Here is a meditation for the shortest night of the year – the time when the sun stands still.
It doesn’t have to be at the moment of the solstice, it’s the connection that counts, the marking of the day. And you don’t have to limit yourself to one pass through – please feel free to explore this more deeply than one single iteration.
As we head into the solstice- that moment when the sun stands still—whether you’re in the northern hemisphere where we have the longest day, or the southern, where it’s the longest night—this solstice feels like a moment of transformation.
Our world is more magical than we know – more than we can know. Increasing numbers of us are realising that the ‘citadel theory of mind’ where we see ourselves as isolated units within the boundaries of our own skulls is not how the world works. But if it isn’t, then how do we engage with the web of life and all that’s around it in ways that are respect, reciprocal and generative?
How do we shift our conversations – and our mindsets – to heal the gaping wounds in our culture?
We grow up thinking we want to be happy (or at least, not-sad). But happiness isn’t enough. What we need is wellbeing, and as Dr Mark Fabian quotes in the dedication to his book, Beyond Happy, “Wellbeing is about wholeness, not happiness, and wholeness is so much more demanding than happiness.’
We are in the midst of the Great Derangement (thank you Amitav Ghosh) – so what tools will help us shape a system that is actually fit for purpose? Who are our elders and what can they teach us? How do we learn to listen to our heart’s (and hearts’) desire and shape the communities of place, passion and purpose that will allow us to emerge into a different culture?
What does an education system look like that’s fit for the twenty-first century? Where we put self care, people care, earth care at the heart of what we do?
In these turbulent times, what values most strongly underpin our humanity and how can we nurture our relationships with all parts of ourselves, with ourselves and other people and with ourselves and the web of life?
How do we shed the shackles of modernity and step into a new set of stories that could help us grow into the fullness of our potential?
In a world of turmoil where the only certainty is uncertainty, what happens if we who yearn for a future we’d be proud to leave behind began really to speak the quiet part out loud? What happens if we acknowledge the meaning crisis of our culture and state clearly that we need a world based on Love: on the raw, wild, wonder of life itself? And what happens if we shape our politics around this, instead of defensive attempts to make the death cult of predatory capitalism feel less… deathly?
This is the second part of our conversation with Daniel Firth Griffith
We know we need to move from a Trauma Culture to an Initiation Culture. But knowing these things is not the same as living them as a reality. To get here, we need waymakers, people of huge heart and raw courage to walk away from the limited, goal-based directions of our culture and step into the ways of being where we meet in open-hearted, full-hearted, strong-hearted relationship with the land and all that lives there.