Here in the northeast US, Solstice 2017 has arrived with dark, gloomy, damp weather that matches the moods of many people I know.

It’s been a tough year.

When Trump & Co. stole the 2016 election, we knew we’d be in for a difficult stretch.

But who could have predicted the assault on civil liberties, the shredding of the already-meager American social safety net, the rigging of the economy for the super-elite, the blatant racism, sexism and callous indifference to the more vulnerable among us?

On a planetary scale, who could have imagined this year’s battering hurricane season, the raging wildfires, the inexorable melting of the polar ice caps, the steady loss of forests and species, even as the rape of the natural world by the fossil fuel and chemical industries continues unabated?

Here on Transition Times, I’ve been writing about politics and climate change since 2011, but never has the situation seemed more dire. We are all perpetrators, accomplices and frozen bystanders to the rapidly accelerating intertwined disasters of politics and climate change, gathering strength day by day.

And yet we continue to go through the motions of our normal routines. We buy gifts; we decorate our homes; we put out seeds for the birds and dream of flying south for warm-weather vacations. Like all animals, we are creatures of habit and it’s healthy for us to live blessedly in the present moment.

I don’t know if I will live to see another Solstice. I don’t know what “normal” will look or feel like a year from now. What I do know is that despite the harshness of 2017, I have so much to be thankful for right now, today.

This Solstice, I give thanks for the abundance I continue to enjoy: loving friends and family, good food and good cheer, health and the freedom to savor the sweetness of each day to the fullest.

I am grateful for the opportunity to write and share these reflections widely (via the World Wide Web, another institution under attack in 2017). I am grateful to everyone who has taken a moment to write back to me with a line of encouragement, a pingback that reassures me that I am not alone, that others are ruminating over similar issues, and what I’ve expressed has struck a chord that continues to resonate out through others into the world.

In 2011, those of us who were awake to the slow-motion disaster of climate change seemed like far-flung outliers, and it was partly to find kindred spirits that I was moved to start Transition Times. In these last days of 2017, I feel the presence of you kindred spirits keenly. It’s important for us to reach out to each other now, shining our lights brightly in the gathering darkness.

The wise ones remind us how important it is to not succumb to fear. As we wake up to the sobering reality of the vast planetary and political changes now in motion, we have to steady our spirits. Amidst all the turbulence it’s our task to stay centered and hold our own little lights aloft so others can see us, and see the way ahead too.

I used to write about keeping hope alive. Now that idea rings hollow; it’s no more than a child’s wish for comfort. What would I be hoping for? A return to the world I was born into, with its familiar abundance and stability? The realist in me knows that world is already gone.

Meg Wheatley counsels that we leave hope behind, not in Dante’s sense of “abandon all hope” as you enter Hell, but in the sense of entering into a more realistic and mature relationship with the reality of our time and place. Instead of hope, we must have faith, she says, that we will be up to whatever is asked of us.

We who are alive for these transition times find ourselves at the threshold of a historical moment unlike any humans have faced before. We must walk clear-eyed into an uncertain tomorrow, giving ourselves permission to feel deeply both the sorrow and the joy of each passing day.

My Solstice prayer:

May I have strength to keep the light of my spirit shining brightly, no matter how daunting the siege of the forces of darkness stalking our planet each day.

May I kindle your light with mine, and together may we illuminate a shared vision of a better world that we can help dream into being, not for ourselves but for our children and future generations.

May we work together for a loving, abundant, beneficent future for all life on our always-generous Mother Earth.

In gratitude, forever….to life!