Solstice

I am typing here with the moon over my shoulder... a moon so very ripe and heavy, even closer to the horizon than usual as the ring around her measures an easy five times her normal circumference. Never in my 33 years here have I seen anything like it. Nothing even remotely close.

It is Solstice, and tonight the dark is present for as long as the light shines. It brings an offering to go in to the quiet still places, go into the dark shadowy crevasses within and be with what is there... so often we try to run from the dark toward the light. Away from grief toward joy.

But the grief offers immense gifts... it is only in being willing to go into those dark held places, into the grief that healing can begin. For grief cannot exist without love.

This year Ariah and I made Solstice cards by hand. The greeting read "Even on the Darkest of Nights, the Light Returns."

There has been nothing more dark than the loss of my son and womb. Nothing more dark than the brutal massacre of 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days. And yet out of both grows new life and new hope. Somehow there is forgiveness and healing.

I look at the moon this night and I have to wonder if this is the night that our child is being born on the other side of the world. Next week we go to the equivalent of the INS to file our forms. Two weeks after that everything should be all set to send our dossier to Rwanda. Our fundraising efforts are in full swing and our event is being planned for the 6th of January. We are still being told that a child will be assigned in late January and travel can commence any time afterwards.

It is true, the dark has much to offer. Without this particular dark loss of Trace there would be no light of this child who awaits us in Rwanda.

Tonight I celebrate the return of the light, shown to me at this moment as the ring around the moon.