Imagine you are a tiny speck attached to a giant rotating space ship, not spinning too fast for you to fall off, but enough so that you notice that things change in your environment. Sometimes, there is a nearby furnace with plenty of light and heat but you can’t get close to it all the time because of the spinning, so you have to plan your energy use carefully. Also, some time ago, way before you were born, the space ship was hit by a big rock, so hard that it tilted sideways, so now the whole thing is tilted and wobbly. Although it’s so big and you’re so small, you don’t really notice. EXCEPT! that when you’re on the side tilted toward the orb, it’s plenty warm but when you’re on the side tilted and wobbling away, it’s not always warm enough. You kind of count the hours until you start tilting toward the orb again.
That’s the Solstice. Happy Solstice.
We carbon-based lifeforms like our solar radiation, that light and warmth that’s much better when we’re tilted TOWARD and not away. We’ve been tilting away, but now, starting yesterday we started TOWARD again. Our ancestors liked this so much that culture after culture dragged giant stones up mountains, across logs, along ramps, just to put together towers big enough so that everybody knew when the space ship would start spinning toward the orb again.
Continue reading “Festivals of Lights”
