Day 22 - THE WINTER SOLSTICE

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Editor's note: The Solstice fell on December 22 in 2011, so we left things as they are this year.

Here you go:

http://maninthemaze.blogspot.com/2011/12/winter-solstice.html

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NEED A WARM PLACE TO STAY?

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 A Prayer for Warmth
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I'm outside enough year-round to know a little

something about the difference twenty degrees can make. For the most part - not so much.

The difference between 92 degrees and 72 is the difference between hot and comfortable, fair enough. But find a place in the shade with a cool breeze and 92 is not usually impossibly unbearable.

The difference between 72 and 52 is even less a difference - the difference between pleasant and slightly cool. No big deal. Put an extra shirt or jacket on.

The difference between 52 and 32 is still not that great. Sure, you need to put on a jacket and an extra layer or two and you'll be okay.

But, the difference between 32 degrees and 12 degrees - 20 degrees below freezing - is a huge difference. You move from merely cold to literally freezing. Your hands stiffen and turn dry and red. Your cheeks sting and you can tell immediately if you don't have enough socks on your feet. This is the sort of cold that hurts.

However, walking half an hour or an hour through this sort of weather is not unbearable, IF you're prepared for it. Today is one of those days. I wore three layers of shirts and three layers of jackets. I had a cap on my head and extra longjohns and socks on to keep my legs and feet warm. Thus prepared, it's just a slightly brisk walk - and that, from a heated home to a heated office. Not that big of a deal.

Having said that, every day on my way to work, I walk past my homeless brothers and sisters. I pass by the mental health agency where shivering, marginalized souls suffer outside the doors, waiting for the office to open. I pass by the folk who stay at the homeless shelters as well as the homeless who camp out.

I see their suffering, dry skin and frozen noses and know that there is a world of difference in twenty degrees. I recognize the huge difference in taking a short-lived walk from warm building to warm building and in standing - just standing - waiting in the bitter cold. Waiting for a chance to get in some place warm and welcoming (hard to come by, that). Waiting for warmer weather, which is MONTHS away, not minutes.

Wondering if you'll live to see Spring's thaw again.

So today, I lift up a prayer for our homeless friends, to our mentally ill friends, to all those out suffering especially on these coldest days. I lift up a prayer of thanks for Diane, for Donna, for Sally's and VOA and Jeff Street and all those places and people who offer a warm cup of coffee and an open door into a warm respite.

"For I was cold, and you offered me a jacket and a warm place to stay."

Amen.

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Dan Trabue

Louisville, Kentucky

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A MID-WINTER PRAYER

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A Mid-Winter Prayer

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From the rising of the midwinter sun to its setting
Scatter the darkness with the light of your love, O Shining One.
Make me short on mean thoughts, long on offering words of comfort
Make me short on being driven, long on paying attention
Make me short on focusing only on my own, long on looking beyond

Make me short on obsessive lists, long on spontaneous acts of kindness

Make me short on mindless activity, long on time to reflect

Make me short on tradition as a habit, long on re-discovery and re-owning

Make me short on rushing and tiring, long on walking and wondering

Make me short on false festive jollity, long on stilling and rooted joy

Make me short on guilt, long on being merciful to myself

Make me short on being overwhelmed, long on peaceableness as I set forth this day

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From The Celtic Wheel of the Year:

Celtic and Christian Seasonal Prayers

by Tess Ward

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IN SEARCH OF SOMETHING

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Who comes here, to this whiteness,

this far and frozen place, in search of something

he cannot name? Not wealth, it may be,

but a fortune of the spirit, a freshness

denied him in the place he came from.

The North glitters and brightens,

the land grows dark again,

and the fugitive glow from a gas mantle

lights the shadows.

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John Haines

Former poet laureate of Alaska

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DUST OF SNOW

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The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

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Robert Frost

HOW TO MAKE WINTER SHORTER!!!

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To shorten winter,

borrow some money due in spring.

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W.J. Vogel

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WINTER, WYETH

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"I prefer winter and fall,

when you feel the bone structure

of the landscape - the loneliness of it,

the dead feeling of winter.

Something waits beneath it,

the whole story doesn't show."

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Andrew Wyeth, 1917-2009

American Artist