Solstice Prayer from Dec. 21st, 2014

The photo is from last summer’s Burning Man festival, taken by Zipporah on Sunday morning while I sat in the Temple of Grace contemplating my life’s loves and losses. Later that night, the Temple collapsed in upon itself like a curtsying ballerina after burning for fifteen short minutes.

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I read the following prayer at the opening of a small medicine ceremony I participated in the night of the Winter Solstice. The Solstice prayer and the Temple photo seem to me to share a similar archetypal character.

Tonight we celebrate one of the deepest celestial mysteries to stir the sacred senses of our still youthful species. We watch in wonder as the Sun’s southward journey comes to a standstill. We honor the darkness this provides on this, the longest night in the history of the Earth. Tonight the Sun dies so that in three days it may be reborn to travel north again toward Spring. We give thanks for the balancing of Light and Dark, a mixture from out of which all Life springs forth. We trust in the Great Cosmic Cycle of Death and Rebirth, in the eternal rotation of the spheres of Heaven and Earth.

We trust that the Sun will return to shorten the night and to warm the Earth. We give thanks to the earth for faithfully receiving the luminous breath of the Sun, for giving birth through its sacred chemical kiss with the Sun to all plants and bacteria, fungi and animals. We honor the Earth’s sister, Luna, the Moon, who tonight will go down with the Sun on his journey through the underworld , granting us an even deeper plunge into darkness.

This is the longest night in Earth’s history because of the tidal deceleration caused by the Moon’s gravitational influence. As Earth’s rotation slows, she drifts ever so slightly further away from us, her longing unable to overcome the momentum flinging her away. It is symbolic of  the tragic beauty giving meaning to all change, to all time. As the Sun enters Capricorn, we honor Saturn, Father Time, who rules over all finite things. Adrift amidst these great cosmic cycles, we gather together to give praise to our ancestors: to the stars overhead whose sacrificial deaths made our lives possible; to all the Earth-beings underfoot, who feed and clothe us; to the first human inhabitants of this land, the Ohlone indians, whose remains dated to 5,000 years ago can still be found buried beneath the pavement of Berkeley just west of this ceremony; and we thank the future beings who will be here after us. We thank them for continuing the evolutionary journey despite our generation’s disrespect for and childish treatment of Earth and her creatures.

We ask forgiveness for our forgetfulness, our irresponsibility, our misguided pride. We humble ourselves before all beings, past, present, and future. We plant ourselves as seeds in the soil of time and look ahead, guided by the Great Mystery toward which all beings are called. We offer ourselves for this Great Work. May we be partners with Levity/Light and Gravity/Darkness in their sacred marriage.