“Allow yourself to trust joy and embrace
it. You will find you dance with
everything.”
-
Ralph
Waldo Emerson
“May all beings learn how to nourish themselves with joy each day.”
-
Thich
Nhat Hanh
“Give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.”
-
Isaiah
61:3
Every
season has associated with it, themes, emotions, stories and rituals that, when
brewed together, make manifest its aesthetic, narrative and spiritual ‘gist.’ Of all the seasons of the earthen year, the
Winter Solstice Season is for me the one most suggestive of joy. Joy is its ‘backgrounding ambience.’ Joy emerges through my anticipation of the
Winter Solstice and my practice of rituals and disciplines associated the calendar of the Thirteen Nights and Dayes of Yule. It then comes-to-stand in whatever I glean
and learn from my annual pilgrimage; journeying to the nemeton of Christmas and
beyond—when the days are lengthening, once again. Joy is a primitive and archaic ‘touchstone’ of
the Winter Solstice Season; its emotional and spiritual ‘rune.’ I have found indications and cyphers of this
in Pagan, Christian and Naturalistic observations of the Winter Solstice.
To
celebrate the Winter Solstice Season intentionally, according to whatever spiritual
or secular tradition one participates in, is, I believe, to seek a deeper
experience of Nature and ourselves; one that spirals around and alludes to – if
not embraces or even all the time makes manifest – joy. Why is this?
To understand this, let us explore a couple of questions.
What is the Winter
Solstice Season? At its root, beneath all of the cultural and
religious traditions that surround it in societies across the northern
hemisphere,[1] it
is an experience of ending and beginning again.
The diminishing days have long been associated, in myth and legends, with the end of a solar cycle;
a solar ‘year.’ In many Pagan traditions,
the Winter Solstice was (and is) symbolically interpreted as the ‘death’ of the
sun of the old year, which is then followed by the birth of the ‘New Sun’ of the
next solar cycle. The birth of a ‘New
Sun’ was often symbolized by the birth of a god of light. As John Matthews said in The Winter Solstice: The
Sacred Traditions of Christmas (1998):
“A surprising number of the gods of the ancient classical world shared Nativity stories that would later influence the story of the birth of Jesus. Among those recorded are Tammuz (Mesopotamia), Attis (Asia Minor) Apollo and Dionysius (Greece), Mithris (Rome) and Baal (Palestine). All are wonder children, born under extraordinary circumstances and conditions at the time of Winter Solstice.” (51)
It is in
large part because of this mythos surrounding Winter’s Solstice that Christians
established the birth of Jesus at this auspicious moment of earthen time, his
being for them the ultimate Divine Child of Light. As Elinor W Gadon says in The Once and Future Goddess, (1989):
“The Winter Solstice is a day of cosmic portents. ... Most pagan mysteries celebrated the birth of the Divine Child at the Winter Solstice. Christians also took this day for the birth of their savior god, Jesus Christ.” (199)
This ‘birth’
of a ‘New Sun’ – symbolized by the Divine Child – gave people a sense that
they, too, could ‘start over;’ begin again—it liberated them to seek out personal
renewal as well as reconciliation with others, both with the Divine (by
whatever name the Great Mystery was known) and with family, friends, neighbors
and the wider human community. The
symbolic heft of the whole Winter Solstice Season sets us up for such
renewal. The Christian season of Advent,
which is celebrated over the last four Sundays before Christmas, also has this
implicit spiritual thrust, as the Trappist Thomas Merton said in his wonderful
little book, Seasons of Celebration
(1965):
“The Advent Mystery is a mystery of beginning, but it is also the mystery of an end. The fullness of time is the end of all that was not yet fullness. It is the completion of all that was still incomplete, all that was still partial. It is the fulfillment in oneness of all that was fragmentary. The Advent mystery in our own lives is the beginning of the end of all, in us, that is not yet Christ. It is the beginning of the end of unreality. And that is surely a cause of joy! But we cling to our unreality, we prefer the part to the whole, we continue to be fragments, we do not want to be “a whole person in Christ”.” (95)
This sense of
renewal; expressed via the themes of ‘ending’ and ‘beginning’—and all of the
traditions and beliefs that spiral around it, flows from a very logical, symbolic
way of understanding the phenomenon of lengthening nights and shortening days
which is, in turn, the simple physical consequence of our planet’s orbit around
our Sun, tilted as we are, slightly (about 23˚) to one side, in relation to the
plane of that orbit. It always amazes me
how our species can construct elaborate symbolic structures around
naturalistic phenomena! It is one sign
of our deep spiritual nature; the metaphoring of reality enables us to point to
something beyond ourselves—beyond the mundane and the obvious.
Merton
suggested in the above quote that the sense of “beginning” is a “cause for
joy.” So we should now ask, What is joy? As has often been pointed out, it is not the
same thing as being ‘happy.’ Joy is
different from happiness, yet related to it.
Happiness depends upon immediate circumstances; it is often but not
always fleeting—it comes and goes as our situation in life and the conditions in
which we find ourselves change. Joy is a
deeper phenomenon; it is a psychological state connected to a genuine communion,
as the human beings we are, with the Earth and in community with other human beings.
