Hello Reader,
I have been thinking about transitions as we head into this solstice weekend. Not the dramatic kind we tend to notice, but the quiet ones. The ones the Earth keeps without fanfare, year after year, regardless of whether we show up for them.
The solstice is one of those.
Wherever you are in the world right now, something has reached its fullest expression and is beginning, ever so slowly, to turn. Some of you are in the north, sitting inside days so long and luminous they feel almost unreal. Some of you are in the south, held inside the long, soft dark of winter. Regardless of where we are, all of us are at the same threshold. All of us are being asked the same, quiet question.
What does this particular quality of light ask of you?
I find myself genuinely moved by what the summer solstice offers those of us bathed in it right now. There is something in long light that feels like pure generosity, the way the sun lingers past dinner, how the mornings come early and warm, how color seems richer and the world more vivid and awake. This is not ordinary brightness. It is the Earth in full voice, pouring herself out. What would it mean to actually receive that? To let it land in you, not as productivity fuel or a backdrop to summer plans, but as a gift being given to your body, your senses, something in you that knows how to love the light?
And for those of you in the quiet of winter right now, I think you know something the rest of us may have forgotten. The long dark teaches a kind of listening that bright days make harder. There is intimacy in it. The world pulls close. What has been waiting below the surface of your busy season, patient in the way that seeds are patient, growing in ways you may not yet be able to see?
Both of these are invitations into deeper relationship with the more-than-human world. Not as metaphor, but as actual connection. This is what I mean when I talk about listening with the land rather than listening to it. The solstice is not backdrop. It is conversation.
A private solstice retreat ~
I want to offer you something simple for this precious, amazing time...a few hours you can shape into your own private retreat, wherever you are, with whatever season is holding you. There is no perfect way to do this. Simply follow what calls you.
Your solstice retreat Β· 3 to 4 hours
I. Arrive slowly ~ Go outside, or sit near a window, and do nothing for longer than feels comfortable. Let the quality of this season register in your body before it reaches your thinking mind. Notice what stirs. Don't name it yet.
II. Walk as witness ~ Move slowly through whatever land is near you, carrying this question loosely: what is the more-than-human world showing me about what is complete, and what is just beginning? Let your attention be led. Trust what stops you.
III. Write toward the season~ Settle somewhere and write without editing. Choose the prompt that feels most alive: What in me has been wanting to open into the light? or What in me has been quietly growing in the dark? Write as if the season can hear you. In my experience, it can.
IV. Make an offering ~ Choose one thing you are ready to release and offer it back to the land in whatever form feels true. Something buried, burned, set in moving water, or simply spoken aloud. The ceremony lives in the intention, not the gesture.
V. Return with food ~ Eat something that honors where you are in the seasonal round. Fresh and bright if summer holds you. Warming and slow if you are in winter. Let the meal be your re-entry into ordinary time, carrying something new.
You might move through all five of these invitations. You might sit with only one for the whole afternoon. Either way, you will have shown up for the solstice threshold, and in my experience, the threshold always shows up for you in return.
I would love to know how you spend this solstice, and what the season is teaching you. Feel free to write back if you feel moved to share. I hope you have a beautiful solstice weekend!
In wildness,
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