Summer Solstice Manifesto

Summer & Winter Solstices are easily the most under rated holidays on the calendar.  How can we let the longest and shortest days of the year slip by without paying them proper respect?  Shouldn’t kids be running around the street with cups of lemonade and sparklers?  Neighborhood barbecues with music and fireflies flitting about in the darkening humidity of the late evening ? Maybe next year.

This year I celebrated summer solstice on my own, but sweetly.  I picked flowers from our garden and placed them on the altar along with dates and almonds as an offering.  I chanted Gayatri Mantra 108 times and then sat for some time.  The Gayatri Mantra is traditionally chanted when one lights candles, watches the sunset or the sunrise.  It is a mantra which helps focus the mind onto the light within us, and ask for its guidance.  

With two months of summer vacation stretching gloriously ahead of me, I asked for guidance on how to spend such precious time.  This is what came to me.

This summer:

I grow deeper roots

I blossom creatively

I become healthier and stronger.

Yes, corny, but it rings true with meaning.  And it becomes my summer solstice manifesto.  What's your summer manifesto?