Having been brought up with no religion, it's maybe interesting that I take spirituality as seriously as I do without being all serious about it. Tomorrow being Christmas (happening in Japan 14-17 hours before in America, today is Friday for me), I'm thinking about the older stories it connects to. That Jesus' birthday is so near the Solstice always reminds me of how, in the old religion of the UK area, this is the time of year that "the" goddess births (rebirth's actually) "the" god, and the sunlight begins to return, and then they both become children who later court (in February at Imbolg) and then consummate (in May), and so on. Of course, there is a lot more to the story. Way later, in autumn, the god (represented by the grain of the field), dies to feed the people, and is reborn at Solstice.

I think Jesus is a form of the dying god, having been birthed by Mary the mother of god who thrives still. People partake of grainy communion as if it were his body. Jesus the person seems to exists along a parallel track to this myth-fulfilling/continuing Jesus. That is a whole 'nother story for another day. Quoting Clarissa Pinkola Estes, "The recovery of the divine is done in the dark of Hel, of Hades, or there. The return of the Christo comes as a glow from the gloaming of hell."

Another older, connected story is that of Inanna of Sumeria. She, a central goddess, voluntarily traveled to the underworld, where she had to surrender her seven powers before entering, and then remained as a corpse for three days upon which she resurrected. Sounding familiar already. Inanna was known as the Morning Star and the Evening Star more than four thousand years ago. The story of her and her lands gave way to the Ishtar story, and the Gilgamesh story, and then the old testament.

The coziness of warmth and light within cold and dark, the fireplaces, warm kitchens, people, hot food and drink that I will partake of tomorrow, is interrupted by the knowledge of those left out, since it feels pretty horrible to be a pariah in general, and especially at times like the holidays. And happiness at the return of sunlight is interrupted by the knowledge of global warming, though change is the way things apparently go. But messed up biospheric systems bother me. There are daffodils, that I remember blooming just as the snows melted in late February when I was a child, blooming now outside our house. It's cold but it's warm, in a lot of ways.