We've made it out of the darkness and into the light...Happy Winter Solstice!

I wait for this day every year. For months, it has been getting darker, and noticeably accelerating. For a writer, this is not a terrible thing, as it means there are fewer distractions. I do not feel compelled to go outside after say 1530 when the sun has already sunk behind the hills and the loss of daylight is looming shortly.

Last year, for the first time, I suffered a bout of depression through this period. All through the Fall I felt myself sinking into a depth from which it felt increasingly difficult to crawl out. This year, a whole different sense was about me. I started looking forward to Christmas and the Winter Solstice knowing that it was the turning point to another exciting year -- a year of promise and hope of accomplishments in business and adventures in sailing.

Then I realized that something even bigger was happening. I realized that not only had I crawled out of the hole, I had scaled a mountain.  I found light and an understanding in the pagan sense that one must experience the darkness to appreciate the light. Long ago, my mantra had been that one has to experience the worst to appreciate the best. Somewhere along the way I had lost that sense, that grounding. Now I have found it again.

Winter is coming and there will soon be a grand stretch to the day. Here's to the joy of celebrating light, and a lightness of being.

Stonehenge and Achill-henge, places of ancient and contemporary spirituality. 

And here's to our friends sailing in the southern hemisphere, where summer is just beginning.