"I remembered in that moment that sometimes you need to stand still so the blessings can catch up with you." I'm going to write this down and tape it to my mirror. Thank you for an excellent read. ♥️
Love this! I also think looking to intact traditions from elsewhere in the world can shed light on lack of summer ritual. In Judaism, summer is a time of mourning.
Here is an excerpt from an email from Or HaLev, a Jewish meditation group:
(Tammuz is the Hebrew summer month we are in right now)
“What can we do about thirst?
`Tammuz` is known as the name of the Babylonian god in charge of fertility and growth. A well-known worship of this god was to mark the day of his death - the peak of summer - with weeping and mourning. At the beginning of summer, it was believed, Tammuz (the god) descends to the underworld for about six months, and with the arrival of the cool autumn winds, he returns and drives out the summer. And behold, the prophet Ezekiel tells us that in his vision he saw the Temple, `and there sat the women bewailing Tammuz.` (Ezekiel 8:14).
Why were the Israelite women drawn to such a foreign cult?
Within these sweltering summer days, it seems that the longing for fertility, for the feeling of life and flow, is common to all of humankind. And from longing comes mourning absence, and weeping for what is not. The beginning of summer in the hot Land of Israel brought with it an opportunity for the ritual enactment of endings - in the form of `weeping for Tammuz.` Summer reminds us, simply, of the end. The long, hot days when it is impossible to stay outdoors, and the death of plants and crops, remind us of the approaching end of humankind, and perhaps, therefore, bring us closer to the desire to escape from this `ק(י)ץ` - summer, which has the same Hebrew root for end - `קץ`.”
——
I find this to be in alignment with your writing. Summer solstice is a turn toward winter, a challenging time. Why celebrate this and try to move the wheel forward?
This is wonderful, I love the prompts to think carefully and differently about such familiar ideas as the wheel of the year, to think specifically about "what we, as moderns" bring to lighten and balance the weight of tradition with the effervescence of our experience. I really appreciate the three takeaways at the end of the piece; I'm there. Your writing has given me the gift of focus on these truths. (And I'm tickled that you write "Perhaps this is one ritual quality of summer" and then give us three. A perfect example of abundance!) I have done a lot of thinking/research on slowing-down-and-going-outside as a needful practice, and I love to read your thoughts about that here. Slowing down -- in order to stand still, is what I am thinking in relation to your writing -- brings us into awareness of our present, our presence, and it is how we become aware of our connection with the others with whom we are present. And slowing down in summer these days, as a modern, is for me always now imbued to some extent with grief because of the harmful effects of our warming world on us all. Which makes me see those three lovely ritual qualities of summer as profoundly apt, and challenging to realize, for this moment.
"I remembered in that moment that sometimes you need to stand still so the blessings can catch up with you." I'm going to write this down and tape it to my mirror. Thank you for an excellent read. ♥️
You’re so welcome.
The cuckoo is in Britain from April and leaves in June (says the Woodland Trust website) so this song is an English Summer song:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer_is_icumen_in
And it is such a good one! I could read (or write?) a whole book about cuckoo magic. 🙏
Love this! I also think looking to intact traditions from elsewhere in the world can shed light on lack of summer ritual. In Judaism, summer is a time of mourning.
Here is an excerpt from an email from Or HaLev, a Jewish meditation group:
(Tammuz is the Hebrew summer month we are in right now)
“What can we do about thirst?
`Tammuz` is known as the name of the Babylonian god in charge of fertility and growth. A well-known worship of this god was to mark the day of his death - the peak of summer - with weeping and mourning. At the beginning of summer, it was believed, Tammuz (the god) descends to the underworld for about six months, and with the arrival of the cool autumn winds, he returns and drives out the summer. And behold, the prophet Ezekiel tells us that in his vision he saw the Temple, `and there sat the women bewailing Tammuz.` (Ezekiel 8:14).
Why were the Israelite women drawn to such a foreign cult?
Within these sweltering summer days, it seems that the longing for fertility, for the feeling of life and flow, is common to all of humankind. And from longing comes mourning absence, and weeping for what is not. The beginning of summer in the hot Land of Israel brought with it an opportunity for the ritual enactment of endings - in the form of `weeping for Tammuz.` Summer reminds us, simply, of the end. The long, hot days when it is impossible to stay outdoors, and the death of plants and crops, remind us of the approaching end of humankind, and perhaps, therefore, bring us closer to the desire to escape from this `ק(י)ץ` - summer, which has the same Hebrew root for end - `קץ`.”
——
I find this to be in alignment with your writing. Summer solstice is a turn toward winter, a challenging time. Why celebrate this and try to move the wheel forward?
This is wonderful, I love the prompts to think carefully and differently about such familiar ideas as the wheel of the year, to think specifically about "what we, as moderns" bring to lighten and balance the weight of tradition with the effervescence of our experience. I really appreciate the three takeaways at the end of the piece; I'm there. Your writing has given me the gift of focus on these truths. (And I'm tickled that you write "Perhaps this is one ritual quality of summer" and then give us three. A perfect example of abundance!) I have done a lot of thinking/research on slowing-down-and-going-outside as a needful practice, and I love to read your thoughts about that here. Slowing down -- in order to stand still, is what I am thinking in relation to your writing -- brings us into awareness of our present, our presence, and it is how we become aware of our connection with the others with whom we are present. And slowing down in summer these days, as a modern, is for me always now imbued to some extent with grief because of the harmful effects of our warming world on us all. Which makes me see those three lovely ritual qualities of summer as profoundly apt, and challenging to realize, for this moment.
Your beautiful ideas about summer were just what I needed to hear, at this moment. Thank you!
Thank you, Zaiga!