WINTER SOLSTICE BONFIRE 2012

Celebrate the Solstice in Community, Around a Great Bonfire!

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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2012
5PM TO 9PM

Featherstone Center for the Arts
30 Featherstone Lane, Oak Bluffs, MA 02539

5 pm:   Drumming and world sing
6 pm:  Ceremonial bonfire lighting
All are welcome. 

A Community & Global Event

Kanta Lipsky, founder and director of Spirit Water Retreats, will orchestrate a wonderfully fun evening and lead a moving solstice ceremony round the bonfire.  The celebration will be located at the far side of the meadow first seen as one enters Featherstone. There will be opportunities for everyone to make offerings of their hopes and best wishes to the fire using pinecones and dried herbs. There will be songs from the great wisdom traditions of Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Islam and Celtic. Vines of tiny lights will light the walkways to The Pebble  where folks may warm up if needed.

At 5:00 pm EST time we will join a chant that will be sung at the same time, in all time zones, around the world.  It will be a simple African chant.  Roberta Kirn is going to lead our One World Chant with voice and drum and we all will sing with her and with people round the globe.

At 6pm the Winter Solstice Bonfire will be lit.  (The Oak Bluffs Fire Department will be on hand to insure safety.) The ceremony leaders will collaboratively run the bonfire activities.  Kanta will lead chants for world peace.  Nan Doty, April Thannhauser, Cynthia Robinson, Marsha Winsryg and Greta Bro will also be contributing to the ceremony with readings, comments, dance and music.   Together they will create an Altar to the Earth Mother, Gaia.  Everyone is invited to bring whatever he or she might like to place on the altar.

Adam Lipsky and his band, Biggie Shorty, will perform a bit later in the evening on The Pebbles open-air deck looking down on the bonfire.

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The Winter Solstice and the Mayan Calendar

“Through the centuries, the winter solstice has been a time for people to come together to celebrate the return of the light, as the earth is at it’s farthest point from the sun and so begins it’s return.  It has been a time of coming together to sing, to feast, and to enjoy community before the cold of winter sets in.

This particular winter solstice is the end of the Mayan Calendar, a long count-down that has gone for over 5,000 years to the final date: 12/21/12.  The reason they ended the calendar here is that there is an astronomical confluence that occurs now.  There is a line up of the Earth, the sun and the Dark Rift, the black hole at the middle of our galaxy.  As skilled astronomers, the early Mayans were able to determine this event with their mathematical calculations.”

Significance of This Winter Solstice

“As it is an ending, so it is a beginning.  Humanity finds itself in a challenging position with the rising of the oceans, climate change and overpopulation.  A time is dawning where we realize that we need to change our ways to be able to live in collaboration with each other and our planet.  This New Era is the beginning of, for a better phrase, the Gaian calendar.  Gaia is the name given to the spirit of the Earth Mother, and in this New Era we hope to become aware of our role as caretakers of the Earth and her creatures, and in so doing live in harmony with each other and the planet.”

Comments by Kanta Lipsky & Greta Bro

Impact of the World Chant

“On December 21, 2013, people all around the world will be coming together to celebrate this long anticipated event. At Featherstone we’ll be creating a ceremony to honor the Earth and our commitment to grow and change with her — to release that which no longer serves and to plant the seeds of new ways of being. We’ll call upon time-honored elements of ceremony: rituals of gratitude, offerings, dance, singing, drumming, and feasting.”

Comment by April Thannhauser


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