12 Holy Nights

The Twelve Holy Nights have long been held as a time to pause, reflect, and listen inward as a new year approaches. Traditionally, each night is connected with one month of the year ahead. What you notice during these nights—your reflections, dreams, and inner responses—can offer helpful clues about the rhythm, challenges, and opportunities of the months to come. By slowing down and paying attention now, you create space to step into the new year with greater clarity, intention, and care.

Find Each Night,

Each Recording,

Each Reflection

Here.

Night 1, Thursday, December 25

Reflection on the last year.

Link To Meditation
Recording Password: Dx7v%Vau

  • Poem:

    On Joy and Sorrow

    Kahlil Gibran

    1883 –193

    Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
    And he answered:
    Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
    And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
    And how else can it be?
    The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
    Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
    And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
    When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
    When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

    Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
    But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
    Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

    Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
    Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
    When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

  • Night One carries the gesture and imprint of January. The quality of your attention, dreams, and reflections tonight can be received as a subtle conversation with the coming month—offering insight into its themes, challenges, and gifts.

    The first three nights of the Holy Nights are devoted to reflection. This is not analysis or problem-solving, but a gentle, spacious kind of thinking—one that tills the soil of the soul. Through reflection, we loosen what has compacted, allowing clarity and simplicity to arise naturally.

    On this first night, we turn our awareness toward the year that has passed, knowing that how we reflect now helps shape the tone of the year ahead.

    You may wish to reflect on:

    • Moments of joy that warmed and strengthened you

    • Moments of sorrow or regret, held with compassion

    • Experiences that still ask for understanding or forgiveness

    • What feels complete, and what remains unresolved

    There is no need to arrive at answers. Simply noticing is enough. Like winter fields lying fallow, your inner landscape does important work through stillness alone.

    As you move into meditation tonight, allow your breath to soften and your thoughts to slow. Let simplicity guide you. What you attend to now quietly shapes the ground from which the year ahead will grow.

    May this first night offer you spaciousness, honesty, and peace as you begin the journey inward.

  • Meditation & Journaling Prompt: - Guided Meditation: 

    The 12 Holy Nights are a liminal space. It is celebrated as a time of the spirit. The first day represents the first month of the year, January. In the wheel of the year, January is a time of reflection as the tilling of the soul’s soil. When you go into Jaurary after the 12 nights, it is a re-entry into the earthly realm through reflection. 

    For today’s meditation, we begin with a reflection on the last year. I invite us to especially think about our emotional body. We reflect on the last year, on the joys and sorrows that accompanied us through this past year’s learning and growth. 

    Beginning with December, I invite us to reflect on 2025… I will be giving 2 minutes to each month. I imagine each will write, quickly scan your experiences of December, I will ring the bell, and invoke November, then October and so on. For these minutes we will sit in remembrance of the last year’s experience of that month.

    If you don’t remember specifics, you are welcome to focus on generalities. There is no wrong way to do this meditation. 

Night 2, Friday, December 26

Imagining into the next year.

Link To Meditation
Recording Password:

  • For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet

    Joy Harjo

    1951 –

    Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop.

    Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

    Open the door, then close it behind you.

    Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

    Give it back with gratitude.

    If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.

    Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

    Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

    Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

    Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.

    Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.

    Don’t worry.

    The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

    The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

    Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time.

    Do not hold regrets.

    When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

    You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

    Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

    Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

    Ask for forgiveness.

    Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

    Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

    You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

    Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

    Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

    Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.

    Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.

    Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

    Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.