Year of Spiritual Thinking, Month 6, Week 5

Summer Solstice -- The Year's Mid-Point

Solstic sunrise at Trail Lake, Ring Lake Ranch

Hello Friends and Happy Solstice!

Whether you live in the Northern Hemisphere or the Southern Hemisphere, the solstices, the time when the sun “stands still” on the horizon at rising and setting, are the mid-points of the solar year.

(The science: The sun only appears to stand still at the solstices, after appearing to move along the horizon from day to day, northward for half the year and back south for the other half. In reality, it is our planet that does the moving; a tilt of 23.5 degrees away from vertical in Earth’s axis of rotation aims the hemispheres either toward or away from the sun. That tilt makes the sun appear to move as Earth orbits the fiery sun.)

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, today is Summer Solstice, heralded as the beginning of the season of summer, the time of heat and green and life bursting forth, of early sunrises and late sunsets, gardens and barbecues, juicy summer fruit and vacations to beloved places.

Year of Spiritual Thinking

This solstice also marks the mid-point of my Year of Spiritual Thinking project, which I began last December at the Northern Hemisphere’s Winter Solstice. I didn’t know what I would learn; I simply wanted to spend a year focusing on what spirituality means to me at this point in my life. I wanted to delve into the spirituality of my ancestors, the Scots Celtic people and their neighbors across the North Sea, the fjord-folk of Norway’s west coast.

In this first half-year, I’ve read books on Celtic spirituality, re-visited new translations of some of the Norse lore and re-read some of the earth-based writing that has long inspired me (I’ll write about some of that in another newsletter).

I’ve pondered how those traditions and the knowledge they rise from inform the spiritual beliefs and practices I have come to over the course of my life, especially in this past decade of learning myself after my husband’s death. I’ve thought about what terraphilia, humans’ innate affection for and connection to this earth, means to me.

What have I learned so far?

Two things stand out: First, for me spirituality is woven through my day and everything I do. Before I brought spirituality into my conscious mind by reading and thinking about it for at least part of every day, I hadn’t realized how much my beliefs inform and shape my actions.

Here are some examples of how spirituality permeates my everyday life: I thank the ingredients in my food as I prepare my hot cereal for breakfast and greet the native plants in the grassland where I live on my morning walks. I pat my truck to thank her for carrying me safely and comfortably before I start the engine (yes, my truck, named Rojita, “Little Red,” is female). I thank the checker at the grocery store for being there to help; I express my gratitude to this numinous earth by writing about the community of life.

These everyday actions are not rituals I have thought about and carefully designed. They are spontaneous, coming from my heart and spirit in response to life itself, prayers of gratitude for this existence and all with whom I share this earth.

Every night, last thing before I go to sleep, I say an intention aloud, beginning with, “I am living with my heart outstretched as if it were my hand,” and ending with “I am living generously and not small, with a whole lot of love.”

Shooting stars blooming in the meadow above Ring Lake.

Second, my spirituality is earth-focused and earth-informed. It is part and parcel of my terraphilia. I am grounded in and uplifted by the web of interrelationships that makes up what we call nature, including humans. For me, simply being part of the seasons, the flux and flex of life, watching and learning about the more-than-human lives around me is a sacred experience.

In The Maine Woods Henry David Thoreau wrote about standing atop Maine’s highest peak, Katahdin (from Ktaadn, a Native American word):

Think of our life in nature.—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! who are we? where are we?

Thoreau’s words attempt to express what we feel when we allow ourselves to step out of the all-consuming busyness of human life into the wider and richer web of life that greens and animates this earth. When we touch and feel the sacred miracle of life itself, the spark of being that lights all existence.

What I know of the sacred comes from observing and honoring nature, in the microbes that live in and on me, and in the myriad lives that weave this world, the “actual world” Thoreau wrote about. From practicing my terraphilia.

What’s Next? And a Challenge

When I ask myself what I want at this time in my life, the powerful urge I feel from within is that my effort to “rewire” my work and life is aiming toward aligning my earth-focused spirituality with the rhythms of my daily life. I want to live in a way that is more attuned to the pace of the seasons.

I often say that the time between the Autumnal Equinox and the Vernal Equinox is my contemplative season, and the solstices are reflection points in my year. But in practice, the ebb and flow of my days is governed more by the temporal world of deadlines and work projects than by the time of year and rhythms of the seasons.

So my challenge to myself and you is first, to think about whether the rhythms of our days are aligned with our spiritual practices and what nurtures our inner selves. And second, to find ways to ground ourselves in noticing and honoring the rhythms of the natural year as our inner calendar. To practice our terraphilia in our everyday lives. To stop and observe moments of awe.

For example, here is a short video I shot yesterday morning at Ring Lake Ranch, where I am spending this week managing invasive weeds. Much of my work is manual labor: stooping or squatting to hand-pull cheatgrass, a non-native annual grass that threatens the health of our sagebrush-grasslands.

I shot this before breakfast, when I was carefully pulling cheatgrass from within and between clumps of native indian ricegrass and spiny Woods’ rose. I stood up to stretch my back and saw the reflections in the lake and was so moved that I had to stop to record the beauty of the moment. (If I sound out of breath, it’s because it was cold, about 35 degrees F, and hand-pulling cheatgrass is harder work than it sounds like.)

May this moment inspire your practice of terraphilia!