Freya: “Think like a planet” is a phrase my colleague, David Spangler, used once in an early online class. It was a phrase that struck me: how could one think like a planet, and what would that mean? Intrigued by the thought, I have tried to live into the idea in different ways. Some attempts were too grandiose and caught in mental constructs that lost connection to the soil of experience that could nurture. Some were too tight and gave little scope for expanding possibilities. Feeling my way to that Goldilocks zone of “just right,” I find participation is my key to thinking like a planet.
Lucinda: In my years of celebrating seasonal festivals with families and communities, I learned, not only to “think like a planet,” but to be with the planet, to breathe with the planet, by aligning my daily life with the earth’s seasonal cycles and rhythms in nature, and in the land where I lived. Now, my body, heart and soul naturally participate, as Freya says, with the planet. In celebrating the festival gateways of the year with others, and in communion with the seen and unseen realms of life, we come to know Gaia as a living breathing being, one whose inhaling and exhaling breath creates the seasons of our lives, both physically and spiritually. The festival gateways–especially the Solstices and Equinoxes, celebrated by all cultures–become invitations and opportunities for us to remember our place, and our steps in Gaia’s dance.
Freya: Gaia’s essential being is reflected in the seasons, revealing itself in a seed as it sprouts and grows, flowering, and dying back so that its seeds can scatter to the wind to renew its life. Celebrating the seasons of the year is a natural and accessible way to appreciate, to align with and to participate in the planet’s life. Through the earth’s yearly rhythms, we touch the depths, heights and breadth of Gaia’s soul-in-action. The seasonal regenerative rhythms of earth’s life are the energy that powers our world’s thinking.
So, to think like a planet, with its global life cycles of expansion and contraction, we need to acknowledge and work with the reality of Wholeness–that the earth is always mirroring and balancing the cycles of life and death, increasing and decreasing light. When we are celebrating the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere, folks in the summer hemisphere are celebrating the Summer Solstice. Both are Festivals of Light. So how can we create a Gaian Festival of Light, one that celebrates this balance of forces, this mirroring and Wholeness at the heart of our planet’s experience?
Lucinda: It is helpful to live into an experience of Gaia’s Breath as a way of exploring Gaian and planetary ways of celebrating the Solstices and the Equinoxes. Gaia’s Breath can be seen as a unifying force that weaves the world together. In December, in the northern hemisphere, Gaia is breathing in. As that breath contracts, the leaves fall from the trees, the seeds drop into her waiting hands, the days grow colder, and the darkness deepens. The Winter Solstice marks the time of Gaia’s greatest in-breath and her time of attentive listening and awakening, in the deep stillness, in the close and holy darkness time of the year. Gaia wakes up, as the Sun “stands still.” (Solstice means the Sun “Sol” standing still).
In the southern hemisphere, the Summer Solstice marks Gaia’s greatest out-breath. As Gaia breathes out through the spring and early summer days, the life force of her breath buds out the branches, raises the sap, brings blossom and flowers into being. And at Summer Solstice, Gaia once again pauses, stands still ( metaphorically) with the Sun. Some say that at this point, the earth falls into slumber, weary after all her work of creation, and that the abundant beauty and richness of the harvest are the earth’s dreams made manifest.
These two pictures of Gaia’s breath bring our experience of the two Solstice festivals into a mirrored alignment, a Wholeness we can celebrate together.
Freya and Lucinda: This December, in honor of both the Winter and Summer Solstices, we invite you to consider creating a Spiral of Light that you and your family and friends can use in a ritual and meaningful way. The Spiral is a well-known and beloved ritual for honoring Winter Festivals in the northern hemisphere. We thought that if folks in the southern hemisphere also created a Spiral of Light, in honor of the Summer Solstice, and people from both hemispheres walked their spirals at the same time–walking into the Darkness for Winter, and out of the Light for Summer–we would be mirroring the Earth’s breath and rhythms, and weaving ourselves together in celebration.
Room-size or table-top, or created outside in our garden, the spirals we create can be gifts to our homes, and to our land and environment. They can serve as a sacred focal point–an invitation to our local nature spirits, house angels, genius loci of land, unseen allies and companions to join us in celebration of our Gaian home.
So please consider joining us, in whatever ways feel right to you, this holiday season. We will be “thinking like, breathing with, being part of our beloved planet Gaia.” We will be “celebrating like a planet,“ forging a new Gaian Festival of Light and Wholeness together.