summer plants

"Be aware of yourself. If you are not doing what you want to do and where you want to do it, you are out of your cycle." - Gregge Tiffen, Impatience Fishes and Empty Pond

In two days we reach the midway point in the earth’s annual cycle. We’ve come a long way from the shortest day of light, Winter Solstice, to the longest, the Summer Solstice. In those six short (or long, depending on your perspective) months dark has given way to light. Stillness and quiet stepped aside and invited us to dance and engage more fully in life outside of us. The light, vibrant, active energy of summertime that lay dormant under a blanket of snow has come alive yet again.

Flora offer a wonderful illustration of the contrast between the seasons and this coming of the time of growth and vitality. As winter approaches trees drop their leaves and turn inward. In spring, new leaves appear. And, now dressed fully in their new green, trees provide shade. They bear fruit for our nourishment and eating pleasure and for their own procreation. Flowers, dormant in winter, have their own cycles that bring them out into the light to show their colors, like this cactus on our morning walk.

Elsewhere in nature, streams frozen in winter, begin to trickle in spring and now flow fully in summer’s warmth. And we, though we have lost so much of our connection with the nature’s cycles, somehow naturally follow this pattern.

This year especially I notice that I am. Ideas and projects given quiet, thoughtful attention in winter have come to life. In the cold, dark of winter they were but seeds of possibility, dreams, ideas. Like all seeds though they contain the full potential of what they can be and with the light and warmth of summer, they are bursting forth.

Some days they seem to carry me rather than me having to move them along. Those are the days of magic, flow and synchronicity. When I look back on them, they are the days when I listened and followed whatever my internal compass seemed to say.

Nature’s cycles remind me that everything has its divine right time. The more deeply I’m aware of and in touch with those cycles, the more patient I am with cycles outside of me. My gratitude for the tomatoes on the vine feeds my patience, knowing that one day I’ll taste the wonder of that gift. I’m more accepting and patient when I’m in tune with my own rhythms. I hear those inner nudgings to take action ‘now’ as well as those that suggest I wait, allow things to unfold in their time.

That’s the dance in which the experiments of life and experience of curiosity become an increased capacity to adjust and to adapt without losing who I am. In the longer light, warmth, and outward flow of summer with all of its activity, as I reach out in many directions, let me not forget my own rhythms and cycles in this larger dance that life presents.

REFLECTION FOR THE WEEK: Are you doing what you want, when and where you want?

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