Slainte!

Winter announced itself with a flash and a flood this week, as a month's worth of rain fell in a night, and a spectacular show of lightning lit the sky accompanied by crashing thunder that rolled and rolled around the summit of the Mountain for hours...

Last month's glorious copper beech shed its leaves to reveal its supple silver skin, whilst the rough and ancient wattle giant opposite dropped a few brittle old limbs, and struggled to remain upright throughout the violent storm...

Tucking into my lunch today, I thought about light, & heat, and the way the human animal instinctively seeks warmth in the cold weather for comfort and survival. As I considered my steaming bowl of fragrant soup, I was reminded that all of these vegetables had absorbed the sun's warmth in order to grow, & now it was my turn to absorb this stored heat, by consuming them so my body can convert light into energy...
...... And then I remembered warm sun on my skin, & the light of a sunny day... of how I loved the sunshine so much one day that I took a photo of the sun directly with my phone, just to see what it would look like... And here is the result...

....I think it looks like the iris of an eye...

A Druid summer solstice ceremony I love, says:"as I stand in the eye of the sun"... it is about making vows, & being open to scrutiny... the sun burns away dross as well as giving life...

Our ancestors held a great & simple wisdom: without the sun, without its light, without its eye of fire, even now, in 2013, with technological sophistication the ancients may not have believed possible, we would still cease to be. How did they know it looks like an eye?

The wheel of the year turns, & winter solstice will soon be here, on June 21st,.

I shall be giving thanks this year, for the light stored inside food..........

Seems rather magical to me to eat light....

Slainte!