively understandable spirit 
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.

These final lines from Theodore Roethke’s poem The Lost Son come drifting to mind this time of year. With the days short and the nights long, I find my inner darkness growing under the influence of the season. So these lines are good medicine for me, arriving—when it is beginning winter—to remind me that spring is coming, and with it the quickening of a more lively and understandable spirit than the seasonally beleaguered one I’m now experiencing.

I find it helpful to remind myself and the individuals I see in therapy that our lives and days have their seasons, and their weather. Moods and feelings are like the weather in being changeable and not entirely in our control. Letting this sink in brings a measure of acceptance and relief. Feelings are also, like the weather, capable of being experienced without being identified with: I can feel the shadow growing, and my darker turn of mind, without mistaking the weather for an existential crisis. Usually.

I have two small presents for you in celebration of the winter solstice. The first is a thought about why it’s good for us to celebrate the solstices and equinoxes. In a time of fractious identity politics, bitter division, and bloody war, it’s good to lean into our common humanity wherever possible. We don’t all celebrate Christmas or Hanukah or Eid al-Fitr or Kwanzaa, but we do all share this galaxy, this solar system, this moon, and this planet with its seasons and weather. And we’re all affected, inside and out, by the changes that the solstices and equinoxes mark. So why not come together and throw a party?

Every earthling belongs at the solstice party. (Which is not to say that everyone need be invited.)

The second present is the rest of the poem I quoted. If you haven’t read The Lost Son, you’re in for a treat. It is a five-part poem. I hope the fifth and final part I offer here makes you curious to read the rest. You can listen to Roethke read the whole poem here. (Part V starts around 6 minutes in.)

IT WAS BEGINNING WINTER

It was beginning winter
An in-between time,
The landscape still partly brown;
The bones of weeds kept swinging in the wind, 
Above the blue snow.

It was beginning winter,
The light moved slowly over the frozen field, 
Over the dry seed-crowns,
The beautiful surviving bones
Swinging in the wind.

Light traveled over the wide field; 
Stayed.
The weeds stopped swinging.
The mind moved, not alone, 
Through the clear air, in the silence.

	Was it light?
	Was it light within?
	Was it light within light? 
	Stillness becoming alive, 
	Yet still?

A lively understandable spirit 
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.