Hello and welcome to another episode of Mindfulness Plus.

I'm your host Thomas Mekonki. Thanks so much for listening.

I am aware that by the time you're listening to this episode, we will have just passed the winter solstice.

The winter solstice this year is Tuesday, December 21st.

The solstice, depending on where in the world we're from, what traditions were from,

it can mean a lot or it can mean a little, but I'll speak from my own embodied experience

that we're just under a huge blanket of snow in Salt Lake City, Utah,

and the days are getting very short and very dark.

And I find it helpful in a disembodied age, a mechanicalized

age where we're kind of abstracted away from nature who has brought us forth to tune back

into the cycles and the solstice, the solstices, in this case the winter solstice,

it's a good opportunity that we get a couple times a year to do this.

As I started to reflect on the winter solstice, well, first, you know, it's getting dark here

in the northern hemisphere.

And I wanted to actually reflect on a friend of mine who passed away recently.

When I thought to talk about the solstice for an episode on Mindfulness Plus,

I thought of my friend Terry Patton who died not two months ago.

Terry was a mystic, he was a scholar, he was a lover, he was a social activist, he was a man of great depth and great joy,

and had a really beautiful influence in my life and continues to, which we'll get to.

But Terry is a beautiful writer, and I remembered when I thought of solstice, I thought of

Terry Patton's writings on the solstice. So I want to start off the episode by just sharing

a phrase, an excerpt from one of Terry's pieces on the solstice.

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