Summer Solstice: Light, Noticing & Nourishment
As we approach the summer solstice, we arrive at the longest day of the year. Summer offers more daylight than any other time of year. The land around us is full and vibrant, and much of what has been blooming through spring begins to bear fruit.
Light reveals, illuminates, and brings hidden things into view. When we look closely at nature, light is one element of what makes life possible and helps us see more when we take the time to notice. Plants also depend on water, healthy soil, and the broader web of relationships around to grow and flourish. Old growth falls away and decomposes, returning to the earth as food for the next generation.
The season around us doesn't always mark the season within. Yet, the solstice invites us to pay attention to where the light shines. It reminds us to pay attention to the relationships, gifts & sources of nourishment that sustain life.
As we gather, we invite you to come prepared to bring a reflection on the question:
At a season when the land is receiving abundant light, what sources of nourishment sustain you?
This could be a person, place or memory. If it feels meaningful to you, feel free to bring an object, song or art piece that helps tell that story. As we listen to one another, may we take time to notice what has sustained us and celebrate the ways in which life flourishes through connection and care.
A Wander: Following the Light of Nourishment
Find a place outside where light and shadow meet—a patch of grass, a tree casting shade, the edge of a river, or simply a place where you can pause and notice.
Take a few breaths and look around you. Notice what is growing. Notice what receives the light directly and what grows quietly in its shelter. Consider all that makes this life possible: the sun, the rain, the soil, the unseen networks of roots and fungi, the old growth that has returned to the earth as nourishment.
Then turn your attention inward.
What sustains your life in this season? Who or what nourishes your spirit, your creativity, your courage, your capacity to love? What relationships, practices, places, or moments of beauty help you flourish?
As you walk, pay attention to what is around you that represents the sources of nourishment you wish to honour—a stone, a leaf, a feather, colours that draw you or simply memories held in your heart. If you are going to gather anything ask for permission first or consider taking a photograph and leaving these gifts where they are.
Offer gratitude to this place that has held you on this wander, remembering that we are not sustained by light alone, but by the many relationships that make our lives possible.
Shadows on white paper ready to be traced
Creative Practice: Tracing the Light
Take a sheet of paper outdoors at a time of day when the sun is casting shadows. You may choose a leaf, flower, branch, stone, or another being from the place where you are sitting. Notice how the light creates both brightness and shadow, revealing shape, texture, and relationship.
Gently trace the shadow that falls across your paper, or trace the outline of the being itself. Then, using watercolours, pencil crayons, markers, or paints, allow colour to fill and flow into the spaces that emerge. There is no need to make a picture that looks like what you see. Instead, let the colours, shapes, and layers express what nourishes you.
As you paint, reflect on these questions:
What sources of nourishment sustain my life in this season?
What relationships help me grow and flourish?
Where is the light shining in my life?
What unseen forms of support surround me, like roots beneath the soil?
You may choose colours for different sources of nourishment—people you love, places that restore you, creative practices, dreams, more-than-human kin, or moments of beauty. Allow them to mingle and overlap, just as the many relationships of life intertwine.
When you are finished, spend a few moments simply looking at what has emerged. Notice where the colours gather, where the paper remains open, and what surprises you. Let your painting become a small map of the nourishment that carries you through this season of abundant light.
traced and coloured shadows