As we approach the end of the calendar year, it becomes a time to reflect on the transformative power of “endings” and “beginnings.”   The ultimate ending, of course, is at the death of the physical body.  The ultimate beginning is birth.  This time of year is the cyclical reminder of the importance of dying followed by birth.  It is the reversal of how we usually see life and death.

I have long been in the camp of those who have feared the dying process because I was born and I will die.  But in the last few years something has changed.  No longer just thinking about the process of how life will end someday I am now focusing on dying as an inevitable part of this thing we call life and  how that awakening changes me now.

It is no coincidence in the Northern Hemisphere, when light is at its lowest point by the 21st of December, that celebrations begin with the winter solstice.  As light begins to gain its prominence we celebrate the “coming of the light” as a reminder that all darkness, all death, precedes light and life.  History tells us when the Christian tradition was looking for a day to celebrate the birth of their savior Jesus, they appropriated the Sun celebration of the solstice from the pagan religions.  The festival Sol Invictus (The Birth of the Unconquerable Sun), was a time of great feasting, celebrating the rebirth of Sun’s light.  Jesus, the Son of God of orthodox Christianity, was often referred to in more esoteric language as the Sun of God.

The celebration at this time of year, when there is the least light in a day, primes us for the inevitable return of the sun’s light.  Mircea Eliade, the great mythologist, referred to this cyclical time as The Myth of the Eternal Return.  Endless.  Never to disappear, always fulfilling the flow of repeating what is known and expected.  The cyclical sense of time is in contradistinction to the time we live with everyday—linear time, past, present, future.  In cyclical repetition we gain access to a world outside of time whereby meaning is attained through Nature’s repetition.  Nature shows us how to allow for the flow of life which repeats itself after the dying process.  This is why the Christian myth predominated in the Western world.  Instead of a simple historical account of a man who lived as a Jew, and elevated to the status of a god, the cyclical notation of honoring life after death is a depiction of natural cycles that Nature dispenses on us.  The concept of life after death did not begin with Christ.  In fact it emerged in the early indigenous cultures based on the cycles of Nature.  And even Saint Augustine who grew up as a pagan and became a staunch advocate for the Christian mythology made this idea perfectly clear when he said: “That which is known as the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist; from the beginning of the human race until the time when Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion, which already existed began to be called Christianity.”

I am forever amazed by this quotation.  Imagine if you will the implications of this idea.  Imagine if we could truly understand the powerful message Nature teaches us that all life emerges from death.  Our “deaths,” our failures, our losses, our imperfections, our disloyalties, our hypocrisies, in fact, all our struggles are expressions of a death which, when mourned, we rise again with life. When we say we get a second chance, we literally get one when we adhere to a cyclical sense of time which steps away from the literal meaning of life’s events.  Not that the literal does not teach us the importance of each event as in the death of Nelson Mandela or September 11th.  But each of these events help us to move on as we mourn the loss.  We know on some level we are invited to see beyond the apparent meaning of the loss.  Has this loss opened our eyes wider than before?  What do we know in a way we could not have if the death did not occur?

It is this season of “midwinter” which reminds us of those powerful losses in our lives which will bring us a new light.  A light which reflects back to us the place of hope in our lives and the importance of making awareness our prayer.  For prayer, no matter how it is defined, aims to keep us awake to the deep power which lies within us.  And if we are open to rebirth, we operate from this inner power knowing death can never be the end.