At least 100 people sat together in the dark and silence for several long minutes on Dec. 20, accompanying Persephone’s underworld transformation. That may sound mundane — a room full of people doing ostensibly nothing. But it was, in fact, profound.
Waves of discomfort rippled through the audience, now participants, in what felt for moments like a glitch in the matrix. “We’re still sitting here,” I remember thinking. “Nothing is happening. How cool.” Besides the occasional cough, no one dared break the sacred silence. After a while, I settled into delicious stillness, savoring the rarity of sharing something seemingly taboo with so many people.
Comically (and in keeping with the ways of life), “Jingle Bells” could be heard blaring and muffled in the distance — a total contrast to what was happening inside the Community Hall at the Third Street Center. I suspect the source was the fire department’s Holly Jolly Truck-Mas Trip around town with Santa Claus.
For their part, Two Rivers Unitarian Universalist, in partnership with The Center for Human Flourishing, honored the Winter Solstice with a theatrical ritual, blending myth, music and dance. Small symbolic acts took each individual into the collective wisdom of millennia of humans contending with the dark — like releasing a howl into the night, placing a piece of nature at the altar representing a loss and swallowing pomegranate seeds in empowered acceptance of life’s shadows.
The volunteer-driven event concluded with a cider reception in the Third Street Center’s Calaway Room. Outside, a fire received all that’s ready to be released as well as hopes for the new year. The darkness is not to be feared, afterall. It is simply mystery remaking us, to emerge new, again and again, with every winter, every night, every death.
