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21 December 2025

Homily

Rev. Kate. R. Walker

Use with permission

“Goodnight Sun”

As the sun has been easing onto the horizon, in this multigenerational worship we finally welcome darkness as a time to rest and to play with images of transformation.  Our Theme of the Month, Myths and Symbols, offers many insights into what can be found in the space where the sun disappears and reappears each year.  

As child, during long summer months, I did not like going to bed with summer’s bright day still beating like a drum in my head. I could hear it through open bedroom windows rhythmically say “grab your gear” still time to play.

If I’m going to bed, the sun should be going to bed too!  Yet over many years, instead, I learned to call out as evening waned “goodnight sun,” tuck yourself in so we can all have sweet dreams of fun and games. 

On this cold December day, winter’s temperatures cast a spell, I don’t like getting up when it’s opposite of hell.  If I’m rising from pillow slumber, the sun should get up too, get on with it unencumbered.   But no, the sun is turning in earlier, sleeping later in the cold morning despite all the holiday revelry and bright red merrier.

Truth is the sun needs rest and it’s the moon’s time to dance around for our annual dark fest. As the sun settles in its distant horizon, all tucked in, let us all say, “goodnight sun,” goodnight and don’t worry about risen’.  Get some rest tonight from all your hard work helping make things right. 

The green leaves will soon reach out, flowers will play peek a boo, critters will hear the energy shout, noses will poke up from nests and caves, the warmth will radiate on swimming pools, mountain lakes and beaches filled with giant waves.

That’s a lot of work!  No wonder so many of us worship the giant glowing ball offering bare toes and shoulders a generous deep massage and special dancing age appropriate twerk. Artists will start the races, draw, paint and sculpt the rays using span of colors and grateful faces. 

Thank you, sun!  Thank you for being up there in the celestial skies, firing all your solar radiance making us wise.  Now get some rest, just like me and my family before we’re a mess. 

The moon will take care of us.  Our dancing will fill the darkness, embracing all that is joyous.  The moon may be cold and harsh, but at least we can land on it with our courageous feet and look at it with our naked eye because … no burning heat.

While the sun snuggles under cover of night, we can explore dark emotional corners filled with hidden secrets that sometimes bite.  We can unpack, unearth, open doors, look under the bed, behind the walls of stubborn avoidance where we’ve tucked away our heavy baggage we treat like bad cabbage.

The moon and its subtle invitation of the night’s stealth weaving of gray shadows, is not a time of deep moans and lows.  Instead, lean into the darkness with a faith that we know the way under the blue moon of starkness.

Goodnight sun, we’ll see you soon, when we’re holding our worth, ready for fiery explosions thrown upon the chilly earth.  You will melt the ice, ready the mud, and call forth all the seeds the wind has thrown like dice. 

Goodnight sun, when you return, we’ll pull up the shade, with eager yearn. We’ll welcome the wash of rain, ready to dance without the chain, free of burdens holding our feet to twisted roots of the ash tree.

Goodnight sun, sleep well, it’s time for you to rest, with the moon’s tender care, we’re ready to be blessed.

Good night, amen, asé and blessed be.

This was Rev. Kate’s last Sunday worship before leaving for a five-month sabbatical and study leave.