Last night we celebrated the Summer Solstice at Neskaya. We did a lot of old dances like the Bach Sun Meditation and Intitusuy. We did some new ones – Sunrise is one of my favorites. We had a clear sky toward the end, and the sun shone through the northwest window almost to the altar with the bodhisattva on it. It only does this for a couple of weeks at the summer solstice. We used to see the sunset from that window, and the light would shine directly on the bodhisattva, but alas, a tree has grown up and blocked it. I suppose I’ll have to have that tree cut. The amazing thing is, this wasn’t planned, it just happened. And at the time of the winter solstice, the sun is low enough to shine through an upstairs south window on to the Bodhisattva. Building a sacred building may produce unexpected surprises!
Summer Solstice also makes me think of a passage I wrote for The Feminine of History is Mystery. It was written when I was still living in Brunswick Maine, and could not imagine ever finding my “tribe” of people who would celebrate the Summer Solstice with singing and dancing. I wrote a description of an imagined celebration at Stonehenge, and in the middle of the writing I called out to “my people” — and they answered! And now I feel unbelievably fortunate to have built a place to which they came.
in the pale pre-dawn light, men, women, and children, wearing animal skins and bright colored woven cloth, carry banners and flutes and tambourines. down the hill, through the valley of the avon, up the shoulder past the mound and the heelstone. a sense of joyful expectancy, of reverence, but no rigid formality, dogs bark, children laugh. there is a moment of solemn silence at the sun’s first flash, then they will sing old songs and new, dance thousand-year-old dances with new variations, feast and share the year’s gossip and wander home again . . . o my people, how I envy you, what a sense of loss that I am not there too — are you the past or the future? we are both the past and the future, we are where the circle meets itself, never fear, you too are enclosed by the circle.
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