Winter Solstice 2012-Celebrate the Sun

"The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth."
—Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)

Happy Winter Solstice!  It is the shortest day of the year.   A day to celebrate the fact that from now until June, the days will increasingly be getting longer.  We will all be exposed to more and more sunlight.  It feels like we need a little more sunlight in our lives right now.  I will save the rants and reflections for another post in the near future.  It has been an intense Fall to say the least, and right now I simply want to revel in the joy that sunlight brings to us all.  Author and radio commentator Thom Hartmann writes

“In a very real sense, we're all made out of sunlight.

Sunlight radiating heat, visible light, and ultraviolet light is the source of almost all life on Earth. Everything you see alive around you is there because a plant somewhere was able to capture sunlight and store it. All animals live from these plants, whether directly (as with herbivores) or indirectly (as with carnivores, which eat the herbivores). This is true of mammals, insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and bacteria . . . everything living. Every life-form on the surface of this planet is here because a plant was able to gather sunlight and store it, and something else was able to eat that plant and take that sunlight energy in to power its body.”

In a very poetic moment Happy Cat Farmer Tim wrote:

“Tomatoes are sunlight, held together by skin and seeds”

2012 was an amazing tomato year.  I have been looking through pictures from the past season.   I have a lot of tomato pictures, and after close inspection, I totally agree with Tim, tomatoes ARE sunlight, held together by skin and seeds.  If you click on the picture below you can view an album of tomato pictures from this past season.

I leave you with Mary Oliver’s poem The Sun—I guess I can’t help including a tiny bit of rant and reflection—at least it is in poetry form.  Enjoy the solstice, celebrate the sun.

The Sun

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?