A WINTER'S SOLSTICE

One of my favorite albums for sitting by the fire with a cup of hot chocolate is one of the Winter's Solstice Series from Windham Hill.  Here is an example.  Happy New Year to all of my pagan friends :-)

Interestingly, shortly after putting this post together, I received this New Year's Greeting from a long time colleague and friend:

Well..., another year has come and gone and tonight, like our ancestors before us, we anticipate the dawn of a new year.  

I hope that tomorrow, all those things that bother you will slip away into the past - where their absence and the quiet salve of the passage of time will erase the pain they caused you, forever.  I hope that the new year delivers surprising things more wonderful than you have ever imagined - not only to you, but also to those you love and those who love you.  Science often appears to suggest that working to achieve our dreams - and believing that we can achieve them - leads to unlikely outcomes.  There is time and there is hope, for the promise of tomorrow still remains.  Therefore, tomorrow and the new year, hold real hope for the achievement of our most heartfelt dreams.        

Thank you for being a part of my life and my work to make this life better for everyone, everywhere.  Tomorrow, we again begin another iteration of our journey around our local celestial fusion source, an event our foreparents celebrated for eons over time immemorial - driven first by biochemistry, later by fear - and only recently by knowledge and confidence.  We are the lucky ones: we know of the "big bang," galaxies, black holes, the atoms of which everything is constructed - and their behavior in the nano, micro, meso, and macro scale.  We live in a time when our understanding of the behavior of electrons, protons - even the quarks of which they are constructed appears correct, repeatable and predictive, even when combined into celestial bodies of such immense size that the resultant gravitational field induces their fusion - and their eventual evolution of the heavier elements upon which our lives depend - fission, fusion, the supernova, accretion, planetary dynamics, integrative systems, evolution, biochemistry, society, observation, verification, prediction - the solstice - yet another beautiful day on earth.  

Our predecessors almost certainly once gathered in fear to to observe this now often overlooked celestial event - the stopping of the sun - unsure if it would reverse its course to deliver the promise of spring - and the relied upon realities of renewed environmental warmth - and food.  While our work-a-day knowledge of the wonders of the universe can lead us to take such unimaginably meaningful and beautiful events for granted, many still appear to celebrate the solemn meaning of this annual celestial spectacle, and a few even look to the stars from which we came.  

These are wonderful times with wonderful opportunities.  We are so lucky to have them - and I am so lucky to be able to share them with you.  

Happy New Year!