Music from circle at Winter Solstice/Yule (but probably not what you think)

In my Tradition's Winter Solstice ritual, we spiral into the Darkness, spend some time there, discover a number of gifts in the Darkness, and then spiral back out into the Light.

Several pieces of music have stuck with me from circle this year.

Lorna Kohler's "Spiraling into the Center" 

Spiraling into the center
The center of the Wheel
Spiraling into the center
The center of the Wheel
I am the weaver,  I am the woven one
I am the dreamer, I am the dream
I am the weaver,  I am the woven one
I am the dreamer, I am the dream...

(I learned this with "shield" and "wheel" interchangeable (ah, folk process...).  There are times when "shield" makes sense to me, and times when "wheel" makes sense to me, too.  Sheet music for this can be found on p. 251 of Songs for Earthlings.)  

Clara Scott's "Open My Eyes, That I May See"

When I had walked a counter-clockwise spiral into the center of the circle, into the Darkness, I spent some time in worship there.  And one of the things that came to me were lines from this hymn:

Open mine eyes, that I may see
Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me...
Open mine eyes, illumine me
Spirit Divine!

Yes, it's a hymn!  Like a lot of women of my generation, I spent many years thinking that was simply the opening to Cris Williamson's "Song of the Soul."

But at FLGBTQC Mid-Winter Gathering a few years ago, when Willie Frye was our keynote speaker, we sang hymn #166 in the Quaker hymnal Worship in Song in worship one morning.  And I learned there's a whole hymn behind those opening bars...  Clara Scott's hymn "Open My Eyes, That I May See."

Open my eyes, that I may see
Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me...
Open my eyes, illumine me
Spirit Divine!
Open my ears, that I may hear...
Open my ears, illumine me
Spirit Divine!
Open my mouth, and let me bear...
Open my heart, illumine me
Spirit Divine!
Open my mind, that I may read...
Open my mind, illumine me
Spirit Divine!

Cris Williamson's "Song of the Soul"

During the rest of ritual, then, "Song of the Soul" was of course stuck in my head.  During singing, I snagged my wife's copy of Rise Up Singing (there are occasionally advantages to casting a circle in your own living room), and my circle sisters indulged me by singing it enthusiastically with me.

In harmony.

They rock.  

And we can sing this song
Why don't you sing along?
And we can sing for a long, long time
And we can sing this song
Why don't you sing along? 
And we can sing for a long, long time

May you, too, always find gifts of magic in the blessed Dark.

The Pagan Arts Initiative
(a project of the Delaware Valley Pagan Network)

presents the

14th Annual
Winter Solstice Celebration

Celebrate the Darkness and the Light
with Songs and Stories

featuring
SpiralSong
Feminist Spirituality Vocal Ensemble


Saturday, December 18, 2010
7:00 pm

co-sponsored by
Thomas Paine Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
3424 Ridge Pike
Collegeville, PA, 19426
directions at http://www.tpuuf.org/about-us/directions/
Please email or call to confirm child care availability for this Celebration (contact info below). 


Sunday, December 19, 2010
7:00 pm
co-sponsored by
Walking Fish Theatre
2509 Frankford Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19125
(Frankford Avenue & Cumberland Street)
SEPTA and driving directions at http://www.walkingfishtheatre.com/directions.html
Space is limited; we encourage reservations for this Celebration (contact info below).


Tuesday, December 21, 2010
8:00 pm

co-sponsored by Springfield Friends Meeting
and The Inner Path
at Springfield Friends Meetinghouse
1001 Old Sproul Road
Springfield, PA 19064
directions at http://delcopeacecenter.org/directions.html

Suggested donation, $10.
All are welcome regardless of ability to make a full donation.

For more information, email dvpn@dvpn.org or call 267-255-8698.

A performance of "A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual" by Julie Forest Middleton and Staśa Morgan-Appel. Book and compact disc for sale at each Celebration and at http://emeraldearth.net/winter__solstice.htm. 

For information about additional Winter Solstice Celebrations, please click here.

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Maps

Thomas Paine Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

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Walking Fish Theatre

Walking Fish Theatre

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Thomas Paine Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

Springfield Friends Meeting

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Springfield Friends Meeting

How to celebrate Winter Solstice using A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual

Speaking of other facets of my ministry: music.  And one aspect of my music ministry is that every year since 1997, I've been part of a community-wide Winter Solstice Celebration in the Philadelphia/Delaware Valley area, which then eventually became a book and compact disc, and has spread to other parts of the US (and maybe other countries, who knows?). 

When Julie (my co-author) and I put together the book and cd package, one of the things we thought could be useful would be if groups of different sizes could use it to put on these same Winter Solstice Celebrations (WSCs).  We'd only worked with large-ish groups, with Celebrations open to the community, but what if individuals and solitaries, and isolated Covens, and small groups who weren't Covens and maybe didn't know each other well, and groups we hadn't even thought of yet, could use the book and cd to do this Winter Solstice Celebration?

