Summer Solstice

Natural Miracle

“All is a miracle. The stupendous order of nature, the revolution of a hundred million of worlds round a million of stars, the activity of light, the life of all animals, all are grand and perpetual miracles.”

                                             Voltaire

Good Summer Solstice to you, friend. Today the sun is furthest north of the equator; the longest day of light in the northern hemisphere. Let us rejoice and be glad in it, as billions of people have done for thousands of years. Solstice means 'sun-stopping'; the point at which the earth begins to tilt in the other direction, moving the northern hemisphere away and the southern hemisphere toward the sun.

The oldest Solstice celebrations that we know about took place in Egypt, where the temple of Ra was built to light a particular chamber at sunrise on the summer Solstice. Of course, Stonehenge in the Wiltshire Plain in England, is a sun temple built around 2000 B.C.E., with the sun rising at the heel stone on the Solstice. Ancient China once marked the this shift by sacrificing a human, with burial in the earth to balance the yin energies. Thankfully, we've dispensed with that particular observance.

Today, few of us will even notice the Solstice, much less celebrate. Too bad, I think, since that is just one more sign of our 'out-of-touch-ness' with nature's cycles. Summer is, with or without our attention, still a time of fertility and abundance. Our juices are flowing, our gardens are growing; natures bounty is never more plush than today. Once upon a time at my church, we celebrated Solstice by building a bonfire. We wrote regrets and resentments on paper and burned them in the fire. We expressed hopes, prayers, and wishes and then leaped over the fire to make them come true. It's always good to keep a little 'pagan ritual' in one's arsenal of religious possibilities. To cover your bases, so to speak.

Here's a wee Solstice poem for you from the book, Earth Prayers:

"Again did the earth shift.

Again did the nights grow short.

And the days long.

And the people of the earth were glad,

And celebrated each in their own ways.”

                                      Diane Lee Moomey

Happy Summer Solstice, everyone! Celebrate, each in your own way!

In the spirit,

Jane