Here comes the Sun

The simple action of sitting in a sunbeam and allowing its heat to seep through my skin and down to the bones, is one of the small, indispensable actions that go with this time of year.  Imbolc is coming ever so slowly, and I am eager to light the candles and help encourage the return of the light.  This has been an extremely mild winter here so far.  Even still, I miss the "laying on a blanket in the grass" type days.  There is some part of this California born and raised girl that needs that.  I have to remind myself that I also need this colder darker part of the year.  I know that I need this quiet time to look inside and plan the coming growth, just as my garden needs this time to prepare.  Even the soil benefits from the cold and snow (although we have yet to have any this year).

I have started a new type of meditation using a short mantra that just happens to be the title to one of the kid's books. "All I see is part of me."  The simple repeating of this phrase while in trance has been an amazing experience.  I feel as if my body is desolving and taking everything into itself. The tingling sensation behind my "third eye," that tends to go with trance work for me, seems to be happening in all of my body, instead of just that one spot. It allows me to feel the dark to be as  much a part of me as the light.  Probably doesn't hurt that I tend to do meditations in the dark of night.

I took two prayers written by a fellow ADFer and made a prayer to help me pull this feeling into my conscious, waking moments.

Bold Orion on the rise,
see the summer fall before you: 
guard us in the growing dark...
There is beauty in emptiness, and in the skeleton of trees against the dark blue of dusk's sky.
When my teeth chatter in winter's wind, remind me of this, God who dwells in the dark as well as the light.~Ceisiwr Serith



But just incase, I also have this