Summer Solstice June 20 2021 9:32 pm mt

Happy Summer Solstice!

The day the sun stands still; solstice comes from the latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), and to the ancients, marked a time when the sun paused at the gate, between one season and the next, between the realms of earth and heaven, between death and birth.

Summer solstice marks the longest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere), the height of its brightness, and the beginning of summer. The summer solstice is analogous to the full moon—a time of celebration, culmination, climax.

After today—though we still have much summer and heat before us—the days will shorten, slowly and ever so slightly, as we move toward the autumnal equinox.

But for now, we revel in the height and heat of summer, partake in its hedonistic pleasures, list through its languorous afternoons. We consume the fruits of our labor, imbibe what we’ve fermented into wine.

Like a full moon, what follows is a time of release, of clearing, of letting go—to make room for what we will plant and grow with the next solstice. But first, we eat, drink, and be merry. We relax and recharge, rest our bodies and minds for the harvest that will come with fall.

Look back at what you’ve built or done or experienced since the winter solstice on December 21, 2020, and the new moon on January 13, 2021. What can you celebrate and honor? What deserves your gratitude, to yourself and others, to the universe itself?

Give that gratitude. Make an altar with gifts to the earth, the planets, any God or gods you work with. Give offerings to your higher self, your larger self, your self that includes the trees and sky and milky way.

Consider, what would you like to do differently, to add, subtract, adjust since the winter solstice? Now is a great time to course-correct, to direct your attention in new directions or with new awareness.

Summer Solstice Ritual Writing Prompts

Write on the following:

1. What were your visions or dreams at the winter solstice (or the New Year, or January’s new moon)?

2. Make a list of everything you’ve done, built, been a part of, experienced since the winter solstice. Give yourself accolades and gratitude for everything on this list. Perhaps add it to altar to honor yourself and the bigger dreams you are a part of.

3. Freewrite or make a list of things you’ve learned since December 2020; things you’d like to approach or do differently. Write on how your visions and goals have changed.

4. Make a new target for yourself, a new direction you want to be aiming—even if it’s only subtly different from what you visioned in December. Now that you’re closer, maybe halfway there, what have you learned along the way and how has your target changed or moved? Write this new vision out as clearly as you can—write the steps you need to take between now and December 2021 to get there.

Summer Solstice Creative Writing Prompt

Come to Dust

by Ursula K. LeGuin

Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body
that are to come, the motions
of the matter that held you.
Rise up in the smoke of palo santo.
Fall to the earth in the falling rain.
Sink in, sink down to the farthest roots.
Mount slowly in the rising sap
to the branches, the crown, the leaf-tips.
Come down to earth as leaves in autumn
to lie in the patient rot of winter.
Rise again in spring’s green fountains.
Drift in sunlight with the sacred pollen
to fall in blessing.

                                   All earth’s dust
has been life, held soul, is holy.

Exercise—Come to Dust

Read “Come to Dust” by Ursula K. LeGuin.

Then write a poem, flash story or mini-memior from the perspective of a grain of pollen. Perhaps you are pollen, are dust. What do you learn about yourself, the universe, from the perspective of a mote?

Photo by Kent Pilcher on Unsplash