Yule: Holding Space For The Light

Last updated on: December 20, 2022 at 12:46 am by Tom Swiss

Yule: Holding Space For The Light 2022-12-20T00:46:42-04:00 Tom Swiss

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For the past few years, I’ve had a simple ritual on the Winter Solstice. At sunset, in the fading light of the sun I set several candles and lamps burning outside, and leave them going all night. I set several so that at least one will keep going all night, and I use “Olympic Flame rules” to relight those that go out and keep the “same” fire going that was lit in the sunlight.

(If you want to try this yourself, I use the big, outdoor citronella candles and torches I use in the summer to keep mosquitoes away, and keep them well away from anything likely to catch fire.)

Photograph by Kat Smith via Pexels, edited by the author

I’ve been mostly working at home for years now, so I’ve always been home at sunset to do this. But this year I’ve picked up another gig, and I’ll have to do my little ritual in the early afternoon before I leave for to do massage for cancer patients at a local hospital for a few hours.

I do like the idea of doing my Pagan ritual before heading off to the Catholic hospital!

Now, when we talk about any sort of holistic healing work, a term that comes up a lot is “holding space”.

Part of my work is physical, applying pressure to the body to stretch muscles and stimulate or sedate the nervous system; and some of it is “energetic”, in the sense of the qi and meridians theories of traditional East Asian Medicine.

But some of it is just about how I am there with this other human being: “holding space” for them.

“Holding space”, therapist John Kim writes, “means to make it about someone else.”

But most people can not do this. Why? Because we’re used to high jacking spaces. We’re wired to take. To want. To seek from others. We don’t want to accept someone’s opinions and worldviews if they don’t match ours….We judge. We come in with our own angles, views, wants, and needs. Instead of holding space, we grab it.

Certainly in many aspects of my life I’m as guilty of that as anyone, seeking to take attention in personal relationships, judging people I encounter. But having at least one area where I try to avoid such failings, where it really matters that I do, helps me tone it down in these other aspects of my life.

And it strikes me that this little ritual, keeping the light going through the longest night, is also a form of holding space; of taking care, of making it about the light and the flame and not me.

It’s useless to judge a candle that gets blown out in the wind; my job is to relight it.

And perhaps practicing that on the night of the Solstice will help me take that attitude into other parts of my life.

Blessed Yule.

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