June 21, 2024

Summer Solstice Blessings to you! The Winter Solstice is my favorite day of the year: the day the earth tips toward the light. Summer Solstice is a tip in the other direction, and part of my body resists that mightily. I do better with more daylight and warmer temperatures. At the same time, the Summer Solstice is merely the beginning of summer and its long, lingering, days, and I try to remind myself to remain in the moment. To give thanks for what is right here in front of me, right here and now. I don't want to miss it, and especially not out of worry for the future.

What I love most about celebrating the solstices and the other rhythms of the natural world - the first days of Spring, Fall, the new and full moons, even our daily sunrises and sunsets - is that they reminds us that our Creator is present with us every single day, in every single way. If we pay attention, the rhythms of the natural world are rhythms that are echoed in our own bodies, and our own souls. Another reminder that we are connected to all things, through the Holy One. The sun and the rain, the daylight and the darkness, all part of who we are, and all part of the great Divine. All holy, each in their own way. 

Honoring the solstices and other such days can remind us just how precious each day of life is, because the truth of its passing away is also acknowledged. It gives us opportunities - daily! - to appreciate gifts we receive from our Creator; not take them for granted. My prayer for you this week is that you feel, in your body and your soul, this holiness. My prayer for you is that you find in these connections reason to give thanks here and now, knowing that whatever the future may bring, it too will be holy.