Summerland

I was very fortunate to grow up in Pennsylvania.  The place I grew up was more rural than not. I now live in a small town not far from my parents' home and I am still very fortunate in that the borough in which I live is a small town surrounded by mostly rural townships.  I do not take any of this for granted.  I do not believe I would thrive in an urban environment.

But I do not take advantage of the blessings of my surroundings as much as I could.  I drive to work 5 or 6 days a week. I work all day in an enclosed building (banks do not have windows that can be opened). I drive home and eat something and I spend time with my Pwca, reading or writing and performing my daily practice.  On Sundays (the one day the bank is closed) I spend an hour or two at a place beside a stream in the woods at a park 5 minutes away by car.  I take offerings and I sing and I listen. 

These visits are completely necessary for my well being and my health, and for nurturing my relationships with the Fae. They are also necessary for nurturing my soul, my spirit, my relationship to my Self.  They are healing and learning and life giving. It is there that I can breathe in the air and hear the trees and smell the water and feel the sunlight and watch the Herons glide silently with strength and grace.  It is there that I can remember the magick I felt as a child.  And it is there that I can feel it once again and reconnect with the universe within and without. 

Summer is a time when the magick of life is full to overflowing.   The air is warm and fragrant. The trees are in full leaf in a million shades of green.  Fish swim in the deep waters and birds fly in the blue sky.  Deer run through the woods and foxes too.  Fawns come out of hiding to follow their mothers.  At twilight, fire-flies rise from the grasses to blink in peridot green to find each other and fulfill their life-purpose (to mate). 

I love summer in the natural world.  I love walking barefoot in the grass and in the mud and feeling the breeze on bare arms and dangling bare legs in cool water flowing by.  I love sitting in the shade of the trees and hearing the wind whisper in the leaves.  I love watching the sunlight create stars on the surface of the water. 

The past few weeks I have been working at a new place and the drive to and from work is longer.  I can no longer retreat to my home in the middle of the day, and when I get home I am tired and sore.  But I need to spend more time walking outside.  Some things are just more important than how tired and sore I might feel. 

I am going to try to walk for a few minutes after work every day.  There is a cemetery on a hill behind my home and I am going to visit there each evening.  The Summerland is a name Pagans sometimes use to refer to the place our souls may go after incarnation, or that our spirits might visit between incarnations.  It is a place of beauty and peace and rest, full of pleasures and fruit and flowers. But the word invokes in me the life of summer in the land where I live, where I have lived my entire life.  I need to spend some time everyday in the land of summer…at least until the Wheel turns again.