2am, 6am they all look the same in the dark

i wasn't expecting the sleep deprivation part of the winter for prior to the actual winter...




it's been so cold that i've had to get up at about 2 am to stoke the stove, and then come down when bernie leaves to make sure there's enough wood in it

he can't do the 2am as he doesn't get enough sleep as it is

i think we are going to start going up at 8 maybe that will help him?



i am sitting here right now, listening to my budgies chirp and watching my cats soak up the heat of the woodstove (and feeling sorry for my red sore plague ridden nose)

i put some of the celtic woman caroles on for bernie who promptly went out to the post office and the feed store!

actually it's pretty peaceful right now in spite of my plague

i was also chatting online to a wonderful friend of mine in Sweden about this time of year, and how she longs for the return of the sun and the light.

i realized that really the rituals, holidays, celebrations at this time of year were originally designed to help us all THROUGH this time of early darkness.... and limited light

i can also see why the Christians hooked so much Son stuff on the Sun stuff
it does seem to so seamlessly play off each other (man them Christians had GREAT PR)

i think that this time of year tends to lean a person towards introspection. and as a species over the millennium we've developed ways to cope and survive.
however i do think maybe this introspective period is a good thing, maybe even necessary to our development as a species as well as our soul growth

now i will go on record saying i really dread the holidays, as mom died on the solstice and the last time i saw my dad was the 10th anniversary of my mom's death..... and evelyn 'notthemomma' also died on the solstice
i miss them all terribly.....but really i shouldn't as they do visit, and for them it was a birth to the other side.
so that got me re-examining the older rituals.
from folks tuned into the change of the seasons and the light.....
how tuned in do you have to be to be able to tell within a DAY (less then an inch of change in the noon light) without all our modern instruments to the changes of the earth?

now what if some of the great philosophers were right, ??? what if is it 'so above so below'
and this is sort of a classroom reflecting our inner world as well as the after worlds (quantum physics tell us there ARE parallel universes)
sort of a fractal spinning off endlessly......?
seems to boggle my mind but somehow seems to fit
and religions? where do they fit?
to me they are attempts to help map out the essentially unmappable.
and the great teachers or 'god's' of these religions..... teachers, guideposts......
maybe a resting place to catch our breath and decide which way we as a species want to develop next?
what if it is all more fluid then we realize?
and the physical world is sort of the brakes on the fluidity until we mature enough to handle the total chaos of it all?

any way for me it's all connected as well as all disconnected ( it ain't easy being me)
i always feel there are half truths and full truths that i can not put into words, let alone draw...... that somehow i am missing the conveyance of information that is sitting right behind but i can feel and sense.

now how does all this fit into the holidays? well it's that time
of introspection......and that is what we are to try and understand
some of the great mysteries of consciousness
where did we come from?
where are we going?
and how?