Suddenly the summer sun shines on a day I cannot miss – like the Prince waking his Princess with a long-awaited kiss!
I’ve seen a fair few summers now, but Mother Nature has a way of heralding the seasons so that we view them with fresh eyes or at least appreciate them anew. Mornings now are bright, so bright we feel excited to get up. At 4.30 the other morning I had to rise and grab my camera to take pictures of the beautiful sunrise because each sunrise is unique and this one was spectacular.
As the poet Rumi says:
‘The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you – Don’t go back to sleep! You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep! People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep!
Perhaps Rumi is telling us here that right from morning time, we can break out of our habitual tendencies and become present. We don’t need to fall back into the same old routines. (Something I need to remind myself!). What does it mean when Rumi tells us to ask for what we really want? It can be interpreted in many ways but for me the ‘you’ asking is the one who wants to create a story of a fairer world and a unification of culture. The long summer hours help us fit more into our days and perhaps we have more time to ask for what we really want. Rumi reminds us how moments of awareness and choice are very subtle. We touch the ability to change, to go ‘back and forth across the doorsill’ – the doorsill is there and is open. We may ask what the ‘doorsill’ is? I interpret it as the way through to enlightenment. It is not just about changing ourselves necessarily, it is about hoping for a peaceful world. Awareness helps us work through new challenges and moral dilemmas.
A new summer can throw new light on what is around us. Or in front of us and our brothers and sisters. My heart goes out to those who face a summer being sent to a foreign land because we supposedly don’t have the resources to care for them here, and also to those whose country is torn apart through conflict.
I don’t however, feel the doorsill is just about moving forward, it is also about looking back too. Being aware of where we are from and acknowledging our past. Reaching out and feeling the love of days long gone. Summer days can be particularly evocative. The smell of newly mown grass, the fragrance of the first bunch of sweet peas or the blowsy bunch of roses will all catapult me back to childhood days. The summers seemed to last forever, and there was time for picnics and tree-climbing, swimming in the local brook and collecting tadpoles. I remember the loving arms of my parents and grandparents, the security of family.
How lucky I am to be able to stop and revisit the places I have grown up in. How will it be for those who are displaced to find their way to some peace this summer? For those who will only look back with sadness and feelings of loss.
I hope there will be a chance for those who wish for life to be just as it was, to find their way home.
‘Don’t go back to sleep’. Of course we will metaphorically. It’s human nature to forget there can be a wonderful, calm simplicity in this life and close our eyes to it; to forget how much love and care there is in this world when we look for it. But when we do awaken, life becomes a blessing.
Sometimes it takes a reminder like this to put us into a place of awareness where we can cross the doorsill, see hope and make change.
Notes From Dove Lane 