Food for Thought: Winter Solstice



An Ansel Adams photograph, but it could be the view from my window today


From today's The Writer's Almanac:

Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night in the Northern Hemisphere.

Poets over the ages have proffered plenty of advice for the coming months. Poet Pietro Aretino, born in the 15th century, said, "Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius." William Blake wrote, "In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy." There's a Japanese proverb that says, "One kind word can warm three winter months."

Emily Dickinson wrote, "There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons — That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes." Existentialist Albert Camus wrote, "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." Victor Hugo once said, "Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart."

American writer Minna Antrim gave these instructions-in-verse:

"Brew me a cup for a winter's night.
For the wind howls loud and the furies fight;
Spice it with love and stir it with care,
And I'll toast our bright eyes,
my sweetheart fair."

     ---compiled by Garrison Keillor
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At about 2:30 this morning we (Earth) experienced a total lunar eclipse.  NASA reports that the last time these astronomical events took place in sync was on Dec. 21, 1638, and it won't happen again until at least 2094.*  I didn't see it, although I was still awake, because of a total cloud cover here in Blowing Rock.  You may recall that in a lunar eclipse the earth passes between the sun and the moon, blocking the sun's rays from reflecting off of the moon so that the moon is dark.  Here's a picture of last night's eclipse at almost the point of totality:

NASA's Bill Ingalls captured this photo outside Washington, D.C., of a nearly total lunar eclipse as the winter solstice arrived early this morning.

Think about a dark moon on the longest night of the year.  Think about living at a time when there was no nighttime illumination except the moon, the stars, and maybe your fire.  As the moon slowly disappeared from the sky, you would be filled with dread.  As it disappeared entirely, I imagine that my heart would be beating hard and fast and that I would be seeing the faint afterimage of the last sliver of the right side of the moon on the inside of my clenched eyelids.  But then I would open my eyes again, because that's what we do, don't we?  Even when our lives are darkest, we open our eyes, we go on.  And what would I see?  The left side of the moon, appearing out of the darkness.  Then my dread would flicker into hope, then into awe.  The moonlight would be restored, my heart would calm, and I would sleep. 

Everything is a cycle:  the rotation of the earth, the orbits of the earth and the moon, the economy, empires, our lives.  I have friends who are going through tough times right now, health issues, economic troubles, marital strains.  I have friends who are in the good times:  a daughter's happy wedding, a new and healthy baby, a new love after the loss of a beloved husband.  We never know what the day will bring.  All we can do is keep our eyes open and look for the left side of the moon.

"Your brightness is my darkness.
I know nothing of You and, by myself,
I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You.
If I imagine You, I am mistaken.
If I understand You, I am deluded.
If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy.
The darkness is enough."

—Thomas Merton, prayer before midnight mass at Christmas, 1941 courtesy of The Beauty We Love




* This lunar eclipse falls on the date of the northern winter solstice. How rare is that? Total lunar eclipses in northern winter are fairly common. There have been three of them in the past ten years alone. A lunar eclipse smack-dab on the date of the solstice, however, is unusual. Geoff Chester of the US Naval Observatory inspected a list of eclipses going back 2000 years. "Since Year 1, I can only find one previous instance of an eclipse matching the same calendar date as the solstice, and that is 1638 DEC 21," says Chester. "Fortunately we won't have to wait 372 years for the next one...that will be on 2094 DEC 21."

Here's another picture and a description of the eclipse as observed from the surface of the moon:

Imagine yourself standing on a dusty lunar plain looking up at the sky. Overhead hangs Earth, nightside down, completely hiding the sun behind it. The eclipse is underway. You might expect Earth seen in this way to be utterly dark, but it's not. The rim of the planet is on fire! As you scan your eye around Earth's circumference, you're seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once. This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth's shadow, filling it with a coppery glow and transforming the Moon into a great red orb. (nasa.gov)




Chris Hetlage via nasa.gov