Last night was the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. I don't know about you, but it has felt to me as though 2020 has been full of more darkness and long, suffering nights than average. Since last night was the Winter Solstice, I wanted to mark the end of the longest nights and welcome the beginning of longer days and more light. So, I went on a contemplative adventure with my boyfriend to watch the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, an event that happens once every 800 years, and then think about what I wanted the future days to hold.
Sign of Hope
We started by driving to the beach to watch the sunset and see the first glimpses of the Conjunction over the ocean. Technically the closest the two planets got was at 2pm that day, but you couldn't see them until later when the sun was setting. Some people started calling the Conjunction, the Christmas Star. Now, I know it's not a star, but I do think it is fitting that an event this rare, coincided with the longest night of 2020. It's been a year for the history books in many of the most unpleasant ways, but I think there is much to be hopeful for. And I think it's not an accident that the Conjunction, or the Christmas Star if you prefer, happened on the shortest day of the year. I think it's a sign of hope.
Call me sentimental if you like, dismiss me as "woo-woo", decide I'm a looney romantic poet who lives for feelings and doesn't understand facts. But just consider for a moment how coincidental this whole thing is in reality. This was an astrological event that only happens once in 800 years, and it happened in 2020, a year that has seen a pandemic that hasn't been rivaled in scale since the Spanish flu in 1918 (or possibly the Black Plague). What's more, this conjunction didn't just happen on any random day of 2020, it Precisely on the Winter Solstice, of one of the worst years of recent memory. Even if you think it is all just a coincidence, revel in the wonder that it's such a large one and feel a bit of magic in it. Then go back to your hard logic and cold facts, I won't deny you. But I digress. I'm simply trying to say it would be a mistake to allow the austerity of science to rob you of the joy of being alive to witness such a rare coincidence. (If you are curious about a few more scientific facts about the Great Conjunction, you can visit this
page). Now, onward.
I think there is much to be hopeful for despite the many, and obvious, terrible things that 2020 has brought us all. I know that we have all suffered, almost immeasurably. Only in later eras, when our history is summed up in chapters will anyone be able to grasp the scale of suffering relative to other times. We feel it, but we cannot really understand it, because it is too close, far too personal. However, with great earthquakes and shake-ups, comes great change. We have the opportunity to reimagine systems that before this year would have been too entrenched to change. No matter how broken it is, if a system is ancient, it is hard to change or replace. We have suffered through the earth-shattering and now it is time to rebuild our society and our systems in a way that is better. We can finally address many of the issues that have bothered us but have felt powerless to tackle.
I am confident that out of the ashes of our sorrows and tribulations in 2020 we can gather ourselves into a glorious Phoenix and rise with new strength, beauty, and dignity.
So we watched the Conjunction dip slowly towards the sea and we decided we needed to hike up to a more isolated spot to watch it set beneath the horizon. We went to Cowles Mountain and hiked up to a place on the trail that has a circle of stacked stones. And it seemed a bit more secluded and contemplative than a busy parking lot above a beach with constant cars moving in and out. So we sat and watched the Conjunction as it slowly sank across the horizon and I thought.
Build Upon What Has Come Before
I thought about what we have been through and what I want to come in the future. We are none of us creating and acting in a vacuum. We have the great privilege of being able to take advantage of everything that has come before us. That is the privilege of the present. We don't have to reinvent the things that we have inherited. We don't have to start from scratch, we can build upon the foundation that others have already laid.
So, I looked around me at the stacks of stones, standing sentinel in the night, surrounded by other rocks, and realized that I was looking at numerous foundations of work done by others who had come to the mountain before me. I approached a compelling stack of rocks, odd angles, and unintuitive shapes holding up an improbably and beautiful natural architectural tower. I studied it and tried to understand how all of its shapes and angles held it up just so. Then I selected a small rock from the ground nearby and I added it to what had come before.
Rebuild What Has Been Broken
I looked around at the many stacked rocks and noticed how many of them had fallen. Knocked over by malevolent forces, or accidental victims of strong winds, or perhaps flawed creations that could not stand. I saw them not as jumbled rocks but as dreams that had not been realized. I thought about the way that all of us experience pain and setbacks in life. It is inevitable. You cannot avoid dealing with brokenness and failures in life. But you can choose what happens after you have fallen. You control how you respond.
I chose to be very deliberate, not to take on responsibility for all the broken dreams, but to perceive them at a distance and then choose one and only one that I thought I could rebuild. It can be too much to take on responsibility for other people's pain. It is not better to take on so much external pain and feel it so deeply that you yourself become crippled by it. This can be a hard thing for a sensitive person to navigate. Sometimes you cannot help but empathize, but I am practicing noticing how much pain is in the world and choosing not to take it all on. I am practicing setting boundaries for myself so that I can keep going, keep helping, and keep creating for myself. So, I chose one fallen stack and I carefully and lovingly rebuilt it.
Make Something Beautiful to Add to the World
Lastly, I feel it is important for all of us to do something to make the world beautiful. It can be your lifelong pursuit. We are all so different, but it is this beautiful diversity that makes the world rich. Some people are artists, some people are healers, some people are full of wisdom to share, others are great at listening. We, all of us, have something beautiful to offer the world. And the world is in need of beauty just now. I looked around and found a spot in this circle of stacked stones that I felt needed more beauty. I chose it as the site of my own rock tower. I selected stones that were unique but also echoed the shape of the one that they would be placed on and I crafted an improbable looking rock stack of my own.
Then I looked up and saw that my boyfriend had been taking loose stones and making a spiral pattern around a central rock stack. It was beautiful. This rock circle was now a rock spiral with one more tower. We watched the stars for a few more minutes and then we returned home to dream of hopeful days to come, filled with beauty and meaning.
I pray that you will find hope even now and see that you can make progress by adding a single stone to what came before, that you can rebuild those things that were broken and rise up with renewed purpose like a Phoenix, and that on these new wings propped up by what has come before you can add something new and beautiful to the world.
