Preparing for the New Year

I found this prayer in a recipe book(!) - a book with hand copied out, by me, recipes with this among them:

A Winter Solstice Prayer
God of all creation,
of bare forest and low northern skies,
of paths unknown and never to be taken,
of bramble, sparrow and damp, dark earth.
We thank you for loss, for the breaking of the dimming year,
We thank you for light, even in its seeming midwinter failing,
We thank you for life, for its hope and resistance,
Like a seed dying and living.

Rachel Mann

It was on a sheet with a draft rota for December/January 2008 so I guess I must have used it last winter. I hope it fuels you too for 2010.
(A further note - I've just found the prayer in Nicola Slee and Rosie Mills' Doing December Differently - I guess that's where i copied it from!)