Solstice Omen

I get up quietly, pull on sweats and tip-toe downstairs.  It's only 6:30 but the sunlight has been filtering through the leafy canopy out back for awhile, casting lacy shadows, inviting me to wake up.

I slide open the back door, careful not to stir the wind chimes, and toss my cushions out onto the porch. It's refreshingly cool. On the  porch rail some crystals are infused with sun and starlight.

It's almost the exact moment of alignment -- 6:51 -- when I sit down, facing east, arranging myself cross-legged on the cushions.  I imagine the gentle rays of the rising sun christening my brow on this, the longest day of the year -- the Summer Solstice.

Despite the fresh new day, troubling realities distract like cawing crows.  Chaos in the Middle East. Legislative battles just to get GMOs labeled. Corporations usurping the people's power. Heart-breaking gun violence. Weather anomalies. Streets are flooded, forests aflame and homes left in twisted piles of lumber in the wake of another tornado. They're blowing the tops off the Smokey Mountains to extract coal.

What!?

Obviously I'm having trouble  settling into meditation.

I turn my attention to beacons of hope:  strong voices calling for a radical shift in the thinking that got us here. Gregg Braden, in The Turning Point: Creating Resilience in Times of Extremes, says an evolutionary leap in awareness is the only practical way to meet current challenges.  Marianne Williamson is shaping a new paradigm that combines the power of prayer with sustainable solutions as a way toward peace. Leaders in the New Consciousness movement urge us to snap out of the malaise that makes us want to opt-out of the mess we've made (or has been made right under our noses). They urge us to take up a cause we feel passionate about and not let up until it's fixed.  Like the fact that special interests are a malignant cancer destroying the ideal of public service from the inside out.

OK, breathe.  Connect to earth and sky.  Let all this percolate into perspective.

On this day the solstice sunrise is framed by ancient structures around the globe built to honor it's life-giving light.  Pyramids and megalithic ring stones reflect the wisdom of our ancestors, who blended science and spirituality for a wholeness -- holiness -- that we are on the verge of re-discovering.   These exact alignments serve to bring us into alignment with the great rhythms and cycles of the earth and sky.

Now I'm breathing softly.  The cardinal whistles. Squirrels rustle in upper branches.   Illumination comes.

May I come into alignment with my deepest truth.

May  humanity come into alignment with its deepest truths.

May we find ways to co-exist with each others' truths.

May we honor the truth that Nature teaches.

Later, on my walk, a gift from Hawk -- messenger of portents and omens.  I take this as a good one.

On this day of light, may we  be the bringers of light.