The Darkness has not overcome it

“Awake, my heart. Awake, O sleeper. The night has ended.” – Rumi, in Masnavi

Winter Solstice has come and gone. I am always inspired to move to my inner landscape at the Celtic calendar quarters of the year—2 solstices and 2 equinoxes. The gravitational axis of the earth continues to shift amidst millions of stars, planets and galaxies. Winter Solstice hails the imperceptible, slow return of light to the northern hemisphere.

Though we think history rises and falls on the tides of man, the universe is truly what orders and dictates our lives. Most pre industrial land based people throughout the ages have known this. Rains, rivers, aquifers, snow cycles, planting, pollination, harvest, and food is what allows our lives to be sustained on Mother Earth. This is what is Real. Not AI or google.

The intelligence of the creatures, land and waters remember its time to shift with the quarters. And we as earthlings, as part of this wise body, are invited to attune our own lives to the seasons as sherpa and beloved teacher.

I read an amazing Substack post almost every day. Rev. Cameron Trimble is a UCC minister, pilot, entrepreneur and writer. I cannot let this one go by without sharing, as she speaks truth so eloquently. Cameron has entrained her ears to earth wisdom. She has keen spiritual land based knowings and stirrings that help me stay grounded in what is not always visible to the humaniverse.

By keeping her ear to the ground, rather than to the incessant clamor of our daily lives and political times, Cameron reminds me to look to the earth patterns and rhythms for guidance. Here’s what she wrote today about Solstice…

The winter solstice came and went last night, mostly unnoticed. No headlines marked it. No alarms sounded. The Earth simply reached a limit and began—without drama—to turn.

That detail matters more than we usually admit.

For most of human history, people paid close attention to this moment because it named a boundary. There is a point, the solstice teaches, beyond which the dark does not get to claim more ground. The cold may deepen. The days may still feel short. But the descent itself has ended.

We are living in a time that feels like an extended descent. Violence repeats. Language corrodes. Truth is bent until it becomes unrecognizable. Institutions once trusted now feel brittle or captured. Many of us carry a quiet fear that what we are witnessing is not temporary, but terminal.

The solstice does not answer that fear. It does something more interesting.

It reminds us that change often begins in ways that are structurally invisible. Nothing feels different the morning after the solstice. The nights are still long. The evidence for optimism remains thin.

And yet the physics have shifted.

This is where modern impatience betrays us. We have trained ourselves to expect transformation to announce itself clearly—to be felt immediately, to justify our effort, to prove that endurance has been worth it. But the natural world does not operate on the timeline of reassurance. Growth happens underground. Turning happens before comfort follows.

In ecological terms, the solstice is not an outcome; it is an orientation. The system has reached a threshold and begun to reorganize itself.

That is a useful frame for this moment.

We may not yet see the results of moral courage, truth-telling, or sustained care. We may feel exhausted by the repetition of harm and the slowness of repair. But the solstice invites a different question than Is it working? It asks instead: Has the direction changed?

The wisdom traditions that grew close to the land understood this intuitively. They did not confuse darkness with failure or delay with abandonment. They learned how to live inside long arcs of becoming—trusting that fidelity mattered even when evidence lagged behind effort.

This is not naïve hope. It is disciplined perception.

The solstice does not tell us that things will be easy. It tells us that limits exist—even for darkness. That systems bend before they heal. That the work of turning often happens without applause, certainty, or immediate reward.

Today, we stand just past that quiet hinge in the year. Nothing is resolved. Nothing is guaranteed. But something has shifted.

The invitation is not to rush toward light, but to live as people who understand how turning works—slowly, subtly, and with consequences that unfold over time.

That kind of understanding does not make us passive. It makes us patient in the strongest sense of the word: capable of bearing what must be borne without surrendering to despair.

We are in this together,

Cameron

Let us turn back to the earth and land based wisdom. Let us keep on digging in the trenches given to us with love and patience. Notice your orientation and gently shift it towards what is possible just for today.

Here’s her prayer:

A Prayer For Those Learning to Trust the Turn

God of seasons and thresholds,
of limits and slow rearrangements,

We confess how quickly we demand proof
that our endurance matters.

Teach us to recognize turning points
that do not announce themselves,
to honor faithfulness that precedes relief.

When we cannot feel the light returning,
help us trust the deeper rhythms
that hold us nonetheless.

Give us the courage
to live into the turn
before it becomes comfortable.

Amen.

Anita F. Amstutz

Valdez, NM December 22, 2025