Summer Solstice

Yesterday, at Avebury, before the crowds arrived, I sat beside one of the stones.

For a while there was only stillness.

Stone.

Sky.

Grass.

Breath.

As I sat, I found myself noticing how the ancient circle has been cut through by roads, houses, and the passage of time. What was once a single flowing whole now seeming fragmented, interrupted.

And later, as more people arrived, another sadness arose.

How easily what is sacred becomes something to consume.

Something to visit.

Something to photograph.

Something to move on from.

Rather than something to soften before.

Something to listen to.

Something to allow to shape us.

As I sat with this throughout the day, it began to feel less like a reflection on Avebury and more like a reflection on the world at large.

On all the ways separation has found its way into our lives.

Into our communities.

Into our relationship with the Earth.

Into our own hearts.

And from that place, a prayer arose.

—

May all that has been fractured

be gathered gently home.

May all that has been separated

return to wholeness.

May all that has been forgotten

return to love.

May the walls built through fear,

protection,

and forgetting

soften back into earth.

May the abandoned be welcomed.

May the exiled be remembered.

May the burdened be relieved.

May the lonely know belonging.

May the hardened know tenderness.

May the sacred be remembered.

May life be met with reverence.

May devotion return

where consumption has taken root.

May listening return

where certainty has taken hold.

May relationship return

where separation has prevailed.

May the rivers be honoured.

May the forests be honoured.

May the stones be honoured.

May all beings remember

their place within the great mystery.

May every thought,

every word,

every action,

and every offering

become an expression

of deepest truth.

May the unique song carried by each being

find its voice.

May all that has wandered

find its way home.

May all that has been divided

return to the circle.

May all beings remember.

May all beings return.

May all beings be blessed.

—

Today, I woke with the rising sun. After my yoga practice, I climbed a nearby hill and lay beneath the solstice sky as the light reached its zenith.

The grass beneath me was cool and soft.

The warmth of the sun spread gently across my skin.

Above me, a kite circled effortlessly on the currents, rising and falling within the vast blue.

The hills stretched into the distance.

The sky seemed endless.

And as I lay there, held between earth and sky, something in me settled.

Something widened.

And alongside yesterday's yearning, something else emerged.

A remembering.

The light has come so far.

Through winter roots and spring rains,

through unseen stirrings beneath the soil,

through every quiet becoming.

And now it stands here.

Golden.

Unhidden.

Poured across field and stone,

leaf and skin,

river and sky.

Nothing reaching.

Nothing striving.

Only fullness.

The rose does not wonder

whether it has earned its blooming.

The river does not ask permission

to flow.

The hillside doesn't hurry

to be itself.

Each offers itself completely

to the season at hand.

And perhaps this is the invitation.

Not to become something else.

Not to wait until more healing arrives,

or more certainty,

or more understanding.

But to stand within this moment

as it is.

To inhabit this life fully.

To trust the shape that Love has given.

To allow what is already alive within

to take its place in the world.

Not as performance.

Not as achievement.

But as devotion.

A flower opening.

A bird singing.

A river moving toward the sea.

This one brief impermanent life...

offered wholeheartedly.

This breath.

This day.

This season.

This quiet, sacred becoming.

—

This evening, as the solstice day drew to a close, I pulled a card.

Sovereign Queen Maeve.

As I sat with her words, I found myself reflecting on the journey of these past two days. The yearning that arose beside the stones at Avebury. The remembering that emerged beneath the wide solstice sky. And now, something else.

A deepening.

Not another prayer exactly, nor another revelation.

More a quiet recognition.

The longing for wholeness and the remembrance of what is already true eventually ask something of us.

They ask to be lived.

The card spoke of sovereignty. Of sacred territory. Of refusing to allow what is precious to be trampled by fear, distraction, greed, or forgetting. Not through force, nor through opposition, but through the simple and courageous act of remaining devoted to what matters.

And as I sat with that, I found myself returning to the same question that had been weaving through the whole weekend.

What does it mean to live in right relationship with life?

What does it mean not only to remember what is sacred, but to stand for it?

Not in others.

Not in the world.

But here.

In this life.

In these choices.

In this moment.

And from that place, something else began to take shape.

Not a prayer of longing.

Not a prayer of remembering.

But a vow.

I choose to belong to myself.

I choose to belong to Life.

I choose to honour what is sacred.

I choose devotion over consumption.

Relationship over separation.

Presence over distraction.

Love over fear.

I choose to trust the light within.

To walk my own path.

To offer the unique note I have been given to sing.

To tend the spaces entrusted to my care.

To stand in service to wholeness.

To stand in service to love.

To stand in service to Life.

And when I forget,

as surely I will,

may I return.

Again and again.

May I return.

To belonging.

To truth.

To devotion.

To the living mystery that moves through all things.

And from that place,

may this life be lived.