Solstice

The Summer Solstice comes this weekend. The longest day of the year. Here in New England, this day of most sunlight has always held significance for me. Our winters are fairly long. January and February are dismal months. So, I often think of this solstice time in those dark days. While revelers are celebrating Christmas and New Year, I am mourning the loss of light. Perhaps I have never lost the genetic memories of my Druid roots.

As I have grown older, I have become more and more sensitive to the seasons and their light. I have developed empathy for the plants in my small front garden. Every morning, I check in with them, as we respond to the weather and light of the day. This has healed my relationship with the planet, I believe. That relationship was horribly narcissistic on my part for many decades. Raised as a selfish human, I had lived as though the planet existed only for me, my comfort, my pleasure.

I know better now. It has taken quite a lot of reality-testing to get my attention. I understand the nearly universal human denial of global climate destruction. However, I also know that this will bring horrors yet unimagined to the human species in the not-too-distant future. I shake my head at those human beings who have procreated and are not rabid environmentalists. This seems to me the height of human ignorance and folly.

I will try to enjoy the long, lavender twilight of another year. The cycle goes on, as it will after I am gone. I am learning to find comfort within my small place on the planet and in The Universe. This deepens my human experience. It does not lessen it.

Summer

Eniko, poet/friend,
inspired this.....



Summer has come for an extended visit.
He's sweating on all the furniture and weeps,
in thunderous showers. The plants love him.
The bees and wasps are frantically building.
I sit in my new patio space and watch him.
He seems determined to topple the tall lilies.
Those weepy outbursts and windy tantrums.
When he leaves I won't miss him 'til January.


________________________________

Summer

In the 'developed' world, millions and millions of dollars are spent every Spring and Summer in attempt to prey on the insecurity of people, whom corporations view simplistically and cynically as customers. Advertising is focused on bodies and sex. Bathing suits and underwear adorn the buffed and flawless bodies of twenty-somethings everywhere you look.

This corporate self-hate industry, including diets, bogus exercise gadgets and unattainable goals for most people, makes many millions every year by inducing insecurity and offering magical solutions. Perhaps the best evidence to show the failure of capitalism as a model for human evolution is the massive number of obese and depressed people who sit and watch these advertisements over and over. Yet, obesity is rampant. Depression is rampant.

It is essential for individual human evolution to accept one's own being, including one's own body with its flaws and also its benefits. This acceptance is a first step to treating yourself with the respect and nourishment you deserve and need to advance in your life.

By embracing and accepting who you really are, you can then look to who you wish to be. This is just the beginning of a lifetime journey.