Solstice - the reality

Thanks to Dave, again, for that photo on the front page.

So, I trotted down to the Reserve with various things to perform a personally orchestrated and rather informal ritual.

As I was walking around to Kairos, I spent a few moments with the Goddess Oak who told me in no uncertain terms that I was to leave my cowardice behind. She is not averse to direct assaults on my character. She suggested I leave them in her omphalos. To mark the moment I left a quartz crystal. That I may not just see clearly, but act clearly too.

I sat by Kairos listening to goldcrests and a song thrush. The jackdaws were gathering and I heard geese and wigeons on the water. A robin and tits occasionally scolded. The squirrels were most upset and the pheasants began their nightly shouting.

I felt around me a world that has more memories, deeper memories than we humans have.

At sunset, I lit the candle, placing it in various locations. Kairos did not object. He had been counseling radical surrender on a previous occasion and I was not sure what that was about. Giving up? No. I understood more here: only surrender to being-with that actual more-than-human community confers the freedom to create, generate, live as yourself. It is the constraints of others that draw a personality and a life into uniqueness.

Or something like that.

I had brought rainwater with me. With it, I washed my eyes and dripped it in a circle around the tree. The sacred value of witnessing, the sacred value of place.