Solstice service; Wolcum Yule

This morning I attended the winter solstice service at the Unitarian church. I was probably more irked than merited when they called the four directions wrong (well, the first three, anyway; the last one tried to compensate). The sermon had some very nice imagery, though. The focus was on welcoming the dark, rather than being anxious about the need to hurry back the sun. He spoke about putting up little twinkling lights in his house for the season, but turning down the regular lights so that the level was about the same, and then made a parallel with stars and sunlight. He also urged us to let our "inner hibernating bear" slow us down. The music was lovely as always, especially the Transylvanian hymn we sang at the end, and an instrumental carol that I know I have on a CD that I can't find.

What else? Lots of cleaning, lots of wrapping. I watched most of The Mummy, and I listened to my new Christmas CD twice through: Anonymous 4's Wolcum Yule. I'm going to have fun listening to it with the accompanying booklet in hand, because there are songs with lyrics in Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Welsh, and Cornish.

And then my boys got home at 7:41 p.m. So now, with the patter of rain and the quiet and dark, we are cozy for Christmas.