There is Deep Rest Here

As we celebrate this longest night and welcome the return of the light, I want to share a beautiful poem we featured in our concerts last weekend. Preparing to end 2013 and begin the new year, the Solstice is always an apt time to release any negative energies that have built up and focus on finding peace and joy to center myself. I wish you and yours the deep peace that is unique to this season.

I Have Found A Winter
I have found a winter in me
that before I kept at bay.
It whispers within
reminding me to calm
and come inside.

While I am mad for spring
and thrill to every fall, now I slow
and settle into winter's bare blanket.
There is deep rest here,
a quieting of the soul.
Threads frayed and severed, mend,
and even the cold silent days
spin dreams.
Candles cup their slender brave flames
for all the world a fire in the night.

Though the stern insistent business of schedules
stamps its foot, demanding we not look away,
the winter within hopes that we will.
That we will not turn
from its invitation to calm, to rest
to remember what we know
and to wonder, wait, and listen
for what we do not.

From Along the Way, New and Selected Poems by Linda Millemann.