Personal Reflections on the Summer Solstice

A creative essay by Victoria Houser

Creating Homelands

The summer solstice marks the peak of the year, a time when the sun lingers over the earth for long hours. Litha (a Celtic word for “June ”) is the name used to refer to the deities of midsummer as well as the myriad events and traditions surrounding the solstice. In Greek mythology Litha was a time for people to worship and celebrate Apollo, the great sun god. Apollo is a fierce and powerful god, certainly worthy of much celebration during the pinnacle of summer.

Closely connected to the sun god is the Greek goddess Hestia, known as the feminine heart of the sun. Hestia is goddess of the hearth, watching over domestic life and promising sanctuary to visitors. She is known for hospitality and safe shelter in times of need. As we enter Litha, we are offered an opportunity to imagine homelands in all contexts. What does home mean to us as individuals and communities? How can we extend sanctuary to those in need of a home? In what ways can we contribute to cultures of homemaking that are inclusive and holistic? Hestia dreams of a world where homelands unite, opening and expanding generosity to strangers and kindness to those who need it most.

Litha brings joyous celebrations at the peak of sunshine, joy, and all that is light. It is a moment of intense celebration. Having shed the burdens carried through winter, Litha is a time to simply exist in the lightness that comes from unburdening oneself. The labors of life and love will still be there for us when we cross the threshold of the summer solstice, but right now life is wide open with the possibilities of all the work we ’ ve done to be here. It is an occasion marked with ceremonies of beauty, sunshine, and fulfillment.

During Litha, Hestia ’ s feminine heart of the sun reminds us of the importance of offering kindness to each other, but especially to those seeking sanctuary and domestic peace. While we celebrate the abundance of summer, the joys of warmer weather, and the beauty surrounding our lives, it is also a time to extend what we can to those seeking reprieve from brutal injustices. French feminist philosopher, Hélène Cixous writes, “It is because of the cruel price paid that, in joy, we can rejoice. But to earn joy, one must first have broken with oneself, life so great is knocking from

the inside ” (103). We ’ ve all paid cruel prices in this life—lost love, abandoned dreams, labor done in vain. But many have paid much steeper prices for making a home in their bodies.

The first months of summer bring new waves of growth and clarity. Hope seems to rise from the earth and spread through the atmosphere. While this hope is vital for us to survive, it is also a reminder that there is still work to be done. June is also pride month—a collective celebration of queer lives, and a time to acknowledge the heavy prices paid for the hard-fought joy of being able to build homes and lives with partners outside cultural inscriptions of heterosexuality. The life that knocks from inside, as Cixous describes it, asks for an expansiveness in our cultural understandings of domestic life.

Another incredibly important date that precedes the summer solstice is Juneteenth, a holiday established in 1979 in the state of Texas to remember the emancipation of African American slaves in the United States. Juneteenth is the first national holiday celebrating the end of slavery. In the wake of the last two years, and with the recent conviction of Derek Chauvin, the holiday takes on new salience as we continue to fight police brutality and the murders of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, Duante Wright, and so many other Black lives. Juneteenth is a moment to celebrate Black joy and to remember that the work is ongoing. Chauvin ’ s conviction is just one instance in which people in power were held responsible for their violent crimes. It is certainly a triumph, but it meets a low bar of justice when Black lives are still threatened by the power structure of policing. During this solstice, the moment of swelling life and renewal, we must also remind ourselves of the work before us - of fighting racism, interrupting violence, and listening to voices that continue to be marginalized.

