Tossing Snowballs into the River - Winter Solstice Ritual

I walk through snowy woods to a bend in the river, hidden from view by the trees and a small slope. The short day's light is beginning to fade, but a nearly full moon hangs above the naked trees upriver. I've followed a deer path and now stand at river's edge in two feet of snow. I have found a sacred place to savor and celebrate winter's solstice.

Breathing, listening to the joyful sound of shallow water rushing over riverstone. I hear my heart beating and soften into a quiet stance. Who am I?, I ask the river. Who do you want me to be? The sound of my beating heart is a solid rhythm for the river's bright melody of gentle waves and currents. The wonder held in this space suddenly shocks time into hibernation and I stand dissolved and free of name and contraction.

Moonlight pours from my face and the low hanging branches and round river stone. Our bones reach deep into the snowy bank, absent of leaf and bird. The river whispers our true name, speaking her fluid language of source intelligence, a universe of bubbling life. This, this again, she sings, now and now, this unending flow. We float upon gravity's grace in an effortless flow of being, tumbling as beauty's truth, rising as creative essence serving love's expansive reach.

My cold toes bring me back to the riverbank, Thomas shivering in the near darkness. I make snowballs and toss my dissolving fears into the rapids. Obstacles of arrogance and laziness and judgments and worries and clutchings are tossed one by one into the river until the sharp pain of my frozen fingers says Enough! I stand silent in the polar essence of the solstice and devote my fullest energy and awareness to being an embodied action of presence expressing the unity of planet, sun, life, motion and soul to all resonant beings sharing this evolving field of emergent life.

december 21, 2007
5:55 pm

Thomas Arthur
awakeningspace.net


Ripples photo by brentdanley
Moonrise photo by James Jordan

Dinner at the Playground

We eat breakfast together and water the garden in the backyard.

Feeding our hummingbirds.

We hang out our sheets and blankets in the summer and revel in climbing into bed at night.

We go to bed in the evening at a set time during school months and if they are reading a good book no bedtime applies.

Listening to Woodie Guthrie Children's songs while puttering around the house.

Eating Pizza and watching a Baseball Game together at home.

Dinner at the playground. Parents sneak a bottle of Sangiovese.

~Bridge


Hummingbird photo
Pizza and baseball photo

Nourishment Cleanse and Practices of Now

There is one ritual that I have for spring and fall – a nourishment cleanse – around the book “If Buddha came to dinner” – it’s a month long attention to eating close to the earth.

I’m beginning another practice process later this month to help me come deeper into the now. It comes from Michael Brown and his book, “the presence process” – it’s an 11 week program which includes 2 -15 minute sessions of conscious breathing every day. I wonder what I will learn and what my practices of the now will be after going through… how will it be in my every day?

I also try every day to get out into nature in some way. The dogs always help with that too. And it feels more important than ever to get my kids there (for me and them).

Teresa Posakony

photo source