When we drove into New England from our cross country trip, I had a visceral recognition of being home, in a way that no where else can be home. I’m a New Englander. My body, my being knows this: New England is in me.

I was happy living away. Happier even. This kindship I felt at returning surprised me.

What stirred in me was not about identity or personality characteristics. It was something else. It was a love forged by something else, something soul-stirring, something capable of permeating me like a song, moving me like an emotion.

That something is the light.

The light in New England is exquisite. In the summer, it’s thin and cool. In the winter, it’s full and warm. Light is rarified here. The summers are short, fleeting. The winters are long, dark.

I watch the light in the morning on the eaves our neighbors’ house—a rambling, white Victorian house, on a street of rambling, white and grey Victorian houses. Soft, warm. Downy yellow against the white paint and the barren trees.

I am caught with a warm, nostalgic satisfaction, by the golden glow from their windows after dark. There is as much gentle comfort in the cloak of the early night as the glimmer of the morning sun.

The sun set at 4:08 in the afternoon yesterday. It will recede nearly another half hour earlier before we reach the Winter Solstice on the 21st.

I am practicing yoga and mantra at dusk, in the twilight. Bowing to the hush of darkness.

It is very still. I am silence(d).

You are invited to join me.

Into the Void is a 5-minute daily sacred sound practice, happening now through January 9. It is in no way too late. Click here.