Meeting for Worship for the Winter Solstice

Here at Lower School, we traditionally welcome the shortest day and look for the returning light with a special semi-programmed Meeting for Worship.

We gather together in silence. We try to remain centered on the Winter Solstice – allowing us all to look inward and use the idea of waiting for the light in the dark and the one voice in the silence as a centerpiece for our last few days of this year together. 

As we reflect, listening to our inward teacher, we hear a special recitation. One member of our community shares this poem:

The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

We close our Meeting singing This Little Light of Mine.

It's a powerful meeting!

In preparation for our Meeting for Worship, teachers remind students (and themselves) that our Faith & Practice calls for silence between messages and after we sing. Those periods of silence are ministry in and of themselves. 

We have a really special opportunity to consider the importance of silence at this particular Meeting given the connectedness to the idea of contrast (light/dark, voice/silence).