Inti Raymi: a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground

Happy Summer Soltice, y'all! Today is the longest day of the year and the first day of summer. Quite the reason to celebrate, if you ask me. I hope you all were able to get outside and spend some quality time with Mother Earth on her highest day. Thankfully, the weather held up beautifully and I was able to take full advantage of almost all the hours of glorious sunshine (I didn't get up at 5:13 in the morning so I missed a few of those early morning rays...).

First thing in the morning, a few friends and I headed out to Seeds of Solidarity in Orange, MA for a solstice gathering. (As a side, SoS is an awesome educational nonprofit farm that is completely no-till, meaning they do not cultivate the soil with any sort of tillage such as plowing and the like. Instead, they use cardboard to suppress weeds and plant their seeds into holes in order to not disturb the living organisms that inhabit the soil and make healthy soil structure. Pretty awesome stuff, but hard to do on a bigger scale, such as our operation at Stone Soup.)

We had an hour of mediation; this was time set aside to listen to the world speak around us as well as to begin to remember our ancestral selves, our past lives, or simply attempt to return to the essence of who we are for a few moments. It was some much-needed silence and reflection for most of us in the circle, I think. Afterwards, a Creek Indian Shaman who was present at the ceremony blessed us each in turn in his traditional language. The smell of burning sage always brings back many wonderful memories of past ceremonies such as this one, and I am thankful to have another memory to add to that mix.

Once we had all been given blessings, we began our group effort to build a circle mandala on the land. People laid down flowers, lavender, written notes on colored paper, and other works of art. One person planted a Columbine tree in the circle and the shaman put a bone from a deer's throat in the center. A mother and her two beautiful children were in attendance and they poured some sand that the mother had from her ancestral home of Bengal in Southern India. A very moving moment, indeed.

We did a few more rituals involving the seven directions (south, west, north and east, plus sky and earth, and then the self) and my friends and I read a meditation written for the occasion. We ended with a prayer circle and potluck. All in all, it was a magical morning.

After this, I returned to the farm and spent the first part of the afternoon with my toes in the soil, hoeing our nightshades in the field. Tomatoes, eggplants and peppers - freeing them of weed pressure so they can get big and healthy!

The second part of my afternoon was spent lounging around in various rivers and waterfalls around the Amherst area. I won't even say more because words can't describe the sense of peace and beauty that pervades those woods, those waters. I am thankful.