Deep time, light chasing and the umbra
~ A reflection at summer solstice
These days I think about time a lot.
About the interwoven relationship between the darkness and the light.
About how we as people measure time in such small ways: years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds.
About how in doing so, we miss a bigger something.
Because our human measurement is one thing, but time has another rhythm too - generations, centuries, millennia, eons…
Deep time.
Both rhythms matter and yet we forget to let ourselves connect with the richness and beauty of the longer, slower, truer, more enduring thing.
It is both soothing and enabling when we do.
As we arrive at this weekend of Summer Solstice, precious though it is, there can be a pressure to be with and celebrate the light.
Of course that’s important and needed, but this time signals something else too.
Deep time energy reminds us that the darkness is also needed and that the light can take years, even a lifetime to resurface and show itself fully.
You don’t need to search for or hold onto the light, or the darkness, because you are them.
Your body is the turning of the seasons and the passage of life through them, so you just need to let it be.
If you’re struggling to find or make good contact with the light right now, I hope you can find some comfort in that. We took a long time to get here, through ages in the umbra, but get here we did, and onward we’ll go.
