We marked the winter solstice on Wednesday:  the day in our annual trip around the sun when Earth’s north pole is pointed directly away from the sun, keeping the northern hemisphere in darkness for longer than any other day of the year.  On Wednesday, in Los Angeles, we had less than 10 hours of day between sunrise and sunset.  Today, already, the day is a few seconds longer than on Wednesday, not enough to notice, but moving us inevitably toward spring and summer.  

We use movement out of darkness into light as a metaphor for hope and progress.  We come out of the darkness of troubling times into the light of liberation or joy.  Actually, though, a dark night can be filled with joy, and a bright day can shine on oppression and suffering as well as gladness.  But there is something literal about winter turning toward spring that has the hopeful feeling.  The earth in winter’s quiescence begins to move toward’s spring’s abundance, new life, rebirth, new creation.

Perhaps today you need winter’s rest.  I hope you’ll find and enjoy it:  the cozy, peaceful, dark.  But perhaps, also today, you’ll begin to plant the seeds that will germinate in the warming earth and the lengthening daylight of the months to come, eventually to burst into bright blooms of joy.