This Sunday has me feeling the rhythm of life. Well, multiple rhythms. Today is Father's Day; we dedicate a day to Fathers in an annual rhythm. And, we have reached the Summer Solstice. Daylight is at it's peak in the Northern Hemisphere as night recedes. Even if today is overcast or stormy, daylight still reigns over night, shrinking a relative tiny bit, so bask in the Light as you can. The weather forecast in L.A. county has high heat warnings for the week ahead, and https://heat.gov/ shows a great swath of heat warnings across the southern U.S.A. Pay attention to all those warnings. Yet, consider the cooler evenings of Solstice light as a gift of the rhythm of Nature, the rhythm of Life.
Even with the heat, this return of Summer Solstice, like the phases of the moon, and the rotating seasons, teaches us that life is rhythmic. And in that sense of rhythm, life is music; life is dance. In the human sphere, changes like extreme heat are experienced as disruptive to our human order of life. Here in L.A county, there has been a series of fires popping up as summer begins, including a big one last Wednesday. A massive warehouse fire in Boyle heights necessitated 'shelter in place' orders, and evening, 'wear-a-mask or stay-in-the-house-until-the-smoke-clears' warnings that reached the mountain areas where I live. It took until Saturday for the warnings to lift, and then be re-instated by further flare-ups. On one level, the daily human rhythm was disrupted (putting it mildly), on the other hand, the community, certainly the fire and police departments and immediately threatened neighborhoods, and even the freeway traffic (including the influx of World Cup traffic!), shifted to the rhythms of necessity. So much of human intervention, blindly separates human activity from the Natural World. Yet, humans do respond to life rhythms. We just haven't learn to relate our actions to the rhythm of Nature all around us.
The dictionary definition of rhythm gives us 'regular recurrence" or "patterns in time" that are applied to various "natural phenomena, language, or art." But Nature is never limited to such definition. The human body is rhythmic; breath is rhythmic, cardiac function is rhythmic, sleep/wake is rhythmic. The discipline of firefighters, police, hospitals, drivers of all sorts, as well as, the functioning of stores, food sources, suppliers of all that sustain civilization, and even the government, with its argumentative upheavals, all move within Life's rhythm. We respond, usually unconsciously, to the rhythmic all around us, to patterns that are taken for granted.
This week, I invite you to a new awareness of the rhythmic order underlying human scrambling. Start with your own awareness of the rhythms of your life, and your own rhythmic patterns. Is it possible, that your rhythm is actually in tune with the Cosmos? Life is Large. There are patterns embedded in patterns. Follow the rhythm guiding you. Let it keep you safe and free. (Susan Nettleton)
For poetry: https://poets.org/poem/song-myself-50 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud https://allpoetry.com/poem/13846951-Finding-Your-Rhythm-by-Arlene-Corwin