Re-Enchantment & Gratitude Day – Darkness

Dear Wild Nature Hearts,

Saturday is this month’s Re-Enchantment & Gratitude Day, when we honor DARKNESS.

I love that it roughly coincides with December’s dark moon (black moon, December 30).🌚

Like so many other aspects of modern life, the OverCulture also paves over the season of slowness and darkness. Yet there’s a reason for the seasons.

There will always be plenty of forces out there that have little respect for the wisdom of the season or the body, tempting us to do more things, be more things, buy more things, keep the lights on. Yet some part of us knows that if we incessantly try to perform summer in winter, or move at the pace of extraction culture, the consequences will be sure to show up as symptom (our body-heart-psyche will speak). 

It is liberatory to re-claim our alignment with natural cycles and the pace of our bodies and the dark season. There are many beautiful ways to be with the Dark (see below for invitations). When we sip each season slowly (both inner and outer), we let the season season us. We feel the reflective turn and all the various species of surrender, and let the elemental alchemy do its work.

Funny, we think some flip of an invented calendar somehow overrides wild nature/s cycles or millions of years physiological evolution. In addition to a new moon on Saturday, this week the Solstice gifted us a sacred pause, a still point in the turnings of the world, before the birth of the sun into longer days. These wondrous winter moments call for us to dream anew as we are offered the depth of darkness, rest, and surrender. 

Will we accept these precious gifts?

I read that the Inuit and Inupiaq peoples of the far north have a custom in preparation for the whale hunt. With no lamps lit, they sit in darkness, in stillness, and in qarrtsiluni, the state of one that waits for something to happen. One translation of qarrtsiluni:“sitting together in darkness waiting for something to burst” until melodies and words rise like bubbles in the sea as they rise and burst in the air. Such are whales honored with song.

What would it look and feel like if we allowed ourselves to honor the darkness and stillness and await the whale-songs of our lives to burst forth? What would emerge in that fruitful darkness? 

As a dispersed web of folks deepening into our own unique landscapes around a particular theme, we are participating in the movement during this Great Turning for the re-enchantment of our lives, re-belonging ourselves to the sacred web of lifewith our gratitude and awe.

The invitation is to participate by honoring Darkness through words, intention, learning, ceremony, altars, song, or deep listening in your own landscape, at your own pace. See below for different invitations to celebrate Re-Enchantment & Gratitude Day:

• Prayer/Blessing
• Practices – 10 Practices For Being With and Honoring Darkness
• Poems
• Resources

May you find your own best way to listen to your body and soul wisdom, to carve out your sacred pause, be with the darkness and sink into your season. 

I’d love to hear about your experience and unique ways of connecting with the Dark Season in an intentional way. 

Wishing you slow rest in the fruitful darkness,
Director of Creative Earthiness, Ryan

Bear Art Credit: Sandra Dieckmann from the book Leaf 

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RE-ENCHANTMENT & GRATITUDE DAYS

Every month we are inviting people to celebrate Re-Enchantment & Gratitude Days, and offer invitations for blessings, practices, and poetry honoring a beloved being or aspect of nature. Next month, we tune into the magic and Wisdom and Treasures of FIRE