Midsummer Reflections on Presence & Aliveness
Stone Henge on a Midsummer Eve
What are you noticing at Midsummer? What is standing out to you?
Perhaps it’s the longer days, the late sunsets, the early bird song, the lush greenery, the vibrant flowers, the animals, or the rhythm of summer activity.
In the northern hemisphere, the Summer Solstice has just passed - 21st June - marking six months since the Winter Solstice. Since then, the light has been returning, minute by minute, leading us to this peak of brightness. Here in the UK, at Solstice we gain around 8 hours and 50 minutes of daylight since the darkest day. The sun is at its strongest, nature is in full bloom, and growth surrounds us.
In the Celtic and Pagan traditions, this moment is marked as Litha – a celebration of fullness, awakening, aliveness, and abundance. If the Spring Equinox is a time of waking and birthing, then the Summer Solstice is a time of full aliveness, a crescendo of vitality.
Traditionally, this moment also offered a pause in the agricultural calendar, between the planting and the harvesting, a moment of rest and celebration. A time when weddings often took place, and life and love could be celebrated.
I’ve loved reclaiming the ancient seasonal rhythms and rituals from my own Christian and Celtic lineage. They invite me into a deeper harmony with the seasons of the earth, the movements of the soul, and the Divine Mystery I call God.
This year, a word that’s been rising up in me is eroticism, in the way Esther Perel speaks of it, not as a word bound solely to sexuality, but as a deep connection to aliveness:
“Eroticism, how people connect to a quality of aliveness, of vibrancy, of vitality, of renewal. And that is way beyond the description of sexuality. And it is mystical. It is actually a spiritual, mystical experience of life. It is a transcendent experience of life, because it is an act of the imagination.”
So I find myself asking:
What enables life to flourish in and around us? What awakens the soul?
During the online Midsummer Retreat, we spent time with Mary Oliver’s much-loved poem The Summer Day, in which she writes:
“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention…”
For me, honouring the seasons is a way of paying attention, to the earth, to my own soul, to others, and to the Sacred.
In her poem, Mary walks through fields, lies in the grass, and shares a moment with a grasshopper eating sugar from her cake. She marvels at the simple pleasure of being present in the day - choosing to be idle and blessed.
That word “idle” can often carry negative connotations, but she reframes it. It reminds me of the Christian mystic Anthony de Mello, who wrote that we must learn to waste time creatively. That simply being - resting, wandering, paying attention- is not a waste, but a sacred act. A creative attentiveness that may even be a form of prayer.
Mary ends her poem with the much-quoted line:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Often pulled out of context this line can sound like a call to do something extraordinary or impressive with your life. But when held within the contemplative context of the poem, it reads as an invitation to presence. To ask ourselves: How am I living? What am I noticing? Am I truly here, in this one wild and sacred moment?
So I leave you with some gentle midsummer questions to ponder:
What does it feel like to be truly present in your life?
When do you feel most alive, vibrant, and free?
What does a life of fullness and growth look like, not in terms of productivity, but in being?
Where are you being invited to rest, to notice, to bless the ordinary?
And from another Mary Oliver poem, Blue Iris, she writes:
“Now I am free to be myself — who am I?”
If you were truly free, free to be fully yourself, what qualities would you live from? What would you pay attention to?
You can still purchase the Midsummer Retreat - 2 hours of gentle meditation and reflection and journaling. Email me at anna@livelightdwelldeep.org.