Skip to main content

Celebrating Litha

It has been a long, exceedingly cold, long winter. If I never hear the words polar vortex it will be too soon. The spring in this area was nothing to write home about either. I haven't completely packed away my winter sweaters because they still come in handy from time to time. But alas, Litha has ushered in summer with the longest day of the year, our wonderful solstice yesterday.

Today, I celebrated Litha inspired by these:


Thinking I was an awesome athlete:



I set out in the morning, doing what I've done to celebrate the arrival of summer since my earliest memories...I returned to the water, and it was awesome! Meditative and quiet, I was left feeling connected to nature around me and to my innermost self. My soul felt contented and complete.

Summer comes on swiftly with heat and testy storms in the Midwest. With its warmth there also comes the opportunity to delight and to retreat in pure unadulterated joy and the sweet memories this season invokes.

Though it was yesterday, my spirit continues to celebrate and welcome the gifts of Litha!


Labels:

Comments

  1. Susan ScottJune 23, 2014 at 9:31 PM

    Lovely, Stephanie thank you. We're smack into winter here though the days are bearable for the moment. Nights are freezing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stephanie BirdJune 26, 2014 at 11:25 AM

    Oh Susan! What a contrast to what we're feeling here. We've just finally licked winter.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Go ahead. Make my day by leaving a comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Gran Bwa

Gran Bwa is a lwa that helps you connect to ancestral roots or the spiritual home of Vodou. A friend of mine, who is an expert on Haitian Vodou, who has spent a lot of time in Haiti with the artists there, told me I had painted Gran Bwa when I made this spontaneous work out of walnut ink and sumi-ink on handmade paper. I had considered this painting a self-portrait. She now holds this piece in her private collection: Quite a few people are afraid of Vodou but it is an awe-inspiring tradition of bringing together plant energy with divinity, spiritual and personal energy. My friend who is very involved with Vodou, especially the art that surrounds it, is from European ancestry. She is light in spirit and bubbly, with a close relationship to nature and her garden.  Vodou affirms the relationships between cycles of life, trees of knowledge and spirit.  The Vodou vision of lwa , understands them as the intelligence of energy present in humans, nature and thoughts.  ...
5 comments
Read more

Tree Whispers

Tree Whispers Shinrin-yoku is a complementary medicine modality, designed to up-lift sub-par health conditions, through lifestyle changes that involve immersion in nature, specifically the wildness, we call a forest, where the senses, including our intuitive sense and ability to heal ourselves through it, is ignited. Forest bathing, as Shinrin-yoku is popularly called, has come to our attention, at a time when the scientific community is abuzz about the ability of trees - be it in stands, groves, or forests, to build community. This, at a time, when we as humans, struggle hard to build and sustain healthy in-person communities, in the face of Online communications. Books like “The Hidden Life of Trees: What they Feel, How they Communicate Discoveries from a Secret World,” (Wohlleben 2016) by Peter Wohlleben is a Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post bestseller. It makes readers privy to trees’ communication skills and social networks, that is, it helps us entertain...
Post a Comment
Read more

Art of Motherland Herbal

 Motherland Herbal is my latest book, set to be released June 11th by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins. It is a cross-genre work, primarily an herbal guide, with elements of memoir, and creative nonfiction. It encompasses my passion for folklore and mythology, from the African diaspora. I’m back here to begin a series of posts built around the art within its pages. Today, I share my inspiration for the book cover art. One of my favorite houseplants is our Money Tree. Rich in lore, intimately connected to abundance, prosperity and luck, I adore this plant. It is plentiful, in its growth habit, beautiful in its variety of green leaves and becomes luminous in the morning, when it catches light, hence the yellow-orange negative space around the leaves on the cover.  I enjoy the playful way the art director at Harper, inserted the text, showing the title, subtitle and my name. The cover was a wonderful collaborative effort. It is designed to be inviting, informative and lumin...
Post a Comment
Read more