Community, Vulnerability, and Expansive Life

At the apex of Litha, the world is pregnant with life that has been painstakingly nourished and is now emerging from spring into plump fullness. It is a time to turn one ’ s energies toward what has been quietly growing in the soils of our everyday lives. This is not to diminish the pain, sorrow, and anxieties that one has walked through in the winter and spring, but rather it is a moment in which we can say, “Yes, I have seen myself through many difficult and bitter times, but life persists inside of me. Joy is imminent. There is beauty yet to be seen and held. ” Litha is a time to create space to speak life over our dreams for the year, both dreams that were not realized and dreams that we still hope to fulfill.

would be new life, two poems came to comfort me: Ocean Vuong ’ s “Threshold” and Mary Oliver ’ s “Wild Geese. ” The opening lines to “Threshold” read: “In the body, where everything has a price, / I was a beggar. On my knees, / I watched through the keyhole, not / the man showering, but the rain / falling through him. ” The image of the rain steadily falling through his body reminded me of the distinct feeling of shedding an old self. It felt like washing away some version of the past that needed to be released.

At times I felt like both people in Vuong ’ s poem —the one looking on and the one with the rain, but in both cases I was in a body where everything definitely had a price. And I was definitely a beggar on my knees. Cold winter days bled into rainy spring afternoons, and the world struggled to be bright. “It filled me to my core, ” Vuong writes, “like a skeleton. Even my name / knelt down inside me, asking / to be spared. ” One winter day, my mother called to tell me that my sisters all had COVID, and that she was sure she would have it soon as well. Everything knelt down inside me. Their names, my own, and the countless others who also heard such news weighed heavy in my soul.

Spring eventually arrived, and my family recovered from the virus within a few weeks. How many others were not spared though? My body felt unbearably heavy wading out into the world again. Even simple tasks felt impossible. Mary Oliver ’ s words reverberated across my bones: “You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves. ” I struggled to know what my body loved. All through March and April, I begged my body to speak to me and tell me what it desired. Spring felt impossible as the idea of new life always appeared off in the distance, but never quite in reach. But April drew to a close, and I felt my body eventually soften as the sun rose early and lingered longer in the sky at night. At the very beginning of May, having completed the mundane and tiring tasks for the week, I went to a park to sit in the sunshine and enjoy grapes. My life felt incredibly crammed into scheduled meetings, writing sessions, and household chores. So, I wrote a note to myself that I needed to sit outside in the sun for at least an hour. I hoped to do some reading while also letting my body soak in the warm glow of early summer. But when I arrived, my usual little corner of the park was overrun with small children, people with their dogs, and lovers. Apparently, the universe demanded that everyone leave their homes on the first warm day of the season.

I sat in the grass, allowing myself to take up the space with others. So much of our social life has been organized around maintaining distance from one another as we continue to survive a pandemic. Our most basic and essential needs have been fraught with peril for over a year now, and most of us have become experts in the art of solitude. So, as I sat in the park quietly eating my little grapes, letting my novel’ s words wash over me, I felt a heightened connection to the strangers around me. My muscles tensed in the fluctuating presence of the children who ran to and from the water, shrieking in delight.

After long periods of social isolation, any interruption in our physical spaces threatened our bodies with potential hazards to our personal health as well as the health of all our dearest people. Living through a pandemic taught us about the extreme vulnerability of our bodies. Interruption in our physical spaces has been dangerous for months with bodies carrying potential threats to our own wellness as the lives of all our dearest people. Re-learning to live together takes ardent and continuous energy. Yet, we are boundless in our capacity to exist with one

another. The pandemic has felt like a suspension of an incredibly long rupture in organizing our lives with other bodies.

While I sat near the shore of the lake, I let my toes sink into the earth and thought about what the world would look like now. Being suddenly surrounded by strangers in a park filled me with an awkward joy. There was a closeness in the distance that we maintained with one another, a connectivity in the silent agreement that this was enough for now. I put my book down, laid back on the grass, closed my eyes, and allowed myself to be present with others in a raw and trusting way. In the transition from spring to summer, as the world begins to reopen, we must learn to live together with respect for our embodied spaces, knowing that things will not be like this forever.

