The Medicine of Time

Here we are. We've slipped (or slogged) past the longest day of this year, into the burn of summer (for the northern hemisphere). These long bright days feel so far from the darkness we are again moving toward. What do you notice as our orbit, the tilt within the turn, moves us into the hot season of summer? 

I notice. The return of the heat bug songs: cicadas, crickets, katydids. And cicadas have been on my mind, partially inspired by the upcoming Motherworld performance (event details below!) and because I listened to this essay about cicadas last week that reminded me of their brood emergence and life cycles. I am struck by the reminder of long tides of time and challenged to reflect on the way I tend to hold time. Even in my attempts to expand my imagination, I'm clocked into our cultural cycles of quarterly seasons or annual rhythms. We don't often take note or have practices of noticing the longer cycles of time. What does a 3 or 4 year cycle feel like? (outside of political terms, academic terms –or what if those could be imbued with nature's terms?)  What would a 13 or 17 year cycle feel like? 

How might expansive experiences of life's cycles shape the way we are in community with each other? Can we find support in a wider view of time?

This is a heavy question to sit with inside of our current social/political context. This year and last week alone has felt shockingly outside of time and simultaneously gripped to a spinning time that feels unwieldy, unyielding. The undercutting work of oppression is not only the violence enacted but the demand that we operate in reaction, that we sync our clocks to their panicked strategic time. How do we (continue to) be in the face of violent times? Can we remind each other of the pace of our healing? 

What medicine can time itself offer you this summer?

However you feel, I hope you have time and space to feel it. I hope you find the support you need to keep feeling. It is in our ability to be in tune with our felt-sense of aliveness that we can continue to build the life our futures need. May this summer bring you the heat you need to feel your rage, your grief, your joy, and your wonder. May you find nourishment in connection with others and in right-relationship with the natural world. May our commitment to freedom set the pace of our time.