Winter Solstice/Sharing the Fire

 

 

If, unlike us, you get to see a clear night sky, tonight, The Bethlehem Star will be visible best tonight.  Saturn and Juniper pass in their orbits and it shows up as one very bright star in the night sky.  Tonight is not only known as the official date of Winter, it is known as “Share the Fire” night, and I will be having a fire and seeking out the Bethlehem Star while I sit in silence and contemplate those who need blessings. 

I am one who has a baseline belief that Bad follows Good, so I am always leery of really good things, in fact, can hardly enjoy really good things, because my psyche has experienced that bad follows.  I have learned to numb awesome Good because I have often been quickly tossed into something that was beyond good shortly afterwards.  I realized this when The Bee \man bought me a brand-new vehicle.  I am sure I seemed ungrateful.  I was not.  I was afraid of the weight of what would typically follow.   It is like I hold my reactions of happiness/joy back.  (I wish I could danged learn to hold back my negative reactions, but that has not happened yet.)  I have not prayed for anything for a long long time, for this very reason.  I simply do not want to be disappointed or wounded. 

My prayers are in the form of mediation while I do my art.  I have always lived life raw and real and still do and part of all that is “I have to do it on my own”, or “it was not meant for me” ideology.  I realize many things are not in my control and I am not sure that I deserve some things, so I take my beating to get it over with and walk on.  (Yes, I have done this, literally, so, yes, this is ‘old’ chite that I still carry).  The quietude of sitting around a fire is also a place that is holy to me and my thoughts there are a form of my prayer.  Prayer does not console me, nor help me be brave or strong, or peaceful.  I do not feel that “down-pouring of love”, and, this is where a guilt/shaming religion got me, since I do not deserve anything other than what I get.  I stand alone, and go off into my “forest”, like a wounded wolf, to heal. 

I have blogged before about how I had to change the name I call the Omnipresent Being from “God” to “Creator” following the Native American ideology of Creator as a loving, compassionate Being, so different from the monster/God I was taught, or understood, from religion that shamed and blamed.  I have some leftover voids in the way I express my spirit.  I am most comfortable with The Good Red Path. And take what is offered to me when it is offered, without request. 

And, so, tonight, I light the fire outside and sit for a time in ‘prayerful’ solitude and send up my sacred thoughts for others.  I never ask for Self.  (Smudging is another way I pray, again, for others, never for self and it is a smaller, less intense, way of communing with Creator.)

If you feel a prayer being said for you, tonight, perhaps mine is one of them.

©Carol Desjarlais 21.12.20

 

https://www.sunset.com/lifestyle/wellness/winter-solstice-rituals-nature?fbclid=IwAR1O5-8eW6MTmZoJ2e9qzs40yVWC7CmebcVO16sO_NNEf0vzzjRZlxEYE2Q