Summertime

It finally feels like summer in this northern city in which I live. I am slightly sunburned and hot. As I walked the dog, I noticed a scent which reminded of the ocean. I thought, "how could that be? I am thousands of miles from the sea" and then I realized that I was a passing a garden of petunias. Their gentle peculiar scent was what I associated with the ocean. The beach that I grew up on had planters lining the boardwalk and so, it was not the Atlantic that I smelled but flowers.

How nice to smell the flowers without even stopping. Drinking in their fragrance is restorative as is the feeling of laziness that the heat brings on. I feel so lucky, so fortunate for the time to spend in the summer sun and cloud. I am lucky, yes, but I have also chosen a path which allows me such luxuries.

I feel fortunate also that I have woken up in time to realize how much I have. This spring I was feeling restless, unable to appreciate the wealth of my life. Thanks to some good friends and breaking open some old beliefs, I am closer to being who I am than I have been in the past. There is a song by Leonard Cohen that goes:

"Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in"

That sense of being less than perfect, of being vulnerable, is what opens us to the light and, also, how our light gets out. I look at the record of my journey from fear into fun and am amazed by the transformation. I still get scared. I still get stuck. But, I continue to learn to leap when my heart tells me and to just be still when my heart says so. The biggest challenge is clearing away the morass of daily life to hear my heart. Music (and I've had plenty in this summer of concerts and folk fests) ...nature (whose beauty I witnessed in six National Parks this summer)... activity (yoga in my favorite studio, mountain biking in new places, and trying a new water sport - Stand Up Paddeboarding - on a whim) all help me to hear, to be. I am grateful.