When I was in college, I was supposed to go to Europe with a boyfriend but we broke up. So I switched my classes around + for my last semester I signed up for the Ethics of Forgiveness because the class culminated in a three week trip to Northern Ireland. It was a most expansive, educational, hilarious and fantastic trip and would set a theme for me of traveling to learn to be better at being human. Solstice is celebration of the seasons, of the balancing and returning of the Light.
May the Blessing of light be on you, light without and light within. May the blessed sunshine shine on you and warm you and warm your heart till it glows like a great peat fire, so that the stranger may come and warm himself at it, and also a friend.
And may the light shine out of the two eyes of you, like a candle set in two windows of a house, bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm, and may the blessing of the rain be on you—the soft, sweet, rain. May it fall upon your spirit so that all the little flowers may spring up and shed their sweetness on the air. Any may the blessings of the Great Rains be on you, may they beat upon your spirit and wash it fair and clean, and leave there many a shining pool where the blue of heaven shines, sometimes a star.
And may the blessing of the Earth be on you—the great round earth; may you ever have a kindly greeting for those you pass as you’re going along the roads. May the earth be soft under you when you rest upon it, tired at the end of a day, and may it rest easy over you that your soul may be off from under it quickly up and off, and on its way to God. And now may the Lord bless you all and bless you kindly.
- Traditional Irish Blessing