“O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.” 

Albert Camus

This week summer settled in my bones. I am unsure why I felt summer this week or if it will continue as bright green trees eventually turn toward Autumn. Today, I am thinking of summer. Today, I am thinking about where I find my juice, jazz, and jump. How do I find my rhythm, flow, and center? When do I charge, build, and create? Summer is about finding all that. Somewhere in between vulnerability, integrity, audacity, strength, and knowing, I stop, reflect, and recharge again and again, as much as I can, for as long as I can.

What is the relationship between invincibility and rest? How do they live in the same body and brain? How do they not live in the same body and brain? Katherine May writes about the value of what she calls “wintering” — slowing down, reflecting, chewing, digesting, and healing — and suggests wintering can occur at any time. 

Wintering is critical to uncovering our invincible summer. Stay with me. We each know invincible summer — the space inside filled with deep love for ourselves, others, and our world. Rest is the heart of invincible summer. That is where we are. It is summer, and we need to accept the invitation to rest.

What I Keep Learning

To Rest Like a Tree

Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a great tree in the midst of them all. – Buddha’s Little Instruction Book

I love trees. I have a list of my favorite trees from different places I have lived. The cherry tree in the front yard of my first childhood home. The willow trees next to the swings in my childhood neighborhood. The massive oak in the backyard of the house my parents owned for more than 30 years. The tree outside my house in Bellingham framed Mt. Baker. The trees in Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC. The trees in Friendship Park in Cincinnati. The Banyans in my neighborhood in Miami. The trees that line the Atlanta Beltline.

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Porch Swing, Summer in a Glass

Porch swing, summer in a glass./ Drinks get named for thirsts we discuss.// Discussions skirt deeper thirsts./Such thirsts burn, turn sand to mirages./ A mirage is a drink the mind mixes./In a glass marked no it pours out yes.// Yes, the sign says, this door is an entrance./At the portal, fields flower without end.// End of the road, grim terminus./We’re thirsty, we get force-fed. — Andrea Cohen

Summer is the time for deep thirst. Something about heat: we long for something. Longing agitates rest. Longing pokes the soft underbelly of rest. We need to escape. We search to fill the empty. We dance or cry. We retreat into quiet or burst into song. If wintering, as Katherine May suggests, is about allowing ourselves to turn inward, reflect, and heal, summering is about turning outward and allowing ourselves to feel deeply and state our desires. Rest, there, looks like relief and laying our burden down. The naming and claiming of our passions, the statement of our most sincere wishes and dreams, the calling into reality a deeply held “yes” is how we quench summer’s thirst and rest.

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Shall I Compare The To A Summer’s Day

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,/ So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. — Shakespeare

Love, like summer, is rest, stillness, and slowing down. Love, like summer, is rejuvenation, quiet, and growth. Love, like summer, breath, beauty, and joy. Love, like summer, is light, brilliance, and warmth.

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Paying Attention

Katherine May reads an excerpt from ‘Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times’ – On Being

The Art of Stillness — Pico Iyer

Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day? (Sonnet 18)”

Porch Swing, Summer in a Glass, Andrea Cohen

How to rest effectively — The Atlantic