Pause & Reflect

embracing the light of the summer solstice

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Photo by Liana Mikah on Unsplash

Happy Summer Solstice!

Remaining soft and open in the moments you're shaping your life and the moments when life is shaping you will bring more luminosity and joy to your authentic self than you could ever imagine.

The morning after the full, harvest moon in September 2022, I immersed my body into a lake for the very first time.

That morning, as I entered the bone-cold water, the light breaking through the clouds was like a rose gold vein, a delicate pulse.

I did not know then, as my feet sank into the dirt and the water ribboned around my skin, just how much I had disconnected from myself and the world in which I belonged.

I did not know then, on that Sunday morning, the moon a day older in the sky, that the light breaking through the thick body of clouds was connecting with the light already within me. 

The soft light—the light of waves that never break but simply travel and gather and find a way through. The light of air and bone, stars and earth – shifting, dancing, calling for me to remember:

“this is home.”

Almost two years later, there hasn’t been a single day when I have not acknowledged the light within me. I have stopped looking for it in illusory, distant places. Instead, I watch it come out of me and everything I hold in my awareness.

When the light of the Earth gave us a little longer in her presence on Friday, I honoured it by getting up at 3:30 a.m. and heading to a friend's garden in the middle of York at 4 a.m. We lay on the grass and listened to the dawn chorus, watched the light shifting and blending, listening to what it was teaching.

In the presence and stillness of dawn, eyes upon the boundless pastel light, I allowed the nourishment of whatever was taking place in my body to happen without interfering—an active meditation, watching, witnessing, inviting.

The beauty of what will be, unrushed, created from the breath of grace.

How do we lie in this stillness, how do we embrace it when we have no control over what is arising? How do we let go and trust?

For some of us, stillness can feel like a difficult place. Wanting the moment to be different from what it is, is the main cause of suffering. Wanting the moment to stay exactly as it is, is another. (In Buddhism, this is referred to as craving and aversion.)

For joy to exist, in its winged and beautiful form,
it requires a choice: a conscious effort to seek it in the quiet,
ordinary things.

Reflections for you:

If you can start your day differently and stop it feeling like 'just another day' but a life you are creating, your inner light will brighten. You will feel in control.

If you can weave small moments of meaning and wonder into the fabric of your life while the world moves around you and experiences you have no control over suddenly appear; your inner light will brighten.

If you can hold the thread of beauty pressed into the seemingly ordinary and mundane, your inner light will expand into everything and everyone you come into contact with.

The more you live in a way that feels right and good for you, the more the light in the distance, which once felt so alive and magnetic, will begin to fade.

The most valuable resources you have as a human being are those you can’t see: love, faith, trust, compassion, imagination, courage, creativity, endurance.

Set the intention each day to honour and harness one of these qualities for that day—create meaning, live consciously, and pay attention.

a gift of fresh eggs

Kairos

The wild unknown archetypes book by Kim Krans and a Witchcraft book by Taschen have become a large part of my morning ritual, along with a raw amethyst that belonged to my mother.

Kairos, pulled before I set off for my magical summer solstice ceremony.

“We have all had the experience of timelessness, of life beyond the ticking of the clock. It may be felt as time standing still, slow motion, or losing track of time on a walk or in a lovely conversation. This is know as mystic time, and it is the territory of Kairos….. when this card appears, it is all about patience and precision.”

When light: alignment, ease in decisions and action.

When dark: fighting against time.

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