As the sunlight wanes, the temperatures have turned cold and we’ve had our first thin layer of snow on top of the yards and sidewalks. With cloudy, below freezing days, the snow remained briefly, with more snow lightly falling at dusk as I walked home into the increasing darkness.

“Sungod religions exult the growth of the mighty sun from Winter Solstice through Summer Solstice, filling the Earth with abundant crops and energy. At Summer Solstice the Sungod’s half-brother—a weird named Mordred, Judas, and other names—seeks to kill the noble Sun. Their struggle diminishes the light till the Eternal Sun dies and is born anew at Winter Solstice, once again defeating his weird. So humanity has walked the path of Sun cycles for millennia, seeing the divinity of the Sun.”

I recently sent this message to one of the most important people in my life who is deeply connected to the Sun and often slowed by the wintry cold darkness. I have heard that all people are affected by the darkness of winter, which seems reasonable since it is a time of dormancy for many animals and plants.

Thinkers and neo-pagan seekers trace the agrarian origins of the seemingly all-powerful sun god, whose warmth and light gives forth the abundant crops that humanity needs to survive and thrive. As millennia passed, later stories involving the death or near-death and renewal of long-haired men such as Hercules, Samson, King Arthur and Jesus were placed over the previous traditions.

This overlay of our historical moment onto traditional, iconic stories is a common religious practice, such as when modern puritans declare what God, Allah, Krishna, or Buddha would do in the modern moment and insist that only those who follow their interpretation are the sanctified followers of the long-passed messenger of god. For millennia, religious leaders have reinvented their own faith, making it contemporary and leading it astray from it natural Earthly origins.

In facing the times of darkness in which the Earth sleeps and we animals walk in the valley of the shadow of death, the answer to the challenges of the dark times is to learn from and follow the Earth. For those of us fortunate enough to have some connection to the Earth, this a time of rest, reflection and preparation for the coming seasons of abundance.

I have been gathering fallen leaves to put on top of the garden after I turn it over, helping the Earth compost the soil and prepare for the coming spring. Later I will sort and prepare seeds from the previous year, in my covenant with the plants that they provide my family with food in exchange for me preserving their family through gathering their seeds, trading them with others and planting them in future gardens.

We have been transplanting native trees and shrubs—Virginia Pines, Virginia Junipers, White Cedars, Dogwoods, Butterfly Bushes, Redbuds and Milkweeds, along with the non-native heirlooms of Lilac and Chaste Tree—during this dormant season to provide a privacy hedge and flower garden to attract birds and butterflies. Soon we will buy a live White Pine Christmas tree to plant in a family member’s yard to commemorate the birth of her and her husband's first child, making a special celebration of the season. So the cycle of the Earth into the cold darkness is also a time of preparation and promise for the future.

We completed the brewing of Irish Red for our Saint Patrick’s Day tradition with our friend and have racked wine off its sediment into carboys to settle for bottling in January. I hope to reach out to local growers, including Anabaptists (Amish), to supplement our supply of foods in our unheated basement, including more Turnips, Beets, Cabbages, Daikon Radishes and Long Island Cheese squash. I am slowly learning to live on what the Earth offers, rather than choosing to indulge myself with a myriad of food from unsustainable practices. My wife and I have also begun to spend time at the homemade fire pit she designed, warming ourselves and watching the fire while we drink homebrewed beer, resting and considering our good fortune during the dark times of the dying sun god.

To an estranged mind, these joyous, reverent acts seem mundane, yet they are part of sacred re-creation of life. While the religions of patriarchy have overlain these traditions with words, concepts and sentiments of the urban human world far from a life in harmony with the Earth, this way of life awaits whomever has the privilege of a life close to the land. The cycles of light and dark remain and beckon us all, even though our modern human consciousness may fail to recognize these ancient, life-affirming ways.