Yesterday was such a gift. Every day is a gift, but yesterday was a jewel of a day. Everything was gold, and green, and blue. It was still and lovely. We celebrated the Summer Solstice… once again in a non-traditional way. I don’t know exactly why the last couple of holiday rituals have not fit the mold, I only know that it’s ok because they’ve been right.

I tried to write the ritual in the traditional form, but several things quickly became clear. Summer Solstice needed to be celebrated while the sun shone. So we did. Also, most of our traditional ritual forms reach out – to other beings, to the divine, to something not here and now. The Silver Branch Tradition works with the spiritual forces, beings, gods and goddesses of the Stellar world, Surface world and Underworld… and yet what gets left out too often is the surface world – particularly in how we celebrate the holidays.

Not so this one.  Yesterday we celebrated the Surface world in all her summer glory. We sat among the trees in the shade and felt the summer air on our skin, we shared poems to Summer, to the gods, to the land and to this  place here, where it all comes together. We celebrated the first birthday of the Silver Branch tradition and shared what it has meant to us and we looked to the year ahead.

And we ate lovely, fresh, local summer foods, and drank mimosas, and shared, and laughed, and allowed the divine to walk among us here, where we are, on a beautiful summer’s day.