Ease Into It…

Memorial Day heralds the start of summer for many and here in Austin, with graduations behind us, the traffic is lighter, and the temperature is rising. Summer is here! How will you spend it?

Back in 1967, we had “the summer of love.” It feels like we’re in need of “the summer of slow” right now.

With so much change and negativity coming at us, our minds can speed up, leading to some ultimately self-sabotaging ways of distracting ourselves from the hamster wheel in our heads.

What helps you slow down your body, mind, and spirit enough so you can be present to the blessings of the season? Is it long walks (my favorite), time in meditation, Tai Chi, or a yoga practice? Maybe this summer you can try out a new “slow down” practice. Explore breathwork, finger painting, or coloring outside the lines. Or visit that park or museum you’ve been saying you wanted to check out for years.

We do not know what events will arise on the national stage or what we may be called to do. But we can practice self-care by resting often (even in 5-minute stretch breaks), listening deeply for what will best restore our energy, and then move slowly forward into a summer that nourishes and even uplifts us no matter what is unfolding around us.

Please join me in a slow, slow summer…of loving self-care.

May blessings appear every time you choose to slow down to renew your body, mind, and spirit. And may this slower pace lead to many moments to savor this summer.

Slow Down…

“It always pays to dwell slowly on the beautiful things—the more beautiful the more slowly.”

—Atticus

Unplug!

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”

—Anne Lamont

The Rhythms of Your Life

“Being slow means that you control the rhythms of your own life. You decide how fast you have to go in any given context.”

—Carlo Petrini

The Sunflowers

Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.
Their faces are burnished disks,
their dry spines

creak like ship masts,
their green leaves,
so heavy and many,
fill all day with the sticky

sugars of the sun.
Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy

but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young—
the important weather,

the wandering crows.
Don’t be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,

which follow the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds—
each one a new life!—

hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands
in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,

is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy. Come

and let us talk with those modest faces,
the simple garments of leaves,
the coarse roots in the earth
so uprightly burning.

–Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press.