Winter Solstice

Dark of night deepens,
Light now slips into shadow,
The sun lies sleeping.

Winter solstice comes,
Darkest day of nature's night,
Gateway to the Light.

See the blazing fires
Drive away the deepest dark,
Warm the earth for Spring.

May the Peace and Joy of Christmas
be with you
through all the years of your life

Christmas is not a universal feast,

but the underlying spirit is common to all of us,

regardless of religious belief.
It is the celebration of light in the darkness,

the warmth of hope spreading in the cold winter of life.

Christmas is gratitude and appreciation

of all we have been given and are still to receive.

Christmas is the distilled essence of love.

It is a time of angel's wings on earthly bodies,
a time when the soothing touch of a nurse
lets a dying man know he is not alone.

Christmas is the distilled essence of all that is good.

It is a time for softly spoken words of love that reach into the hardest heart,

for it is only in giving our love unconditionally

that we release the heart song in others.

Christmas is the distilled essence of a quiet joy.

It rings out crystal clear in the singing of the soul.
It is the music of heaven played out on earth
in each carefully composed note of giving.

Christmas is the distilled essence of childhood innocence.

It is their laughter, their astonished delight, their belief in magic,
all wrapped up in the overwhelming love we feel for them
that sets free the child in us.

Christmas is the distilled essence of peace.

It is the profoundest stillness of the soul
when it quietens the rampant chatter of the mind
and hears the single heart beat of the universe.

We are never alone.

In that stillness

we are one heart, one mind, one soul.

Hold the distilled essence of Christmas in your daily lives all year around.

Reach out in love to those around you.

I will always believe in magic.

Open your mind and let magic believe in you.

Christmas is here and now and every day of your lives.

Live it !

In Love and Light,

Maria

Prompted thoughts from a Writing Group

( Julie Jordan Scott's Sacred Sixty)

I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve. Igor Stravinsky

And the truth for me today is:

The truth for me today is reflected in the bright tear brimming eyes of a sixty five year old man.
He came to me weighed down with remembered pain, present sorrows heaped upon him unremittingly.
I listened.
I shared his tears.
We moved together from past to present to a place beyond time.
We moved to the truth of choice, the choice to live in love regardless of external circumstance.
The truth for me today lies in the soft awed smile of that man as he left me.

The present is the ever moving shadow that dividesyesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope.Frank Lloyd Wright

In the present moment, I see a richness of jewel colours flaring from a space deep within me.
They sparkle in prismatic energetic patterns, splintering the once solid greyness of the day.
Living rainbows bedazzle my mind.
In their scintillating rays, I find a feast for my inner eye.
Here in this visual cacophony of light I am bathed in the light of the soul.

He who lives in the present lives in eternity.Ludwig Wittgenstein


In the present moment I hear women chattering happily as they sit together sewing a glowing tapestry of multi-dimensional energy.
They embroider with their laughter, splashing the canvas with incredible colours with every peel of merriment.
Each myriad coloured thread splashes startling geometric patterns, abstract representation of the blending of their hearts.
I hear their souls, the divinity of their sharing, these sacred sisters who weave the silken web of etermity.


When we come into the present, we begin to feel the life around us again. Jack Kornfield

In the present moment, I feel a soft, yet weighty pressure emanating from my heart centre.
It is as though love itself is pushing to escape the constraints of my mortal body.
I feel as though I am ready to explode.
In that conflagration, a rain of incandescent fire will sweep the stars from the sky.
The planets will fall from their orbits and spin into space to seek new vistas, new solar systems, new creations.
I feel my skin stretching, stretching, stretching until atomic bonds dissolve and love is freed.

When I am in the present moment, I know the space between each sacred breath where all is stillness and white light.
I know the intimacy of electrons dancing in the orbits of creation.
I know the alchemical molecules of transformation.
I know who I am and who I may be.
I am the I who lies between the realms of past and future.
I am the I of now.
I know the presence of the energy that sings the universe into creation.
I know the space between all that is and I know love.

Moonlight Sorrow

Moonlight spills softly
Across the silent grave,
Haunting the darkness
With the memory of light.

Deep within my soul.
A sigh rises, transmuted
TO a silent keening moan,
A note of longing and of loss.

Silver shadows cast across
the tall pale granite stone,
Etched with icy tears,
Drawn from sightless eyes.

I ache for one more day to walk the earth
For one more night to hold you close,
Before the Light of dawn returns
And I am once more lost to Life.

Day dreaming

Flowing, drifting, wandering dreamily in the eternal cycle of life,
Far from the bustling, jumping, jostling, running to catch it, how do I juggle it, world.
Here I find balance in my heart beat,
Dancing and stretching as I reach for love,
Expanding, glowing in the syncopating rhythm of my soul
Snuggling down into the magic of the universe's hug.