Happy Summer Solstice!!
Summer Solstice occurs on Friday, June 20th, 2025 at 7:41 pm Pacific Time. It is the peak of light in the year—the longest day and the shortest night. Even if it’s not always the peak of greening and growing.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, we’ve been nonstop blooming since early February—snowdrops, heather, the many bulbs mom planted, the calendula that overwintered, marsh marigold, bleeding heart, the rhododendrons, the overwintered chamomile, western and eastern Solomon’s seal, lilacs, apple and pear trees, salal, salmonberry, and thimbleberry bushes, oxeye daisies, wallflower, chives, Astrantia, roses, Pacific Ninebark, foxglove, oriental poppy, and pond lilies! (And I know I missed some others…)
So, lots has been and will continue greening and growing!
This year, I’m more than ever aware of the circle of summer coming around again…all this blooming, over a few months leading us right into the Summer Solstice again. I love that I can still rely on the earth to grow again, to flower again, to create food, and beauty yet again! Like last year and the year before, and many before that.
But it’s happening early this year. And that worries me. Climate change is disrupting the seasonal circles.
As I write this, we have 2 inches less rain that we should have at this time of the year. It’s been a very dry spring. I have had to start watering the perennials a whole month earlier than last year. And my big water tank (270 gallons) is almost empty already…
Amidst all the flowers and greening, I am afraid and deeply sad about the disruption and damage we are causing the earth. The breaking up of the natural order, the natural circles of life.
This excerpt from Muscogee Joy Harjo’s Eagle Poem invites us into a way to be with this reality:
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
The seasons are circles of motion of the earth. The earth shows herself to me in flowers and greening this time of year, but there are so many circles and so much motion happening underground and invisibly all around.
How can I open my whole self in prayer so that I can participate more fully in these circles of motion? Certainly, by tending the earth, by loving and caring for the earth, by listening to and praising the earth, sun, sky, and moon…
I pray for sun and rain and care and rest, that the earth receives these in the right amounts so that she can bloom and thrive.
I pray and give thanks as I create food and medicine from the plants the earth offers freely. This is one of the ways I can commune–by receiving these gifts and allowing them to heal me and my family.
…
I wonder if the earth prays? Maybe as I do, tangibly—in the winter-spring in rain, in the spring-summer in greening and flowers, in the summer in sun, and in the fall in apples and pears and Fall harvest?
And as I pray or the earth prays, do we know ourselves as one voice? Does she know me as earth standing on two feet? Do I recognize her many forms and shapes as me? And tend her as I tend myself—feeding, watering, brushing, cleaning, loving?
I find grace in knowing that the earth is always here, carrying us through the seasons, more than we know or can see, in circles of motion. For now.
June 20th: Summer Solstice Ritual, 6:00-7:30 pm
Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
outside in the Circle Garden/Courtyard.
Read more on my Calendar.
Nourishing Wholeness 