We’re a few hours away from our closest brush with the sun for the year. We are also a few hours away from the darkest 4 weeks of the year. Coincidental, true, but both are good news.
Because the perihelion happens in winter, we’re blessed with a longer summer in these parts, and we’re blessed with a larger sun when we need it most. (This is mostly illusory, but so is pretty much everything else we pretend matters.)
As the days lengthen, again, I am reminded, again, of our ties to the light, to the ground, to the air and water. To say as much these days gets you labeled as some kind of Luddite or wiccan or pagan.
The crime is not separation from G_d or religion–the offense is daring to separate oneself from modern, abstract human “life”–a belief that somehow humans can separate from the world. (This falls under many guises–neoliberalism, ed-tech, “the global economy” and so many other abstract flags, none of which make us happier or healthier.)
Maybe this my gift to my students– an old soul standing in front of them, still connected (if tenuously) to the world that sustains us than the one that merely entertains us.