Advent Spiral Walk
Today was our Advent Spiral Walk, a ceremony wherein each child, carrying an apple with an unlit beeswax candle inside, walks a spiral made of evergreen branches while poignant live music is played. When the child reaches the middle of the spiral, she lights her unlit candle with the large burning one waiting in the spiral's center, then slowly she retraces her steps outwards, placing her lighted candle down along the spiral's way. As each child kindles her candle, slowly but surely the darkness in the hushed, music-filled Great Room grows less dark, and soon all are awash in a glow.
The Advent Spiral Walk is practiced in most Waldorf schools at Winter Solstice, a time when many religious festivals celebrate the gradual return of longer days. To see each student walking the spiral in her own manner -- some jaunty and light, some measured and proud, some nervous and tentative -- is an experience words fail. But the observer is doubtlessly filled up, defenseless before the beauty and uniqueness of that particular human being on her particular journey towards her particular light.
Relatedly, Charles Eisenstein writes, "In a ceremony, one attends fully to the task at hand, performing each action just as it should be. A ceremony is therefore a practice for all of life, a practice in doing everything just as it should be done. An earnest ceremonial practice is like a magnet that aligns more and more of life to its field; it is a prayer that asks, 'May everything I do be a ceremony. May I do everything with full attention, full care, and full respect for what it serves.' Ceremony offers a glimpse of a sacred destination, the destination of:
Every act a ceremony.
Every word a prayer.
Every walk a pilgrimage.
Every place a shrine. "
PS -- The poem of the day is by James Wright:
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.