Tag: practice

Spring Equinox 2024–Coming Alive!

Spring has been quietly and not-so-quietly growing since early February in the Pacific Northwest. Spring Equinox marks the middle for us, and for some areas, the beginning of Spring.

In 2024 Spring Equinox falls on March 19th at 8:06 pm Pacific Time. This is a time when the day and night are close to equal, with the days becoming longer and longer until summer solstice is here!

The living earth gives us so many ways to participate in Spring—aligning with the growing light, practicing balancing, making way for the invitation to new leafing and budding and lengthening…

This year, I’m drawn to the invitation to join with the aliveness happening all around us, to enter into the movement, the vibrancy, the joy, even the noise of Spring.

The varied thrush is calling her long high whistle, the peepers are returning to the pond to call to their mates, and the robins and migrating songbirds are showing up to sing. Life is awaking!

Wintertime called us to rest and be quiet so we could be ready for Spring’s energy, and now Spring is here calling us to more!

This poem by the poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer showcases a bird we know well here, the Kingfisher. We are always excited when Kingfisher visits us with their distinctive call!

“Beyond Quiet“
From bare branch to bare branch
kingfishers weave the dry tick
of their call through morning—
as if sticks are rattling,
as if stones are clattering—
and whatever part of me
that is longing for quiet
is invited into the racket.
I say I want peace,
but what the heart really wants
is to know itself
as part of everything,
to belong to the world
of grinding and trilling,
scolding and chattering,
to knit itself into this raucous day,
strident and so alive.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Winter’s rest and peace give way to Spring’s aliveness!

Of course, we need to carry rest with us and still make time for it, but the invitation is always is to knit ourselves into the day, even one that is strident, in order to be so alive!

How will you participate in the invitation of Spring?

How will you knit yourself into Spring’s
fresh, new aliveness?

Summer Solstice 2023–Fullness & Stillness

Breathing in, I take in the fullness.
Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.

Breathe this gatha (mindfulness verse) with me.

Breathing in, I take in the fullness.
Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.

This is a Summer Solstice invitation–to take in the fullness of summer and to rest in the stillness within.

Summer Solstice, a time when the sun seems to stand still in the sky, occurs at 7:57 am PT on Wednesday, June 21st, 2023.

Breathing in, I take in the fullness.

The fullness is all around us.

Flowers blossoming–in our gardens right now: floribunda roses, foxglove, oxeye daisy, euphorbia, rhododendron, native and cultivated bleeding heart, chives, sage, lady’s mantle, California poppies, orange Oriental poppies, valerian, geranium, fringe cups, toad flax, purple bells, peonies…

Leaves in full verdancy–lady, bracken and sword ferns, hazelnut, birch, witch hazel, asian pear, cherry, apple, mountain ash, vine and big-leaf maples, nettle, cleavers, herb robert, violets, kale, cilantro, lettuce…

And so many more that I did not name… Not to mention the birds!

As Gunilla Morris says in A Mystic Garden, you can almost hear the earth humming with growth.

Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.

And the stillness?

It’s as if all this verdant and vivid growth is held in the stillness–in the ground of the living earth, in the rays of the sun, in the vast vault of sky.

Without this holding, nothing could grow–without the earth the roots root in, without the light of the sun that creates life, without the air to breathe…

Breathing in, I take in the fullness.
Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.

Isn’t this so like our lives?

I can get so caught up in the fullness–in answering its call to tend, to enjoy, to jump in–that I forget about the stillness holding me.

Sometimes I can get a visceral sense of the holding by just lying down on the floor to do some somatics or by stepping outside into the living earth or by just sitting with tea. I used to take 5 minute “Do Nothing Breaks,” too.

This summer, let’s savor the fullness–revel in it (not just work!)–and also take time to rest in the stillness. We need both to be whole.

Breathing in, I take in the fullness.
Breathing out, I rest in the stillness.

Which part of this gatha do you need
to be reminded of most?

How will you practice that?