I’m meeting with my web guru tomorrow to move all of this blog to the new website and to conquer the world of MailChimp so that newsletters from me can at last re-commence.  In the meantime, in this week between, I’m reposting a few Facebook thoughts for those of you who aren’t there.

I have mostly been baking and delivering apple butter today but have spent enough time here to feel the sense of some folks being overwhelmed by the season, awash in personal and cultural grief, trying to claw some joy from this season of returning light. I sat at my altar at mid-day, simply sat with a single candle burning. I counted from ten to one in Gaeilge, to see if I could. Then I dreamed a bit. In that dream, you were heavy but resilient. You were working to ground and to keep yourself and those you love shielded. You were paging through a seed catalogue and making a list. You were smiling, though the world holds chaos. You were confident, even as you kenned that the challenges would continue into the “new” year. You were strong, and loving, and whole. You were ready. We are ready. Let us together weave this new world, even as we midwife the old one through its transition.

In spite of the dour pronouncement of the “meteorologist” who is dressed like a sex worker, many of us don’t consider the Winter Solstice to be the beginning of Winter. Since Winter started for us at Samhaintide, we are looking at Midwinter. Just so’s you know.

Of course, I am contemplating the Wren Boys of Boxing Day and I am wondering what Wren Women would get up to. Thinking, thinking…obviously today, this Wren Woman is going to be sewing a shroud. But in 2016, when the Wren Women take to the high roads and by-roads, what shall we be doing?

I insist on six more weeks of luxurious endarkenment. I’m not coming out of my cave until Imbolc.