Fixing Moment of Darkness

[Raymond Arnold]

I consider the Moment of Darkness speech as currently practiced to be a bit of a mistake. 

Personal, Oddly Specific and Hard

The best Moment of Darkness speeches have been intensely personal. I think most of the rest of the speeches have been okay-but-not-as-great-as-that-part-of-the-Solstice-needs-to-be.

So a) we have a lot of okay-but-not-great centerpiece stories, and b) they're a lot of work to produce, and a huge ask for aspiring Solstice folk.

The problem is that AFAICT we currently have no speeches that really fill the niche in a timeless way. There are stories specific to people, and stories specific-to-themes (i.e. smallpox, nuclear war). But few that just... work, with no special effort.

By contrast, Beyond the Reach of God has some issues, but mostly works fine as the "now we are very sad" speech.

The MoD speech needs to take that sadness, maybe take it slightly deeper, and then pull back out of it into the light.

Contenders for Timeless Moment of Darkness Speech.

Gift We Give to Tomorrow

I Have Seen the Tops of Clouds

The Goddess of Everything Else

Pale Blue Dot (I think this needs to be paired with something else, but works well just after the 

None of these feel as good to me as the best personal stories (and none of them have been done so far without a personal story). But if I wasn't comparing them against something heart-wrenchingly-personal, they would seem like reasonably solid centerpieces to the Solstice, and probably better than the average Moment of Darkness speech.

Smaller Solstices

Recently I was advising some people who were running a small (10 person) Solstice. One thing I mentioned to them was that due to their small scale they have the opportunity to do some more intimate things than usual.

For a tiny Solstice (maybe less than 15 people?), I think a reasonable thing to do is replace a Moment of Darkness speech with a few minutes reflection, followed by:

• Each person sharing something that they're scared/sad about
  
• Each person sharing something that gives them hope in the darkness
• (with a couple organizers planning words to say at this moment that have at least some thought put into them)
• Followed up with one of the speeches listed above

This feels like a more natural final-state for Small Private Solstice, and there might be some way to scale it for Big Solstice that doesn't have 150 people sharing things out loud. (The thing Kenzie led at the 2016 Bay Solstice worked pretty well)

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[Daniel Speyer]

This sparked a thought that I haven't really dug into and considered yet:

Suppose instead of a speech, the community takes an oath.  Not literally everyone, we'd have to do it as "Those of you who are willing to commit to the principles on the screen, I ask that you rise and declare them with me".  Actually writing the thing would be hard, since it has to be real enough to be meaningful, but vague enough to fit every life plan and path.

After all this "there's no one out there to help you" stuff, hearing scores of people declaring their helpfulness in unison could be exactly the right turn-around.

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[Raymond Arnold]

A variation of that I'd considered-but-never-got-around-to-trying was having people recite (probably in English, although after a few years you could maybe switch to 'the original' latin) the Nihil Supernum quote.

No Rescuer Hath the Rescuer

No Savior Hath the Champion

No Mother nor Father

Only Nothingness Above

(hrmm, actually, I just in-real-time remembered one of the reasons I didn't use it, because I didn't like the lone-hero emphasis)

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