a1sx2_Thumbnail1_Laurie-Crain-Tree-of-Life1.jpgSummer Solstice is just around the corner. This Saturday marks the longest day of the year.

The sun-drum is high and taut as the wheel lifts to the peak of ascension. Gaia stretches out luxuriously; flowers pour from her, colours, light, heat—time to rest, play, blossom—flowers in our hair and our hearts wide open to celebrate Beauty, Grace of Earth. We gather together, travel and dance, campfires opening like stars on the land as long lovely blue velvet nights wrap us in ease. Yet we have Gaia's work to do: Earth is heating up, strangely, erratically, scorching lands into deserts, setting wild fires. Water, that sweet companion of solace to heat, comes ferocious in floods and storms, or refuses us rain, so we thirst. Our crops are now burnt, now drowned. Earth, Air, Fire and Water spin out of their true integration.

Let each circle be a powerhouse—each drum, each throat open in prayer for Gaia and her continuance to be at the heart of all we do. Our world will only come into balance if we make our own radical shifts, bringing women's wisdom into the centre.

Rose Flint © Mother Tongue Ink 2013