Tracking light in the darkness of winter

What we call “winter,” this time of year between winter solstice and spring equinox, carries a deep irony.

On winter solstice the sun “turns around” and begins its trek back towards the Northern Hemisphere. We who reside in the Northern Hemisphere begin to gain a few extra minutes of light every single day after this moment of “the return of the light.”

And yet, the external world around us actually slips much further into what to our senses accurately perceive as a deeper and darker place!

Temperatures continue to drop dramatically. The winds pick up. There are more, and harsher, snowstorms. The ground freezes ever more solid. More tree branches fall. There’s less life aboveground. Wild animals move about minimally or hibernate, and lose much of their body mass. It’s a rough, rough time for most living beings.

And in this irony lies a natural law – that the movement of the physical world lags significantly, in time, behind the movement of light. If you are a scuba diver like me, you’ll notice the same phenomenon with regard to breathing underwater. The moment you take an in-breath (through the scuba tank to the regulator), the body continues to sink, carried by the momentum of the previous out-breath. Only towards the end of that in-breath does the body become more buoyant than water and finally start to float upwards.

These two examples illustrate a similar principle, that what is denser (matter, bodies, soil, wood) takes longer to change course than what is less dense (light, breath, energy, thought). But eventually, everything must follow the direction of the movement of light.This moment of winter, to me, feels like exactly where we are as a society, as a civilization. What many have dubbed the “polycrisis” seems to be getting more intense along every axis: climate change, natural disasters, income disparity, political polarization, AI technology poised to take over many of our jobs, just when the social safety net to catch and re-train the masses is at its most fragile.

On the outside, just like this time in winter, things are pretty dire. It can easily get a lot rougher for ourselves, our loved ones, our beloved planet. And yet, in my bones, I know that we have crossed that mark of winter solstice, that the light has returned.

How do I know? I’m not sure. Intuition is hard to pin down, because the kind of light I’m speaking of lives only in our hearts.

It lives in the resolve of so many people I know to sincerely look inside themselves, taking accountability for how their own wounds and shadows impact others and the world around us. It lives in the genuine curiosity of people questioning the dominant narrative of our civilization, of the stories about progress and the separation between man and nature. It lives in the growing humility and reverence towards learning from ancient wisdom traditions, from indigenous elders, from voices of marginalized peoples. It lives in the yearning of so many for a patch of thriving garden, for singing and dancing together under the moon by a fire, for love and intimacy that no longer require us to pretend.

Is this light enough to outshine the darkness of the external world, of ecosystems on the brink of collapse, of severe disruptions to the political and economic structures that we have previously relied on, of unprecedented levels of uncertainty? No one knows.

But I trust. I trust because spring always comes after the long, dark winter. I trust because I know that by natural law, all the denser parts of our world follow the movement of light.

And in the meantime, how can we savor the poetry of winter? How beautiful it is that the frigid darkness forces us to treasure what we have and hold it with tenderness. How poignant to keep the fire burning against the brutal winds and harsh storms.

Many Native tribes in North America – Cree, Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Cherokee, Lakota – have versions of a similar prophesy that goes loosely like this.

“One day there would come a time, when the earth is being ravaged and polluted, the forests being destroyed, the birds would fall from the air, the waters would be blackened, the fish being poisoned in the streams, and the trees would no longer be, mankind as we would know it would all but cease to exist. There will come a day when people of all races, colors and creeds will put aside their differences. They will come together in love, joining hands in unification, to heal the Earth and all Her children. They will move over the Earth like a great Whirling Rainbow, bringing peace, understanding and healing everywhere they go.”

The prophesies call these people the Rainbow Warriors. Consider that perhaps all of our souls chose to be here at this moment, because we are these Rainbow Warriors, incubating, purifying, growing, waiting for that moment when it will be clear what role we are to play at this momentous point in our civilization.

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