Happy Solstice

Winter Solstice

It snowed and snowed, the whole world over,
Snow swept the world from end to end.
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.

~ Boris Pasternak

White out

Winter is here, complete with snow and cold and gusty winds.  We’ve been having horizontal weather today, everything blowing sideways.

Sideways snow

The snow that has been making its way across the U.S. didn’t come to us until early this morning.  Lake Erie will join in the fun by turning on the lake-effect snow machine.  We might even be able to go cross-country skiing tomorrow.  Yay!

Wind and snow in the white pine

Ever since posting Be the change, the words and idea keep coming back to me.  In meditation,  Be the change drifts through my mind.  During my yoga practice, Be the change whispers in my heart.  While out on my daily walk, Be the change floats by with the clouds or on the waves and ripples of the pond.  Be the change.  Be the change.  Be the change.

Nothing is static.  Everything changes.  And it occurs to me that if I want the changes I wish for to occur, I must be those changes.  As Gandhi suggested, I need not wait to see what others will do.  It doesn’t really matter what others will do.  The only person I can change is myself.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

~ Henry David Thoreau

I don’t know if I can turn the world around, but I can turn myself around.  I’m going to start with my health.  I often take good health for granted.  Then I get sick and realize I’ve not been doing the things I need to do to maintain good health.  I’m working on a list of small changes I can make, one per month, starting in January.  I’m not thinking of them as resolutions.  They are the changes I want to be, the example I want to set.  There are things I would like to teach my grandchildren, and I think the best way to do that is through example.

On a not unrelated side note, I suppose walking around in a blizzard while still experiencing flu symptoms is not a brilliant strategy for good health, but then again, it could be.  I’ve always found nature to be healing.

Celebrate endings, for they precede new beginnings.

~ Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Happy Winter Solstice to you!  May this winter bring you love, light (the days are growing longer now!), fun, and a good beginning to any changes you might want to make.  I’m wishing for snow, too, but I won’t wish that on you unless you really want it.

Mother Nature’s Yule/Christmas decorations

That’s all from the Bogs on this wintry day.  Thank you for stopping by, and joining me on another walk.  Have a great weekend!  Stay warm (or cool, if it’s hot in your part of the world).

Lighting one candle
from another –
Winter night

~ Buson

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