Evening, all.

This is a long week. Not in terms of hours, as 3 of my 4 shifts are less than 5 hours long. Rather, it’s that I start early (either 6:30 or 7 am) at all 4. I came home today, took a nap, and still feel like I don’t have more than a handful of functional brain cells.

This year has not been kind to me, or countless others. Tonight is the Winter Solstice. It’s one of the major holidays for Wiccans. We celebrate the long dark night that signals the coming of the light. We look back at what has happened to this point. And then we greet the dawn with a new sense of purpose.

We can’t change the past, no matter what we’d like to do. There’s no do-overs, rewinding, or reshoots of our lives. All we can do is know where we either rose to the challenge, or fell short of who we really are. If I didn’t have to work tomorrow, and wasn’t feeling exhausted, I would stay up with a candle burning. We don’t have a fireplace, or I’d tend the fire. Instead, I would keep the wick lit until the first rays of dawn crept over the horizon. A single light in the longest darkness of the year, leading us toward the dawn.

It’s snowing here, or trying to. I’m not sure it’s going to stick around overnight. While I don’t mind snow, I’d rather not have to work everything I do before I head out the door even faster to accommodate dusting off my car. The snow does bring with it a sense of beauty, peace, and calm. Where I grew up, we could stand in our kitchen, next to the washing machine, and turn on a light that shone across the back yard from the garage. I remember spending countless hours standing there, sipping a mug of hot chocolate, and watching the snow fall.

I don’t anticipate waking up tomorrow, or on January 1st, and finding out the world changed overnight. COVID vaccines are instantly available, masks are a thing of the past, we can hug our friends again. The economy won’t be booming. There will still be those who cannot accept who won, or who lost.

But the dawn will still come. The long, dark night will be behind us again for another year. The world begins its slow shift so that the sun returns to the northern hemisphere. There will be another chance to be strong, laugh, and remember that we will outlast the inky blackness.

BB/Chan Eil Eagal Orm