🕯️Light in the Dark: Solstice Blessings + Poetry 🌟

High winds and heavy rains have led to more power outages lately, so candles, flashlights, and charged phones are always at the ready. It seems we must be prepared for sudden darkness, a lack of power, a prolonged uncertainty—both literally and figuratively.

Figuratively, many of us feel the tug of political divisions these days, along with visceral concern over the state of the planet and the ongoing safety and well being of many of her inhabitants. This discomfort hits hardest at this time of year, when the differences between have and have-not are most striking, and we may not be sure what to do about it all.

“We must risk delight,” says Jack Gilbert in his poem, A Brief for the Defense, a poem that explores the paradox of the human condition, with its balance of light and dark, sorrow and joy. It doesn’t offer solutions to life’s dilemmas, but by acknowledging the dilemma of existence, it makes space for the light and the dark.

It can be tempting to go cold and quiet in the dark, to give into powerlessness, cynicism, or despair—to give up before you’ve given something else a try. Today I want to remind you that your creativity is a source of light. For yourself and others. The act of writing, or reading the words of others, can kindle a circle of light to keep back the dark.

Yet, there’s wisdom in the dark too.

A writer who recently experienced her own sudden power outage described the particular moment—after the candles had been lit and a cozy quietness and been surrendered to—when the power suddenly came back on, and life, as suddenly, returned to usual. For a second: disappointment.

The soul craves a break from the usual demands of day-to-day life, and it understands the value of darkness, of its power to give meaning to the light. So, when darkness descends, outwardly or inwardly, turn toward the soul’s longings.

For many of us, poetry can be a haven. In honor of the solstice darkness, and just before we turn back to the light, I’ve selected a handful of poems offering solace, inspiration, or simply a clear-eyed look at the paradox of the human experience with its unavoidable mix of joy and suffering.

After reading one or all of the selected poems, I invite you to sit down and write down your own thoughts and feelings about the light and the dark. A new poem might be born…

We don’t need to solve the dilemmas of existence, but we can be brave witnesses to them; we can be scribes of both darkness and light. We can write about and through and in darkness by lighting the candle of our creativity and keeping it burning.

"Someone I loved once game me a box full of darkness".

It took me years to understand that this too was a gift."

~ Mary Oliver  ~

“Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark.”

~ Kate DiCamillo ~