Dear Friends and Pagani,

The Soslticetide recedes and the secular year will soon turn.  Having grown up and spent the first 30+ years of this lifetime living in Anchorage, AK. USA, I relate to the Winter Solstice as the turning of the year much more so than Samhain as a Spiritual New Year as some Pagans do.

I am doing a lot of inner work.  I’ve started keeping a daily paper journal, and am meditating daily, and am doing some daily work with my chakra’s and similar thinks.  It’s good timing for me as I have always viewed the Winter Solstice as part of an inward turning tide or spiral of the dark have of the  year.

The onset of a lot of cold weather systems flowing over the Florida peninsula has thrown me into something of a hibernation mode as of late.   I can usually get by with 6 – 8 hours of sleep but the cold weather and the extra hours of night (being an overnight shift worker now I am largely nocturnal these days … or nights rather) have left me crashing out for 12 hours of sleep at a time, sometimes more.

~~~

And I just got a Solstice Care Package from my dear friends Michael and Mark, including a couple of boxes of Turkish Delight, and some Samovar Tea (Black Tea with Cinnamon Oil, Cloves, and granulated lemon and orange peel)  from the Kobuk Coffee Co. in downtown Anchorage!!  It’s suddenly really the Holiday’s on some deep and important personal level…

It’s funny the inward turning I mentioned earlier is seemingly aided and abbetted all around me.  I have not only found a  few favorite books about meditation and daily practice as I went through my boxes of stuff, I have also found new resources online thanks to recent gift of an I-pod Shuffle from the lovely Jonathan.

I haven’t been doing a LOT of posting on here….  I am going to be doing better about that in the coming year.  I think Once a Week minimum… although I am sure there will be times where it will end up being multiple times a day, and times when I have to let it lay fallow due to involvement with other projects (more on those later).

There was a very interesting service at the U.U. Church I attend this last Sunday about New Years Revelations… things we can learn about ourselves as we examine the past and contemplate the future.  It has elements of a confession to it….

I am a work in progress, for years I have brushed aside feelings or impulses I somehow labelled “negative” or wrong-headed without actually acknowledging them or accepting them.  I have a lot of inner work to do on my self and spirit, and yet I am actively engaged on that journey.

May your own journeys be full of joy and wonder and wisdom,

Pax