It is grounded in our acceptance of
ourselves; who we are, where we are; including the decisions that have brought
us to this present moment. It involves embracing
our flaws and brokenness as well as the progress we have made toward being the
best version of ourselves that we can be[come]; this being one major root-goal of
a spiritual life.
Joy
is not giddiness or simple boisterous expression. It is often a quiet, sustaining feeling of
gentle uplift that flows from being deeply in-touch with our truest-self in the
midst of daily life in the round of the earthen seasons; being resourced in a
contemplative acceptance of ourselves as a manifestation of Nature; a consciousness
of which augments and deepens ordinary experience--as well as opening us to transcendent identities wrought from myth, spiritualities and authentic religion. You cannot ‘generate’ joy by an act of
will! To find joy, you must needs find
and embrace yourself; know yourself—which involves understanding where you are
and with whom your life is interwoven, locally and even universally.
Genuine joy is connected to hope; hope being a
psychological ‘attitude’ that stems from authentic dwelling in Earth & Spirit
that in turn empowers us to imagine possible life-affirming futures. Hope is not optimism; just as a lack of hope is not pessimism. Hope stands at the present juncture in which we exist; at this moment, reconnoiters the past and all that has happened, standing open to the possibility of a better future. It does not say "ah_ the future will be bright!" Nor does it despair of any better future. Hope stands-forth in the belief that a better future is possible.
Joy sustains; hope looks forward to a better,
more humane world. True hope and a false
-- i.e., naive, simplistic, sentimental, superstitious, or delusional -- understanding of the world and/or one’s self are mutually exclusive. A lack of hope is often indicative of a lack
of joy; and vice versa. For those who
have found themselves and nurture their joy, “The mere sense of living is joy
enough,” as Emily Dickinson once wrote.
Hope then abounds, wherever possible.
Why should the Winter
Solstice Season be so associated with joy?
Or, perhaps, why should joy be a touchstone or ‘rune’ of this Season?
Because,
of all the earthen seasons, it is the one that deeply symbolizes -- via that metaphoring of the 'Solar cycle' as perceived from our planetary situation in it -- the imminence
of death and the possibility of rebirth; it stands at a point in the year that
has been construed, symbolically, as the crux of ending and beginning—and as such portends the hope of new
beginnings.[2] And in new beginnings, we find it possible,
once again, to more authentically connect to our truest selves. What has gone well in the last ween months? What have we achieved? What has gone wrong in the last year? What didn’t work out? What have we done that we might regret or
despair of? What have we lost? What have we given up? Or perhaps we have simply lost our way since
last being ‘here’ – i.e., at the threshold of the Winter Solstice Season? Whatever our journey through the year has
been like, with its successes and spiritual progress, failures and regrets, as
well as whatever you might want to cast off or remedy, reclaim or affirm, the Winter Solstice
Season gives us a chance to re-set and start out again on the spiral journey
through the year. While you can never
completely of fully reset yourself – and this is truer the longer you live – renewal
and a re-directioning of the self with better or renewed goals and ideals is
always possible. Hope carries
possibilities in its stride not available without its resonance.
This chance for renewal and conscious spiritual
‘course (re)setting’ for the coming year is one impetus for joy; hope naturally arising from
the depths of our mortal being and making it possible to reaffirm our best
aspirations, once and ever again. While hurtful, wearying or damaging circumstances can tarnish this natural flow of hope and deaden the potential experience of joy, no matter
how broken we may have become over the course of the previous eleven months, no
matter what we have had to deal with, the Winter Solstice Season offers a chance for
discovering, refreshing and renewing ourselves_ and in that finding the seeds of renewed joy. _Seeds which hope may mature over time.
You can be in a state of ‘joy’ even if you
are not ‘happy’ at some particular moment.
Joy is linked to our love of life; our affirmation of our mortal existence
and all of its potential paths, roads, trails_ and even our waylostness. We may wonder as we wander, and still be
uplifted in a subtle sense of joy when we recollect ourselves in devout
self-reflection, as in meditation, at Winter Solstice or at any point throughout the earthen year.
You
can be joyful and happy at the same time, but you can also experience and be
sustained by that deep undercurrent of joy when your life is disordered by
circumstances beyond your control. Attention
to the flux and flow of life can facilitate a renewed connection to the
undercurrent of joy beneath. This does not mean that in the presence of tragedy
and death you are walking around blissful with a smile on your face! That would be absurd, if not a sign of a
serious disconnect from life. Rather, when
you find your joy and can nurture it authentically, you tap into one of those deep
source-springs of vivaciousness and persistence that can buoy us up when more
transient emotions may evaporate and fail us.
The
experience of joy is deeply linked to the experience of beauty. The old word delectatio describes a response
to beauty characterized by joy and delight.
The beauty of the natural world is an external impetus for the rise of
joy on our selves. The world is full of
potential moments of beauty; experiences of others, of music, of Nature or intellectual, sensual
and imaginative scenarios. Sometimes,
when we cannot get ‘in touch’ with our own deep selves, seeking out – and being
open to – experiences of natural beauty can liberate us into the narthexes of joy, which experiences then facilitate
the resourcement of self-understanding.
