Day of the Mouse God's Sun...
When the darkest part of the year is upon us we gather in our homes and share the stories that keep our hearts warm.
In the winter of the year when we lost both of my parents the darkness is extra heavy and the cold is very bitter.
On this, the shortest day of the year, I offer you the story of the Day of the Mouse God's Sun.
The Mouse God was the smallest of all of the Old Gods. While the other Old Gods played at War and Oceans and Growing Things the Mouse God's work was easy to ignore. All through the late summer and the harvest and the beginning of winter, she grabs the wasted moments of sunlight. Each scrap a tiny spark of warmth, kindness, and hope.
When the winter wraps the world in cold and darkness she watches for the no-rise. On the morning when the sun does not shine at all she gets her bag of sun crumbs, her best pie plate, and a little bit of butter. She butters the pie plate and presses the sun bits into it so they stick and shine together. She puts her sun pie on a stick and holds it up in the sky where the real sun should be but is not.
On this day the light that we see in the sky is from the Mouse God's sun as she lifts her luminous pie crust high in the air for us.
She knows that if we saw this dark day for what it is we might loose our belief in the sun coming back and then the sun might not feel obliged to come back.
We who love the sun so much that we take it for granted and squander it's light when it is plentiful could be the first to give up on expecting it to ever return to us if we could not feel it near.
The Mouse God, mindful of our ways, spends this whole day hungry and straining to give us hope. She will sit up the night through and wait for the great sun to rise in the morning. If it does not rise, she will spend another day holding up her sun pie for us to live on. If it does rise, she will bask in its rays and eat her buttery bright pie shell.
Cookies recall the shape of the Mouse God's sun and help us remember that even in the darkest days that little things can feed our hope. Soon we welcome the return of the light. Please share them with someone you love and remember that with the Old Gods sleeping, we are the only ones who can shine and help others through the dark day until the sun is bright for us again.