Solstice supplications

If you’re not doing anything useful this morning and have a hankering to change your lot in life, you’re in luck. It’s that time of year again, the summer solstice, when we are genetically tugged, perhaps celestially shoved, to place a toll-free conference call to the cosmos.

At 8:26 a.m., the Earth’s axis is tilted most directly toward the sun, marking the beginning of summer for the northern hemisphere.

Nearly every culture throughout history ritualistically marked the summer solstice — the longest day and the shortest night of the year — to symbolically seize the sun’s power and goodwill for the growth of crops, the fertility of the womb or to jumpstart a stalled psyche.

Back in the Stone Age, they scratched marks in bone and ivory to tally such celestial adjustments. At Stonehenge in England — indeed, on nearly every continent, including ours — thousands of years ago people with naturally strong lumbar support and lots of time on their hands upended impossibly heavy stones, bringing them into line with the rising summer solstice sun.

More than 4,000 years ago in China some lucky citizens would make the ultimate sacrifice by ultimately becoming a sacrifice. They were buried in the earth to counterbalance the feminine earth with the strapping solstice sun.

The solstice ceremonies of the Hopi Indians in the southwest were less demanding. The Hopis would don feathers and masks to conjure the dancing spirits of rain and fertility, and they would light fires to give the sun a boost so that it would remain powerful throughout the growing season.

Some early Christians lit fires during the solstice to honor Saint John the Baptist, whom Jesus called a “burning and shining light.”

This is all to say, the summer solstice has been habitually meaningful to humanity.

Clearly, there’s a transition of power going on, both on the small and large scales. In our bodies, our sun-kissed pineal glands go on summer break, and most of us have more energy. Out in the universe, with the sun at it furthest point from the equator, it’s a near celestial pile-up — the Creator’s equivalent to getting all His ducks in a row.

But what are we, modern people of today, to do about it — we who are so disconnected from the natural order, for whom laughter, music and vegetables have increasingly become so thoroughly canned?

We could break out our inner Druid. That’s one option.

I was once invited to a late-night, deep woods, “solstice party” up in Savoy or Windsor, I think. (Silly me, I thought it’d be a keg party.) They were beating on drums, chanting toward the heavens, dancing around a bonfire. I remember a young woman with feathers in her hair saying something about how the summer solstice “is the full bloom of what you want to accomplish this year, a shift in energy from seedling to mature creation.”

The truth is, for me at the time, watching middle-class former grad students jumping ceremoniously over flames, banishing demons and conjuring good graces rang false. Like listening to Michael Bolton sing Motown.

In retrospect, I respect their good intentions. Certainly, we could all stand to light the little wild flame and stand around it and remind ourselves we’re connected to creation and that we’re being cared for and that our humility makes us stronger. (Funny, even our noontime shadows today will be the shortest of the year. Go figure.)

Or here’s another option for today: Light the grill and sacrifice some baby back ribs.

Above all else, it’s officially summertime as of 8:26 a.m., and dog gone it, and we need no further excuse to bang the drum or thank the heavens.

And, with haste, as the sun makes its mad tick or tock back toward the tropics, I’ll pitch a few solstice requests out to the vanishing point and hope for a returned call:

May there be peace on earth for a change of pace.

May blue- and red-state voters this November get a grip and agree on a sensible shade of purple.

May this year’s Berkshire graduates live long and happy and forever cherish good memories of their hometowns — and maybe even return to raise families here and volunteer in the community.

May T.J. Shea and all soldiers serving overseas come home safely.

May Monica Corbitt get well soon.

May this year’s sweet corn be at least half as good as I remember last year’s being.

And may the June groom kiss the bride with a flutter in the heart that never subsides.

Happy summertime.