Solstice Threshold Crossing

Clearing

Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life

and wait there patiently,

until the song that is your life

falls into your own cupped hands

and you recognise and greet it.

Only then will you know how to give yourself

to this world

so worthy of rescue.

– Martha Postlethwaite

As the sun begins to climb from the deepest dark amidst slowly lengthening days, I am looking ahead to the ceremony I’ll be co-guiding with Mo Wilde at the other end of the solar year: the Summer Solstice Threshold Crossing. I am looking forward to the privilege of once again offering support and guidance and bearing witness to people proactively engaging in the story of their own lives. It touches me to offer this work, and heartens me that there are other humans out there who want to live more fully, and keep giving themselves to what's truly important in this life. 

And so I ask you:

How connected do you feel to the song that is your life, and the wild world? 

When did you last take time to pause, breathe, and reconnect with the deeper mystery that is your life (and all life)? 

What will this next orbit around the sun hold for you?

For thousands of years people have walked into wilder places, alone and without food or shelter, to step outside the usual busy-ness of life, to slow down and listen more deeply within and without, in order to consciously choose their path forward, and to give their lives more fully to that which feels truly important. 

In this way people have sought to find more clarity and connection, to be with the questions life stirs up, or to ceremonially mark significant life transitions or new directions. Even though such people walk out alone, they are supported by their community, with whom they prepare and to whom they return. In this way the human community has been weaving and re-weaving their connection with each other and with the wild land. Remembering: we are not separate from wild nature.

“These times are urgent. We must slow down” – Bayo Akomolafe