Summer Solstice 2022

Happy Solstice! Happy Summer!  (and of course wintery blessings to all our southern hemisphere friends).

But I’m happy to celebrate the turning of the seasonal wheel and to welcome Summer. I’ve been slightly obsessed with portals lately – thinking, dreaming, and drawing them. And I happen to love this image of a leafy wheel with one of my favorite piece of Chiastolite in the center.

I’ve worked with the seasonal wheel for longer than I can remember, but it’s only recently that I’ve begun to see the spokes as defining portals. I’m finding this way of thinking very helpful at the moment. I confess I delight when something that has served as a framework for a long time suddenly deepens or expands my understanding. It reminds me that everything can have leading edges, that everything can be current in the now moment, that everything evolves and metamorphizes, and moves in spiralling paths.

I find that both reassuring and exciting, and also a proper nudge to release some of the things I’m holding on to so dearly. I think for all of us there is a tendency to want to repeat the good things, or at least stay in a state of stability so other, perhaps more challenging, things can’t creep in. And that’s kind of how I’ve come to see our collective response to change – to the turning of the proverbial wheel. Most of us are okay if it turns, but want the assurance that its turning on a path we’re familiar with. But in truth, familiar paths simply aren’t there any more. Perhaps that’s one of the gifts the pandemic has made so abundantly clear globally in a way that cannot be ignored. Life has changed, systems have changed, foundations have changed – and certainly almost everything that hasn’t changed is up for consideration.

So the portal metaphor is helpful to me. We may be moving into the next season, as we have always moved into the next season – but if I think of it as a portal to move through in a more dimensional sense, I’m not bound to trying to re-create the old and hoping for the familiar, which frankly seems an entirely futile task.

Instead I’m finding the invitation to look anew, to hurl myself into new dimensional awareness, to invite myself to enjoy learning the new game and explore what captures my attention and simply be okay with it all. It’s exactly the non-linear kind of traveling that I think is called for.

I’m entering this season with delight and a deeper sense of sacred devotion. I’m inviting myself to remember to keep invoking that joy, to keep making decisions that maintain that energy, to keep all of me pointed in that direction. 

I’m holding the intention that my summer is as a powerful alchemical container I’m devoting to exquisite self-care and wild creativity.

I’m curious to see not only how each day unfolds, but also where I’ll be at the next turn of the seasonal wheel.  I’m approaching this as a grand adventure and experiment – just how much fun can I have following my inspiration in the moment and releasing needing to structure in a more linear way.  Paying attention to how things rise and fall away in a very organic way, and not pushing things past my point of interest.  There feels like so much to explore here that has implications for every aspect of my life.

I had a thought about that as well today.  Instead of marking progress like stops on a road map, what if we marked things like a random dot on a piece of paper?  Like a star flung in the endless canvas of the night sky.  And the next time we make a mark it doesn’t have to be anywhere near that previous star, because we aren’t tied to where we once were literally or figuratively.  But then we can just be a huge constellation of stars and have the joy of connecting the dots into endless patterns.  Nothing has to stay the same.

Speaking of constellations, sorting through things in my studio I re-discovered this postcard sent to me ages ago as part of an organized postcard exchange. Tiny delica beads and fine metallic thread on a dark velvet-y background.  I simply can’t get a good photo of it, but I hope you get a bit of a sense of its wonderfulness.

Here’s to having a fabulous summer (or winter) in which we all shine brilliantly!

What about you? Are you celebrating today? Have plans for your summer? Fascinated by portals? Do tell – you know I love to hear.