From the feedback I've gotten, and from the experience I've had during the time I lived in other parts of the country, it works as we'd hoped.

I've used (experienced!) A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual in a bunch of different ways:

• with small and medium-sized vocal groups and volunteer narrators and readers, in celebrations open to the community

• with a group of drummers and the cd, narrating myself and sharing reading

• with 13 people who sight-sang it in an unheated gazebo and no artificial lights, passing reading around the circle

• by myself in my living room in the dark

• with four other adults and a preschooler in my living room during a snowstorm, with the cd, with one narrator and sharing readings

Groups that Julie and I have worked with, or know have done this (often working together) include:

• a number of Unitarian Universalist congregations, either with their own choirs or in partnership with community choirs

• community choirs, especially feminist and LGBTQ choirs

• Pagan community groups 

• churches

• Quaker Meetings

• YM/YWCAs

• LGBTQ community centers

• peace centers

• private covens

• individuals

• families

• community groups that aren't Pagan or religious at all, who have wanted to do some interfaith community-building around/during the winter holidays, and have wanted to escape the commercialism of the season

Okay, that sounds like fun!, you say.  How do I do it?  How do I use A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual for a Winter Solstice Celebration?  

(I'm so glad you asked!)

Host an event on your own or with some family or friends.  

• You can do it by yourself, using the book and cd. 

• You can do it with a small group of friends and/or family, using the cd for music, and volunteers to narrate and do readings. 

• You can get together a group of friends to learn the songs, and do it at one of your homes, either as a performance or just for yourselves. 

Partner with an organization

• Find out if a choir or chorus you know is interested in doing this as an alternative to a Christmas concert, as a community-building event, and/or as a fund-raiser.  (For example, a women's choir or LGBTQ choir somebody you know sings in.)  

• Find out if your spiritual community or congregation is interested in doing this as a service, as an interfaith community-building event, or as a fund-raiser. 

If you're part of a Unitarian Universalist congregation

• ...and your congregation has a music program, talk to your music director or some of your musicians to see if they're interested in this as a service.  Julie and I are members of the UU Musicians Network, and we can put you in touch with other UU folks who have done this.  

• ...and you have a CUUPS group (Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans), ask them if they're interested in doing this.  

Feel free to contact me directly for encouragement, advice, practical assistance, and spiritual support.  

There are lots of practical suggestions in the second half of the book.  If you need to order books and cds for your group, please contact the publisher.  (She will charge you less than Amazon, plus she's an independent bookseller.)  

For lots more information, see the Winter Solstice page at my website. 

But most of all, have fun!  Enjoy the music, sing along, take time for the silence, and appreciate both the gifts of the sacred Darkness and the rebirth of the Light.

Blessed Winter Solstice!

I hope everyone had a good Winter Solstice, filled with the blessings of the Dark Time of the Year.

Last year brought a very snowy Solstice to Seattle: Winter Solstice itself was the second of three snowstorms in a week. Record snowfall brought the city to a grinding halt for days. Winter Solstice was on a Saturday last year; it started snowing again that afternoon, and finally stopped snowing that Sunday night. (When we flew out to visit relatives on Thursday, the buses still weren't running in our neighborhood, and we hiked, using backpacks for luggage, half a mile to the freeway to catch a bus downtown to transfer to the bus to the airport.)

On Winter Solstice last year, a small group of folks still made it to our apartment for a Roses, Too! potluck and a Winter Solstice Celebration based on A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual. This was the second or third time I'd done it with a small group, using the cd for the music. We had five adults -- just enough for readers and the narrator -- and a four-year-old, and had a warm, cozy time in the candlelight with the woodstove. Everyone made it home safely, eventually, though the two miles uphill to the U District was a haul for some.

It was a beautiful Solstice.

(c) 2008

So, now here we are in central NJ, and there's record snow here already now, too! (I think it's just following me around the country right now...)

Friday evening, dear F/friends who are part of the extended Roses, Too! community graciously hosted the Roses, Too! Tradition Winter Solstice/Yule potluck at their home in Philadelphia. They've hosted a number of potlucks in the past, and it was a treat, for me, for us to have a potluck there again.

We had delightful company and conversation, and we shared all sorts of yummy, festive, and comforting food and drink -- hot mulled cider, homemade fettuccine alfredo, cider donuts, chocolate (of course), apple cobbler with local Philly Vanilly ice cream, cranberry-jalapeno salsa (which I bought from a local farm store, but which is not as good as my friend Jennifer F's from CA), a cheese-pepper-onion torte with a sweet potato crust, all sorts of good things.

And then we shared a hilarious, intergenerational game of Apples to Apples. At one point, I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt and I couldn't quite catch my breath.

We knew a big winter storm was brewing, and sure enough, record snow came to much of the East Coast with a blizzard over this weekend.

