We are fast approaching the longest day of the year in this Northern Hemisphere. Daylight/sunshine is precious for reasons almost too numerous to list; such as, reasons related to vegetation; reasons related to food; reasons related to bone health to mental health and on and on. Energy from the sun is essential for life on our planet.
The saints will tell us that we all have an inner diamond, which, in order to be fully itself the diamond must absorb as much light as is possible.
Do you have plans for this longest day of 2025? Or would you rather just be surprised by how your summer solstice day unfolds?
Mary Oliver has written the following poem entitled “The Summer Day” which might inspire your plans/or not for the way you spend the longest day of this year.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?-Mary Oliver
Blog by Sister Elaine Cole
Image: Rajiv Bajaj/Unsplash
