A shaman invited us to her Vermont house last night to celebrate the winter solstice. I’ve learned in my spiritual life that the more things I am open to, the better I do, the more understanding I find, the more peaceful I can become. Two years ago, Maria pointed out, I would not have gone to a winter solstice celebration with shamans. Now, I was curious and eager to go. The shaman had a beautiful house on a hilltop and she made a point of letting me know dogs were welcome – spirit dogs and power animals are a big part of shamonic healing. So I brought my spirit dog Red.

The setting was enhanced by a windstorm that had knocked out her power earlier in the day, so I had to use my Iphone flashlight just to find the steps, get past her ancient Bernese Mountain Dog and get inside, where the house was lit with candles. I found the evening fascinating. The Winter Solstice comes on the darkest day of the year – yesterday – and celebrates the coming of more light, and in this case a new era. This is an ancient rite that has gone on for thousands of years. Such old rituals have been pushed to the corners of our consciousness. We light a Christmas tree on the White House lawn but one of the oldest healing and spiritual rituals of the earth is relegated to the edge of our lives. A bunch of shamans came to join Carol and stay over and after eating some wholesome food, we got down to business.

We marked the darkest day, welcomed light. There was a healing ceremony for those who wished to get up and stand in the circle – I did – and I was surrounded by dancing shamans beating drums, changing and shaking bells around my body. I felt a strong sensation around my heart – this is where my fear has always lived – and we wrote down on paper things we wished to leave behind in the new year and then we tossed them into the fire.

Red was great, he greeted people but got anxious when the drums got loud, so I brought him out to the car. Before that, he was a gentle and loving spirit in this circle of people.

There was drumming, chanting singing. Imagining our dreams and the lives we wanted. Homage paid to animals, Mother Earth and the better side of our nature. Then Carol, my shaman, sang “Imagine” by John Lennon (in the dark we had to look up the lyrics on our Iphones). I felt these shamans very much for real. They were all women, and they were direct-speaking, even on the tough and blunt side. The ceremony was marked by the presence of spirit dogs who wandered around the circle to be petted and comforted in the midst of so much noise.

I was touched by it.

I loved the way this ancient ceremony helped me see the powerful transition of darkness to light, and the hope and opportunity there is in that. What hope do our rituals – Black Friday, the news from Washington, Christmas shopping – give us, what challenge to think about the coming time and what we have to dream of and heal from?

I have learned that for me, openness is always rewarded and progress is not made in dramatic and revelatory steps, as in the movies, but in small bits and pieces, the calcified and frightened and angry parts of ourselves chipped away. I wasn’t comfortable enough to speak, but in my head, I wished for the angry and fearful men of the world to be healed, so that we could begin healing our world and ourselves. I was grateful for the solstice ceremony. The country would be a better place if this were the ceremony on the White House lawn each year.