Our community-wide Winter Solstice Celebration / performance of A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual (with SpiralSong, PAI/DVPN, and Pebble Hill Interfaith Church) was snowed out Saturday night, as was Sunday night's dress rehearsal for the second WSC.

Last night, however, lots of people made it to our Winter Solstice Celebration (with SpiralSong, PAI/DVPN, and the Inner Path), and it was just delightful.

I loved singing with SpiralSong again; our readers, narrator, and stage manager were wonderful; the "audience" (in quotes, because it's actually very participatory) were wonderfully present with us, and enthusiastic during the high-energy parts; our musicians were excellent (and I had lots of fun drumming with our drummer); and the management and collection of lit candles went more smoothly than I think I've ever seen it.

Our hosts, the Inner Path, are members of the Delaware County Peace Center, so our Celebration was at the Springfield Friends Meetinghouse. This is a great space for this Celebration -- conducive to the ritual, warm and intimate without feeling cramped, and quite nice acoustically (something that is definitely not true of all old East Coast Meetinghouses!).

Plus, there was this moment at the beginning, when the singers first saw the "audience" after we'd processed in, and were facing them, singing with them... I saw so many familiar faces, and so many I didn't know. Among the familiar ones were friends who were there for the first time; folks who were there for the first time in a long time; folks who have been to these Winter Solstice Celebrations every year since the first one in 1997; folks who drove long ways; women I've sung with in the past and haven't seen in too long; folks from different parts of my life who had no reason yet to know each other... It was a magical moment in the web of connection and community.

How has your Winter Solstice been? What gifts of the Spirit has it brought?

(c) 2006

"What's this empire coming to?": a politically-correct ancient Roman holiday

More stuff to make you think about perspective. This piece, from NPR, had me laughing out loud. Click here to listen.

What's this empire coming to?

Now they want us to stop greeting people with "Io Saturnalia!" "We have all these different cultures in Rome," they tell us. "We shouldn't offend anyone," they tell us, "We've got to be inclusive."

We've got the barbarians from the north with their tree decorations and their fire rituals. And the weirdos from Gaul, cutting mistletoe with a golden sickle. And the Mithraists, the Zoroastrians, the Isis cults, and, of course, those characters who hang out in the catacombs. "Hail, Winter!" we're supposed to say now.

I ask you, what next: we lose the feast? We stop the Solstice parties? No more honoring Ops, goddess of abundance?

I was buying some greenery down by the Forum the other day, and there's old Macrobius with some Visigoth chick, and she goes, "Gut Jule." And I go, "Hey! In this country, we say, Io, Saturnalia! Maybe you should go back to where you came from." Then Macrobius goes, "She can't, she's a slave."

Whatever.

At this time of year, the Visigoths sacrifice a pig and burn a special log that they dance around, instead of acting like normal people and going to the temple of Saturn.

I swear, I was at this party over at Septima Commodia's house the other day. She always has a Saturnalia party. Anyway, she decorated the place with prickly green leaves. "It's holly," she said, "The latest fashion from Brittania. They all do it in Londinium."

It gets worse.

She had this statue of some goddess from Ultima Thule or somewhere, name of Frigga, sitting right there on the dining room mensa. I mean, this is darned near blasphemous. I'd be scared about what the lares and penates would do if I put that thing in my house. But Septima Commodia just said, "Oh get over it! We're cosmopolitan here." Cosmopolitan. That's what they call it.

Well, by Jupiter, I live in Latium. I'm a Roman. And this empire was founded on the principle that the gods, our gods, must be honored at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way. None of this foreign heretical nonsense or these strange customs from Germania or Hibernia or Palestine. I say, "Io, Saturnalia!" and if you don't like it, you can leave.

~ by Diane Roberts

Snow... snow... and more snow... in Seattle!

So, here we are in Seattle for the year... where I nearly didn't bring my winter coat with me, thinking to make do with layers of fleece, wool, and Gore-Tex. After all, the average low here in December, the coldest month, is 36 F.

I'm glad I brought my heavy coat. First, we had a week where temps didn't get above freezing, with record cold -- mostly in the 20s F, but then we dipped down into the teens. Then, in the last week and a half, we've had three -- count them, three -- snowstorms which have stopped the city in its tracks. As soon as things get moving again, we get more snow. With ice underneath.

It's rather astonishing.

But, this did make for a beautiful Winter Solstice.

Amazingly, some hardy souls did make it to our house to celebrate with us on Saturday night. Getting home was a bit of a challenge for them, but everyone seems to have made it back safely.

Beloved Wife and I live two blocks from the Arboretum, and less than a mile from the Lake Washington Ship Canal. We've had two beautiful walks -- one Saturday night through the Arb (where, at 1:00 am, people were still out sledding!), and one Sunday afternoon through the marsh boardwalk. I will post pictures. :)

We've had several more inches of snowfall since then.

We are well and truly snowed in at the moment. Wow!