Mediations and Practices for Celebrating Litha

Litha is a time where we can celebrate the subdued knowledge of our bodies. It is a knowledge that our bodies have carried for so long, and it is bursting at the seams of our lives now as we are ready to dance and frolic in the summer sunshine. The fullness of life expands out from the earth and through the tendrils of our own bodies, reaching out further still as we unite across spaces to be with each other while also maintaining the spheres of our little worlds.

Litha is a time for acceptance of the self and others. It is a time to open our hands to the sun and let warmth circulate through us as we receive and release the beautiful moments from the spring that we ’ ve carefully nourished into blossoming. Litha is a time for letting go of our past mistakes and the judgments we ’ ve carried against our own bodies. Litha provides a space to release patterns that no longer serve us as we heal, and it is a time to rejoice in all that has provided peace, strength, and inner knowledge this year.

Litha is a time for us to be present with all we ’ ve carried. It is a time for a deep awareness of every muscle and every feeling that our bodies hold. Every tiny moment that has led us to the current position our bodies occupy. Every violence that our bodies have witnessed and carried. All of the joy we have shared with others as we recover. All of those disparate and uniquely challenging memories that make up the current moment sit with us now. Lithia invites us to rejoice in the infinite wonder of growth. The solstice celebration asks us to put aside the outward strife in order to be present with all that we have experienced, carried, and felt throughout the season of growth.

Litha is a time to engage with each other as part of a universal experience. While the spring solstice issued a cleansing ritual to help us move forward from winter, the summer solstice is a time for cleansing ourselves of self-doubt and self judgement as we rejoice in our connections to each other and the earth. To honor Litha ’ s season, below are some rituals that you can practice on this summer solstice to release self-judgement and rejoice in the

Water Ritual to Release Self-Judgment

The following is a ritual of release from The Book of Runes by Ralph H. Blum. The ritual can be performed in a variety of ways, such as wading into a pool, a river, or a lake. The simplest version of this would be to prepare a bowl of water that you can dip your hands in as you speak the following over your body:

I bathe myself in generosity, Appreciation, Praise and gratitude for my fellow beings, Self-acceptance, And enlightened understanding of my life experiences

This can be repeated a number of times for specific experiences you would like to release, or it can be performed as a general practice of releasing experiences collected throughout the year. The summer solstice invites us to rejoice in the release of any judgements that may have crowded into our lives this year. It is a time to witness how this release opens our bodies to receive even more light and joy.

As you release judgment and pain and begin to experience acceptance of the self and the positioning of the universe, you can also practice the following to create symbolic meaning around the event:

1) Building a flower crown or devoting time to drying/pressing flowers.

Later in the year, as the sun has begun to set sooner and darkness descends, you can place these symbols around your dwelling to remind you of what you learned during the release of the summer solstice.

2) Gardening

Clearing away any weeds and nourishing living plants is one way to celebrate your position in the cycle of all living things. As a caretaker of a garden, you can celebrate the many ways you have nourished life this year. Spend some time listening to the life forces that you have connected yourself to in this space. If you do not garden, you could dedicate some time to visiting a community garden or a friend’ s garden and join others in celebrating the life they cultivate.

3) Baking or cooking a meal for another person or family.

Creating something to be shared with another person can take many forms, but cooking with another or for another can provide a beautiful space to celebrate the many ways we take care of each other ’ s needs and enrich each other ’ s lives. Plan a meal with someone who has walked with you through the more challenging moments of the winter and spring. Or invite someone you want to know better into your space to share in a new ritual together. Rejoice together in the life that you ’ ve sustained together.

The summer solstice contains the deepest heart of summer. It is the crescendo in a year full of desires, challenges, heart aches, and jubilation. It is also the moment when the sunlight will start to wane, and summer begins to deepen into fall and eventually winter. We are at the peak of warmth. Delight and rejoice in all that has brought you to this moment.

References

Cixous, Hélène. Stigmata. Routledge, 2005. Oliver, Mary. Dream Work, Atlantic

Monthly Press, 1986. Vuong, Ocean. Night Sky with Exit

Wounds. Copper Canyon Press, 2016.