{"id":526,"date":"2010-06-21T23:11:05","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T23:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=526"},"modified":"2010-06-21T23:47:47","modified_gmt":"2010-06-21T23:47:47","slug":"summer-solstice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=526","title":{"rendered":"Summer Solstice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night we celebrated the Summer Solstice at Neskaya.\u00a0 We did a lot of old dances like the Bach Sun Meditation and Intitusuy.\u00a0 We did some new ones – Sunrise is one of my favorites.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It only does this for a couple of weeks at the summer solstice.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I suppose I\u2019ll have to have that tree cut.\u00a0 The amazing thing is, this wasn\u2019t planned, it just happened.\u00a0 And at the time of the winter solstice, the sun is low enough to shine through an upstairs south window on to the Bodhisattva.\u00a0 Building a sacred building may produce unexpected surprises!
\nSummer Solstice also makes me think of a passage I wrote for The Feminine of History is Mystery<\/a>.\u00a0 It was written when I was still living in Brunswick Maine, and could not imagine ever finding my \u201ctribe\u201d of people who would celebrate the Summer Solstice with singing and dancing.\u00a0 I wrote a description of an imagined celebration at Stonehenge, and in the middle of the writing I called out to \u201cmy people\u201d \u2014 and they answered!\u00a0 And now I feel unbelievably fortunate to have built a place to which they came.<\/p>\n

in the pale pre-dawn light, men, women, and children, wearing animal skins and bright colored woven cloth, carry banners and flutes and tambourines.\u00a0 down the hill, through the valley of the avon, up the shoulder past the mound and the heelstone.\u00a0 a sense of joyful expectancy, of reverence, but no rigid formality, dogs bark, children laugh.\u00a0 there is a moment of solemn silence at the sun\u2019s first flash, then they will sing old songs and new, dance thousand-year-old dances with new variations, feast and share the year\u2019s gossip and wander home again .\u00a0 .\u00a0 .\u00a0 o my people, how I envy you, what a sense of loss that I am not there too \u2014 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.<\/em>
\nopposite right hand page 133<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night we celebrated the Summer Solstice at Neskaya.\u00a0 We did a lot of old dances like the Bach Sun Meditation and Intitusuy.\u00a0 We did some new ones – Sunrise is one of my favorites.\u00a0 We had a clear sky … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-circle-dance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}