The Shortest Day

[lupestripe]

It's Yule for the Pagans amongst us or for those living in a more secular world, the less punchy "Shortest Day". If you celebrate Yule then I hope you have a good one and don't feel to disheartened by heartless card companies using the phrase "Have a Cool Yule" in their Christmas Cards. It completely misses the point and is also a pretty dreadful rhyme. To me, it's just one of life's little annoyances.

I always see 21 December as a watershed as it means that the days will now start to get longer again. Granted we won't really see its effects until the end of January but after the miserable darkness of the last two months, today being the Shortest Day is something to be thankful for. To me it symbolises hope and I am hopeful of brighter days to come. I'm sick of waking up when it's dark and feeling tired for most of the day simply because there's a blanket of murk that is shrouding the world.

Roll on Summer! Turn up the central heating!

Comments

[schnee.livejournal.com]

*noddles* That's how I feel, too - I could never be a wiccan, or a druid, or anything like that, simply because I'm neither willing nor able to take anything for granted or as an absolute truth. I base my own view of the world on my own considerations and experiences, and I'm willing to change and adapt it, but I need to be convinced for that to happen, and I also will be willing to do the same thing again in the future. Dogma - of any kind! - fails on both; it doesn't convince, and it also cannot be challenged or changed in the future.

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

I agree completely. I study things through scientific rationality and I can't make leaps of faith myself. Hell I have trouble believing some of the positive things people say about me so believing in a deity of some kind is not going to happen. It's something I just cannot understand, I need evidence of the existence of things and my natural philosophy works within that construct. I have adapted my views many times, just like scientific theories need adapting from time to time, I guess that's a fair summation of my belief system.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

That's a good sum-up of my own beliefs etc., too. :)

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

I've studied scientific philosophy too so can throw all that into the mix. Religion and belief systems fascinate me, I guess I'm just too logical a person to believe too.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's similar for me... it's not that religious beliefs can't be interesting, but they're interesting in the same way that literary fiction etc. is interesting. When people actually believe things unquestioningly, especially things that defy common sense, I always find that a little creepy, though. But to each their own...

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

It depends what they do with that belief though. People doing evil things on the whim of a fantasy I find very disturbing.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, that certainly - I was mostly talking about the beliefs as such.