Tomorrow’s Solstice is the official beginning of winter. Then, thankfully, the hours of daylight slowly grow longer.

This cycle repeats and repeats through the years. It may seem as if the darkness is expanding until there is no daylight left.

And then the daylight hours begin to grow—until we reach the shortest night at the Summer Solstice.

The source that spoke through Edgar Cayce devoted a chapter in the A Search For God books to Day and Night—darkness and light.

The readings quoted a verse of Psalm 19 (above) that speaks of how the vastness and beauty of the sky, including the stars and the natural cycle of day and night, demonstrate God’s power and creativity—with each new day and night continuously revealing knowledge about our purpose and our relationship to the Divine.

We all experience dark times in our personal lives. The world experiences dark periods of history. But eventually the light prevails again. The readings speak of the darkness as (among other things) a metaphor for our separation from God. Of course, since we were created by God and created out of God “in whom we live and move and have our being,” we can only be separate in consciousness, not in reality. But we sometimes do a really good job of separating ourselves in our minds.

We need the darkness, we need to experience the pain of separation, in order to yearn for, and value, and seek out the Light. Often, we learn far more from the dark times than we do when life is sweetness and light.

And the returning light as the days grow longer is a reminder that there is always hope, that we are never alone, that God is always present and we have light within us. We can be lights to one another.

I’d like to share a favorite poem about the Winter Solstice or Yule.

The Shortest Day

by Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us—Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!