Photo: Diane Kirkup

As the Winter Solstice arrives, I’m reminded of words of Pearl Buck’s:

“It is good to know our universe. What is new is only new to us.”

The newness of the season arriving now can be a quiet kind, and an invitation to quiet, and stillness. To waiting, and listening, in order to hear.

“Make Hay While the Moon Shines”, image by Lauren Chuslo-Shur.

Here in the northern hemisphere, the Solstice brings with it such a distinct meeting place of light and dark.

And yet, as with the sun’s gradually returning light, we can be warmed by the understanding that the forces at work in human life are drawing us away from a dark, centuries-old preoccupation with survival and “fighting evil” toward our highest destiny: a creative, collaborative and potentially limitless building of the good.

That is a prospect in which every one has a part to play and every culture unique contributions to make.

“Sunburst” image by Lauren Chuslo-Shur

Frederick Buechner expressed this reality beautifully: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

“Renewal is the order of the day,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá declared when he visited North America in 1912. “And all this newness hath its source in the fresh outpourings of wondrous grace and favor from the Lord of the Kingdom, which have renewed the world.

“The people, therefore, must be set completely free from their old patterns of thought, that all their attention may be focused upon these new principles, for these are the light of this time and the very spirit of this age.”