It’s the Summer Solstice: Where is your strength coming from?
Macrina Weiderkehr’s Seven Sacred Pauses don’t just influence my daily rhythms, but how I view seasonal festivals. Summer Solstice is the noon of the year, peak sun, the Hour of Illumination. So as this milestone approached I thought of her theme for the midday. Around noon when the sun is highest and hottest in the sky we may feel most weak and drained and be reconsidering all we thought we could accomplish in this day. But it is symbolically ironic that the thing draining us is itself made of energy. Heat and light are energy, and the life and light the sun brings are used over and over again for symbols of God’s power.
This brings me back to Lara Casey’s goal setting series, where for each goal we ask, am I striving for this under my own power or relying on God?
Many Summer Solstice rituals include taking inventory on where you are in your goals and plans for the year, and I have definitely been doing that lately, but I think as we check in with our personal growth we don’t want to forget to ask, Am I doing this in my own strength or Creator’s?
This year when I was trying to decide on a word, I had two. Two words that couldn’t be subsumed into one, two words that complimented each other a little, but also seemed to be operating on two totally different plains. So I kept them both. My first word for the year was Steady or Steadfast. It fits into my stream of growth over the last few years before 2019-2020 I felt mostly stuck and invisible for so long. So 2021 was Loud, inspired by the Preemptive Love Coalition quote, “When Hate is Loud, Love cannot be silent.” and also by this video of Harry Styles, that looked like I wanted to feel, alive and free and bold. I started my business that year, and got my picture taken in my underwear a lot. 2022 I didn’t have a word for the year until April. The word was slow. As I started developing new patterns and learning new skills for my designs I wanted to let go of my sense of urgency and take enough time with things to give them my very best. In 2023 my word was Flow, and I imagine water bursting and gushing forth, abundance and finally growing and earning profit. Instead I spent a lot of the year getting rid of everything in myself that was blocking the flow of the Creator Spirit through me, and learning to be present to that emptiness. 2024 is finding the balance between slow and flow. I have pictures pinned up of Jan Brett’s Mossy the turtle, moving along slowly enough, splashing in the creek, that moss grows on her back, then ferns, then strawberries, and pollinators start fluttering around her. I am learning to be faithful in my creative work, keeping a steady healthy balance of work and play and rest. I am going to be faithful to the work in front of me and finishing what I have started, and let go of my expectations of results. The work is my responsibility to Creator. I will plant the seeds. The results, the blooms, I will leave up to them.
My other word for this year is Tender. I was at a family holiday with family extolling the virtues of lax gun laws and I thought my head was going to explode. All of the feelings about wars and violence that I constantly see around me, and try to do something if I can, and then move on as fast as I can just bubbled up. I thought that if I let myself linger with those feelings that they would overwhelm me. That I would drown. But my friend shared her story about the babies she had lost in the past few years and her prayer of thanks to God for the love she still has for those babies even when it hurts. It reminded me of the Andrea Gibson quote, “How can I let this open my heart instead of close it?”
I have been holding space for myself this year, to just be sad and tender, to let bruises remind me I’m alive, and praying for a soft heart. It is the biggest prayer I pray for anyone.
Oddly enough, in this two word year, the month of June has had the same feels for me that I usually experience in December, of soil turning over and something new happening, and as I’ve taken stock of the things I am cultivating this year, I am already almost done with the main work project that I have been holding steady with, and as it happens, what comes next is feeling really vulnerable and like a ledge to step out on that I can’t quite see.
And as I sat in that space Andrea Gibson came through again with an email this week about her recent experience with another one of her quotes, “Let your heart break, so your spirit doesn’t”
“Some people might call 'em spoiled, but I think that these almost ruined ones sometimes make the sweetest jam.” -Sweet Home Alabama
This came back full circle to my solstice question, “Am I doing this through Creator’s stength or trying to do it on my own?” Isn’t that what hard hearts are? Isn’t that where “self-preservation” comes from? I have to keep going and have to do all of this on my own, so I can’t let my feelings overwhelm me. Hogwash. We are never doing this on our own. The notion that we could be is preposterous. I have to let go of this mountain I am trying to carry and realize where my strength really comes from. I have to let go of all the pressure built up inside before it breaks me.