“May you experience each day as a sacred gift wrapped around the heart of wonder.”
–John O’Donohue
The fourth candle is lit. The element is Earth, the theme is Love. May we each be exquisitely conscious of how inextricably linked our lives 
are with the Earth in this web of life.
This Sunday was a “snow day.” It also marked the end of my last session teaching college. Our etsy shop is shut off. No one had anywhere to be or anything specific to do. It felt like this broad, expansive of possibility and the quote above came to my head. Today is a gift wrapped around the heart of wonder! I announced to the kids. They looked at me strangely, but I kept saying it throughout the day. We made a fun breakfast and ate an assortment of strange goodies for lunch. That night, we lit the fourth candle our our Solstice Prayer Wheel. Our family Solstice Prayer Wreath practice is based on the one described by Beth OwlsDaughter in this post (and shared by her currently in a series of weekly facebook events).
We chose a family theme for this season (harmony) and intention to carry us through each of the four Sundays leading up to Solstice: “our family 
works in harmony to meet each member’s needs.” Each week, we reaffirm this intention as well as reflect on the element and quality of the week. The fourth week is Earth and Love so we each shared something we can do to help love be at the center of our choices (mine was to take breaks and work less as an act of love towards myself. So far, I have not honored this commitment and feel a bit disappointed in myself!). We talked about listening to the earth. We marveled about how everything in our lives comes from the Earth, even things that don’t look like it, like computers. We stamped our feet on the ground and marveled at the size of the planet and how many people live on it and how much we depend on the resources of the planet and each other. We cannot live without Her and yet so often the population completely ignores that fundamental truth. We talked about the Earth as Goddess, right here beneath our feet, sustaining our every breath and movement. We talked about the land in our lives and our appreciation for the opportunity to connect with it, live on it, and learn from it.
Then, we sang I am Earth several times all the way through and, holding hands, reaffirmed our family intention: our family works in harmony to meet each member’s needs.”
Then, we got up and all danced again together in a raucous circle singing We Are Circling and We Are a Circle. The kids especially like it when we draw back our circle to arms length and then bring ourselves back into the center and make the circle little as we dance, so we did that repeatedly until we were all laughing and out of breath. We were going to make Yule tree ornaments together then, but it had gotten late, so we saved them for another day.
I’m glad we listened to the heart of wonder.
These are the themes/topics for each candle: 
- Candle 1: hope (air)
- Candle 2: peace (fire)
- Candle 3: joy (water)
- Candle 4: love (earth)
- Candle 5: center (spirit, solstice night)
Brigid’s Grove offered a Worldwide Solstice Circle event online this year. Companion resources, journal prompts, a detailed free ritual packet as well as a collection of digital gifts are still available in our free Creative Spirit Circle companion classroom.
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- Solstice Prayer Wheel Week 1 post.
- The Second Candle: Fire – Brigid’s Grove
- The Third Candle: Water