Winter Solstice Celebration December 21, 2021
Prarie burn is cancelled.
Winter Solstice 2012
The first year I became caretaker at Harmony Farm, I honored both the Summer and Winter Solstices. For the Summer Solstice, I invited family and friends over an 11 day period to help me celebrate joining with this land. It was a beautiful celebration that included music, sound, dance, walks, prayers, storytelling, and connecting with each other and the land. During the Winter Solstice, I did a three day fire, at the newly established medicine wheel by the house. There was probably only one standing stone and a fire ring in the center of a space for 20 or 30 people. Each year the lands wants something different. One year it will be a single evening fire lit at sunset and at other years, it is a fire lit at sunrise on the solstice, and kept burning for three days and nights. That first year it was the full monte: the three day deal! I lit the fire Friday the 21st at sunrise, and kept it going until Monday morning the 24th. Many people came and went during that time, being present, walking the land, doing their own “ceremonial” activities around the fire, and helping to tend the flames. It was a beautiful celebration during which my commitment to this land deepened. It is always a time to honor the land through acknowledging the energies that are here right now.
Winter is an artist
Winter Solstice 2021
The Winter solstice is the shortest day of the year. This year’s celebration will be on Tuesday, December 21 with multiple events including sunrise fire lighting prayer, a prairie burn (weather permitting), sunset fire lighting and evening potluck. Come and go as you need. People are welcome to help with, or watch the prairie burn. It is a good time to gather about you those things you no longer need energetically, and give them to the powerful prairie fire. And then, for the evening, the fires will be burning in the Sun Temple, and in the Harmony Medicine Wheel in the woods. We will share potluck food and fellowship around the fires. It will be on the heels of the full moon, so there will be moonlight later in the evening. Please see the full schedule below to help you decide when best to be here for your own purposes.
As always, your presence is your prayer, and any added intention you wish to contribute, just strengthens that prayer.
Schedule of events
I invite you to join me at any time during the day that suits your purposes for this Winter Solstice. Some times of interest:
7:36 AM (Sunrise) Lighting of the Harmony Medicine Wheel fire (follow the path through the archway in the woods to the fire circle). This fire may burn through the night until sunrise on the 22nd. You are welcome to help tend this fire. Let me know if you are interested in tending this fire in the woods.
9:30 AM Prairie burn is cancelled.
5:01 Sunset prayers and lighting of the Sun Temple fire
Evening: Potluck and communion around the fires, and walking the spaces in your own ceremonial prayer space
Dragonfly shapeshifting into spider, Winter, 2020
All beliefs and faiths are welcome. The Winter Solstice is a time of low energy in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun has lost its potency, nights are long, the woods are dormant and everything about the environment and those who inhabit it are focused on conserving what resources they have. The Solstice Celebration starts the beginning of quiet time on the land. I do not run machinery of any kind in the woods or up on the prairie until around the 1st of March. It is a time that the land goes deeply inward, and I honor that with quiet. I invite you to contemplate what this all means for you, and how you move through this time period. My creation of these spaces is my ceremony and I invite you to pray, walk, exist in whatever way resonates with you.