SkyWatch Friday: Solstice

Behind the complicated details of the world 

stand the simplicities. 

~Graham Greene~

A stack of sunrise-colored clouds 

A warm, soft glow of lights and snow illuminate the blue spruce in our backyard
(May my Southern Hemisphere readers please forgive my Northern Hemisphere bias!)

Happy Solstice and Happy SkyWatching!

See you next week (she said with utmost confidence)...

;-)

ABC Wednesday: W for Workshop (Santa's!)

I'm sure by now I'm on Santa's Wayward Blogger list (Which is Way Worse than being on his regular Naughty List, you know), having Wistfully Wandered away from the Land of Blogs for nearly two Weeks. I fear I've been Whelmed (over and over) and Wretchedly under the Weather. And While neither of those conditions has Waned yet, I don't Want to miss a third Week in a row of ABC Wednesday. So I'm Worming my Way out of Working on a more Wearying post by reprising a Post of Christmas Past. (Ha, get it? I'm such a little Dickens!*) To those of you Who have been my unWavering followers for over a year and so for whom this is a rerun, I apologize for my Wicked indolence and assure you I've been Working on my promised photo post(s) of Dragonfly Cottage's interior. For the those of you newer to my blog, please enjoy the festive Whimsy of this Wonderful (if I do say so myself) post of yore! ;-)

W is for Workshop. As in Santa's Workshop! Here's just a Wee sneak peek to entice you in, via the link below, for the story of my miniature Santa's Workshop (housed inside an antique mantle clock) and lots more photos...

Santa's Workshop!

*My absolute favorite cinematic version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is the 1984 film starring George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge. If you've never seen it, you can watch it in its 9-part entirety on You Tube, beginning here...

And as a bonus in honor of my friend veganelder ~ Who believes no post of mine is complete Without our Winsome Woofer Willow ~ I give you this classic photo of...

Willie-Claus! (Claws?)

Along With Warmest Wishes for safe and happy holidays!

What are you Waiting for? Wander over to...

Where more W's are Waiting!

Winter Solstice: Eclipse & Meditations

This year's Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere, which coincides with a full moon, will occur tomorrow (Dec 21) at 11:38 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), which is 4:38 pm my time. But I'm posting this a day early because this year the Solstice also coincides with a total lunar eclipse that begins tonight in some places (11:33 pm here in Mountain Standard time). The entire eclipse, with a totality phase lasting 72 minutes, will be visible in North America, western South America and the northern Scandanavian countries, and during its early or later stages in several other parts of the world. So here's hoping for clear skies for a good viewing of the coppery Solstice full moon in its eclipse! (But if it's cloudy where you or you'd just rather watch it from the comfort of your computer, you're in luck. NASA will have a live video feed of the eclipse starting at about 6 pm EST).

Updates:

In case you missed it (and even if you didn't!): here's a gallery of terrific photos of the eclipse taken from various places around the world.

BW made it till midnight and I stayed up till 1am to watch it through the skylight in our sunroom, and went to bed while the moon was still fully in the earth's shadow. There's a photo in the above collection, taken in the Bronx, of an icebow surrounding the moon and we saw one here, too. The interior of the ring here was crystal clear, the ring itself was really huge and just beautiful, and made it look like the eclipse was mounted inside a giant round frame for our viewing pleasure. :-)

As any of you who read my Winter Solstice post from last year know, I love both winter and its solstice, always accepting with gratitude their invitation to enjoy some serene stillness, quiet reflection, deep peace and sacred solitude. Since those can be hard to come by on any regular day, but especially during these last mad-dash days before Christmas, I've gathered a few beautiful Winter Solstice meditation videos, with lovely music and images, to help. I hope you will grant yourself a few moments of tranquility any time you're in need of it, but particularly at Solstice.

By the way, the photo in my new header is of a Winter Solstice sunrise taken a few years ago off our deck.

The Still-Point of Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice to my fellow residents of Earth's northern hemisphere! (And happy Summer Solstice to our southern hemisphere neighbors!)

What most people love about this first day of winter is that after tonight, the days grow longer, the nights shorter. Although I also love sunshine and warm days, I am atypical, for I adore winter and its hibernation-inspiring dormancy and darkness. Maybe it's due to my strong introversion or the fact I'm a child of winter, born in its depths. But I celebrate Winter Solstice not so much for the return of the sun and longer days as for the powerful silence, sweet peace, inner reflection and necessary restoration winter's cozy days and long, dark nights can bring. (No wonder Still, Still, Still is one of my favorite carols!) :-)

I hope you'll enjoy the quotes and images I've gathered as a tribute to winter and her Solstice. Since the holiday season has been made unnaturally contrarian with its clamor and cacophony, chaos and crowds, obligations and acquisitiveness, moments of blessed stillness can be impossible to find and challenging to create. But it is stillness that this serene and slumbering season invites us to embrace, so here's a chance to savor a few moments of quiet meditation on the sweet and simple gifts of winter...

Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice 2009

Dec 21, 5:47 pm Universal Time (GMT)

What fire could ever equal

the sunshine of a winter's day?

~Henry David Thoreau

Winter Solstice: A time to let the longest night of the year

seduce you into stillness.

Time to silence inner voices,

listen to the beating of your own heart.

Time to breathe slowly, become the breath.

Linger here. The night is long.

~Dr. Judith Rich, Winter Solstice: A Paean to the Pregnant Darkness

There is a privacy about it

which no other season gives you...

In spring, summer and fall

people sort of have an open season on each other;

only in the winter, in the country,

can you have longer, quiet stretches

when you can savor belonging to yourself.

~Ruth Stout

Winter solitude—
In a world of one color
The sound of wind.

~Basho

O Winter! ruler of the inverted year...

I crown thee king of intimate delights,

fireside enjoyments,

home-born happiness, and all the comforts

that the lowly roof of undisturb'd retirement,

and the hours of long, uninterrupted evening, know.

~William Cowper

Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do ~

or because you can now and then permit yourself

the luxury of thinking so.

~Stanley Crawford

Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.

~Pietro Aretino

The color of springtime is in the flowers,

The color of winter is in the imagination.

~Ward Elliot Hour

Winter came down to our home one night

Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again.
~Bill Morgan, Jr.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind

Thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude.

~William Shakespeare

Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth,

for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire:

it is the time for home.

~Edith Sitwell

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

~William Blake

"Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree,

where I had heard a tittering for some time,

"winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel,

if you know where to look for it."

~Henry David Thoreau, 28 November 1858 journal entry