A Solstice Sermon to Me

The sun has been scraping along
in and out of the clouds of the horizon all week.
They burst into flame when the sun
remains offstage, or when it has gone.
What is it now, 3 hours 42 minutes peeking
above the horizon?

The moon is higher,
and has been gradually losing its brilliance
all week long, falling behind in its race, soon
to vanish entirely, and then be reborn.

What kind of rituals to give thanks
for the wonders of our days.

Marin came home late Thursday night
(an ordeal of snow in Seattle
bequeathed 5 hours of extra airport time
on her and Annika) just in time for
Matteo’s little seasonal program Friday morning,
for which I was guitar accompanist and conductor.
One of the girls, Rika, had a birthday which the class
commemorated after the parents had left
and the cookies were gone.

Ms Hanneman laid out a universe of time on the floor:
the sun with it’s flaming hair and cheery face,
12 month names circled around it like rays,
and Rika was positioned standing on “December”
and holding a remarkably colorful, earth globe.
We sing: “The earth turns round the sun,
the earth turns round the sun,
the earth turns round the sun,
and Rika is one.”

Carrying the whole world
in her two hands, all the seas, the air, the 6 billion people
the giraffes, the gerbils, the belugas and birds,
Rika, a young and ingenuous Atlas,
walks through the empty universe, holding us all
just far enough from the sun, bound by universal laws.

“What were you doing, Rika, when you were one,”
Ms Hanneman asks, interrupting my reverie.
“Learning to walk,” Rika improvises.
And then she takes another turn
walking around the sun while we all sing,
questioned and improvising, until she’s reached her 5.
A wonderful, satisfying ritual.

I believe from years of praying and meditating,
preaching and singing and talking about it,
that the members of a tribe or community must gather together.
They find themselves sacred spaces and go there at sacred times,
to promote health, to stay fully alive, to honor their newborns
and mourn their dead, to tell the stories that hold them together,
in order to support and challenge, comfort and teach,
nurture and wonder, all so that people can live committed,
vital, changed lives, and are able then to offer
just that to the wider community and world:
A life of authentic engagement, and openness to growth,
to the health of the earth and to the generations to come.