Dear friends of ours organized a Winter Solstice Feast last Saturday to honor the longest night of the year.  Invited guests were purposefully asked to show up before nightfall to enjoy what remained of the afternoon’s daylight.  Libations, delicacies, introductions, and dialogue intertwined, and before we knew it, daytime had become nighttime, and we were partially marinated and satiated works in progress.

We had been given a few questions in advance to reflect upon and instructed to bring a candle. The questions amounted to an invitation to embrace the winter solstice and to consider harnessing it as a potential turning point. The candle, my favorite part, served to dramatize the extinguishing of what hasn’t been working so well and the ignition of what might work better.  This is how I recall it.

We have two lives – the one we learn with and the life we live after that.
Bernard Malamud