01 Oct A New Midsummer Night’s Dream
This year’s Summer Solstice is a once in a lifetime event.
On June 20th, the highest, fullest point of the sun, typically considered masculine, will coincide with a full moon, typically feminine. This only happens once every 70 years or so. The last time was 1948, just as the world was recovering from the shell shock of WWII. That not only seems like a lifetime ago—it was.
I see this as signifying a confluence and balance of gender values. While the masculine sun waxes and wanes in a yearly cycle, holding its power for a longer time, the moon cycles monthly from dark to full. But rarely does the full feminine coincide with the full masculine.
It’s an interesting time for this to happen—a time when gay and trans issues are up everywhere, a time when a woman might be our next president for the first time in 240 years, (even the chance of a female vice president), and a time when the heat of the life-giving sun threatens our civilization through global warming.
A new kind of balance between masculine and feminine is desperately needed, and perhaps this year’s ancient holiday signifies a turning point in our maturity as a species.
Fullness represents maturity, and despite the way it may look, the people of the world are maturing. In adulthood, we learn to work together. We learn to get along, to cooperate, to co-create, to collaborate.
I know it may sound hard to believe, but consider the larger movements underneath our tragedies. Despite the fact that a single, crazed hate-monger can shoot out a gay bar, the larger world is rallying around gay rights and gun control. It took a long time to legalize gay marriage, but finally it happened. It’s taking a long time to pass gun control, but eventually it will happen too, and I hope it’s sooner rather than later. I may not see it in my lifetime, but eventually we will outgrow war as a way to solve conflict, and learn to control population through better means. Women’s right to birth control and child-bearing decisions are an important part. It’s been less than a hundred years since we gained the right to even vote.
The male-dominated world is falling and a new noble masculine is rising—as men come together in integrity, to protect, to lead, and to innovate—separating the men from the boys. A new feminine is rising, and while it has to look fairly masculine to begin with, there is a deeper order underneath that is ripening, an order of compassion, equality, and peace.
This doesn’t happen in our leaders alone, but in each and every one of us as we expand ourselves to embrace both feminine and masculine within, and to honor the divine feminine and masculine without.
Make this Solstice count for something that brings wholeness to your life. Honor these archetypes in your meditation or practice. Celebrate that life does move on, children grow up, and parents come together to create a new generation.
The Sacred Marriage is a integration of opposites: heaven and earth, mind and body, masculine feminine, dark and light. And from this marriage we become the parents of the future.
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