My joy in the Winter Solstice celebration in Stanstead makes me think of a passage I wrote for The Feminine of History is Mystery. It was written when I was still living in Brunswick Maine, and could not imagine ever finding my “tribe” of people who would celebrate the Solstice with singing and dancing. I wrote a description of an imagined celebration at Stonehenge, and in the middle of the writing I called out to “my people” — and they answered! And now I feel unbelievably fortunate to have found them and celebrated with them.
in the pale pre-dawn light, men, women, and children, wearing animal skins and bright colored woven cloth, carry banners and flutes and tambourines. down the hill, through the valley of the avon, up the shoulder past the mound and the heelstone. a sense of joyful expectancy, of reverence, but no rigid formality, dogs bark, children laugh. there is a moment of solemn silence at the sun’s first flash, then they will sing old songs and new, dance thousand-year-old dances with new variations, feast and share the year’s gossip and wander home again . . .
o my people, how I envy you, what a sense of loss that I am not there too —
are you the past or the future?
we are both the past and the future, we are where
the circle meets itself, never fear, you too
are enclosed by the circle.
from The Feminine of History is Mystery, opposite right hand page 133