Some years our themes are easy to embrace, for example Joy or Healing or Balance (a bit more challenging). I have to admit that Change was a pretty challenging theme. But often we find more in the more challenging themes, just as we often learn our greatest lessons from the challenges we face. Next year’s theme is going to be Stillness, Waiting, Holding, … as an image: Ice.

We are going to be exploring finding what we learn from Silence, what is under the surface, the benefits of slowing down, the drawing power of emptiness, and what we gain in waiting. When the molecules of water slow down, water becomes ice, and we can see it’s inner structure. Dr. Emoto’s images of water that had been charged with different energies made it possible for everyone to see how those energies were locked into the water, even when most people don’t have the ability to feel it when the water is in liquid form. Film has made it possible for us to slow things down and see what we couldn’t when something is moving faster than we see. Perhaps this is what meditation does for us as well.

When we scry in a crystal or in water, we look deep into the material that light usually passes through; looking deeper puts us in the right state to perceive more deeply. When the sun shines on the surface of water, who knows what’s going on below the surface? We can see what’s under the surface when the water is still, but not when the surface is rough.

Let us explore contradictions: how the same ice that makes it impossible for us to travel the river in our boats, makes it possible for us to cross it on foot or skates. How the frost that blights the blossom, preserves food so it can be eaten later. Let us learn what we hear in Silence, what we learn from saving things for later. Let us hold space for others and for ourselves, and find the crystal form of our centers.