Solstice...and Thin Spaces

 By Marilyn Moore

We are approaching the winter solstice…just a few days until the shortest day of the year, the time when a late sunrise and an early sunset leave us with the most hours of darkness.  In these last few days before the solstice, I’m reminded of the terror that people felt at one time, fearing that the sun, the source of warmth and light and life itself, was going away, never to return.  Each day, the darkness came a little earlier, the light came a little later, and the fear grew deeper.  

Then, it changed….the sun rose a few minutes earlier, the sun set a few minutes later, and fear was replaced by rejoicing and jubilation.  Solstice celebrations have been a part of human culture from the time humans emerged; it’s embedded in our DNA to celebrate light and sun, because in so doing, we celebrate life itself.

Now, we understand that the lessening, and then increasing, minutes of sunlight are among the many celestial wonders.  We know it’s related to the rotation of the earth on its axis and the revolution of the earth around the sun.  It can be measured precisely and predicted exactly.  And for me, none of that knowledge detracts from its wondrous nature….

I sat this evening on the hill at Pioneers Park, watching the day fade away.  It’s been a gray and cloudy day, and I wondered what it would look like as the sun set.  Would it just become darker gray?  It was a mostly empty space, only a few other people were there.  We were all quiet…. The birds called to one another as they flew overhead, following their own inborn instinct of where they were going and how they would get there.  The gray did indeed darken.  And then…at the moment the sun would set below the horizon, the edges of the clouds were illuminated in soft pink, and the skies above and below reflected that light.  A stunning palette of color at the end of a day of gray skies.

It was a thin space moment, one of those times, and places, where the veil between earth and heaven is so very thin that one can reach through and touch that which is beyond.  In my experience, the thin space moments are rare.  For me, they are most often to be found in an earth and sky setting, at the ocean or on the prairie.  Some experience thin spaces in music.  Most people that I’ve heard attempt to describe a thin space moment struggle to find words, finally landing on something like “achingly beautiful,” or “tender beyond words.” Usually, we just shrug, knowing we can’t find the words, and the moment doesn’t need words.  I believe that in that moment, our hearts simply burst with the wonder of it all.

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