For this reason, the philosopher Blaise Pascal once suggested that in
difficult times or situations, we should turn to a touchstone of beauty, and that we should 'carry it’ with us. This requires that
we have ‘collected’ moments of beauty, that we can then reflect on, when hard
things happen. It only takes being aware
of our surroundings and being open to possibilities in the moment of each day to experience beauty in its
wondrous particularity, here and there – often hidden from us in the world as
go about ‘asleep at the wheel.’ To help inspire
ourselves to joy, we can seek out a moment of beauty every day.
“Joyful_ Joyful_ Old Sun
is Dying; but a New Sun shall soon be born!”
Each
year during December, as I engage in traditional rituals, stories and imagery; decking
my place of dwelling with the evergreens, colors and lights of Yule, I hope to be able to return to the wellspring-of-the-self where I may be
refreshed and find a deeper joy. For me, joy usually re-emerges, often
gradually, through the course of the Winter Solstice Season. Some years it manifests earlier than in others,
yet I can think of no year in which my devout, poetic and experiential pathing through the Winter Solstice
Season did not lead to at least some small resourcement in joy.
“If
we die with the Old Sun, we may be reborn with the New.”
And
so with hope I say, each year as I approach and enter the Winter Solstice
Season, that whether we are aware of it or not; whether we even celebrate it or
not_ the Winter Solstice still comes—and that subtle, buoyant feeling that is ‘joy’
may not easily be suppressed once it manifests in our Heart (i.e., our deep
center). For those who center themselves
and go adventuring through the mythic and symbolic tapestries of the Winter
Solstice Season, according to whatever tradition they follow, all of the
frenetic and frantic activity that usually holds us prisoner in its sway may well
fall away, at last. _And then, on the
first morning after Winter Solstice, we may find ourselves able to rise and
exclaim:
“Joyful, Joyful, we dance and adore you_ bright New Sun!”
So mote it be!
I will leave you with a few Words for Meditation
on Joy and Beauty:
Lectio # 1—
“Happy, indeed, are they through whose souls course the genial
currents of ancient tradition, who with natural and non-rational joy can stop
to drink of the springs of wonder, under the tree and beside the manger; for
they are precisely those who enter abundantly into the Kingdom of Christmas and
come to know and love the human beauties and the holy mysteries thereof.” (11)
-
William Muir Auld
Christmas Traditions (1931)
Lectio # 2—
“Verily, I may have this and that for
sufferers, but always I seem to have done better when I learned to feel better
joys. As long as there have been men, man has felt too little joy: that
alone, my brothers, is our original sin. And learning better to feel joy,
we best unlearn how to do harm to others and to embrace harm.”
-
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus
Spoke Zarathustra in “On the
Pitying” (pt ii, 3)
Lectio #3—
“That the natural world can bring us peace; that the natural
world can give us joy; these are the confirmations of what many people may
instinctively feel but have not been able to articulate: that nature is not an
extra, a luxury, but on the contrary is indispensable; part of our essence.” (238)
-
Michael McCarthy
The
Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy (2015)
Lectio # 4—
“Beauty has its purposes, which all our lives and at every
season, it is our opportunity, and our joy, to divine. Nothing outside ourselves makes us desire to
do so; the questions, and the striving toward answers, come from within.”
-
Mary Oliver
Upstream (2016)
Lectio # 5—
“Hope is a function of not-knowing. It is a longing for change, experienced in
necessary ignorance of when that change will come or what form it will take.”
(302)
-
Robert MacFarlane
Landscapes (2015)
Lectio # 6—
“The world does not, in its deep design, embody all forms
of beauty, nor the ones that people without special study, or very unusual
taste, find most appealing. But the
world does, in its deep design, embody some forms of beauty that have been
rightly prized for their own sake, and have been intuitively associated with
the divine.” (223)
-
Frank Wilczek
A Beautiful Question (2015)
[1] I say
this because I am primarily familiar with traditions in the northern
hemisphere. The Winter Solstice happens,
of course, in the southern hemisphere, but on June 21 not in December. I would love to learn about Winter Solstice
traditions from the southern hemisphere and discover whether they also portend
joy and are connected with hope and renewal. If anyone wants to discuss this
with me, please feel free to contact me.
[2] Other
seasons and the festivals that mark them are ‘on the way’ from birth to death;
they represent the spiral journey of life.
They are symbolic of the different stages we go through as we grow and
mature and then move into the repose of old age. Only Winter Solstice has this symbolic sense
of death and rebirth about it.
[3] There is
a Pagan version of the “Thirteen Dayes” presented in my book, The Fires of Yule (2011) associated with
the fictional Neo-Pagan Keltelven traditions, and then a literary-aesthetic
version, found in my book, Heart and
Hearth (2005) associated with the Whittiers. While the calendars evince surface
differences (e.g., the naming of some of the days is different), the ‘logic’ of
the journey is largely the same. The
spelling “Dayes” is said in-world to derive from Egbert Whittier’s book of 1835,
in which the full calendar of the Thirteen ‘Dayes; was first published for the
family.
