Tucker Farley Shares Thoughts in a Time of Pain

This site shares, and invites comments on, these thoughts offered by resident Tucker Farley in our time of shared pain.

In a time of darkness and mourning, as we approach the longest day of light, a musician whose pulse is attuned to life’s heartfelt rhythms has shared this and I offer it to my new community:
– Sweet Summer Solstice Balances Life’s Bitterness –
by James Carroll
Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company (excerpted) shared by Paul Winter.

“This is the week toward which the year has been straining. The fullness of light transforms awareness. Each day prolongs itself. Time is reinvented, as the present tense comes into its culmination. Approaching next week’s summer solstice, Earth seems to slow in its turning. The sun loiters. Evening slides luxuriously into night, which reliably cuts itself short with dawn. All of nature tugs at human consciousness to say: Notice this.

“And when has astronomy ever done more for the lifting of the spirit? The suspended moments of time’s zenith are sacraments of life’s goodness. Haste, duty, and the hassles of work have no admittance here. In the coming week, you will remember with love all those with whom you have found your ease in such suspension — companions of summer. And in recalling such release, you will look for more. Ironically, this is how you deepen your feeling of responsibility for the world. It is the one thing you have learned: to be at peace is the way to prepare to work for peace.

“There is no coping with the heartbreak of the human condition without a nurtured sense of the heart when it is full. It is the business of the summer solstice, through the weave of memory and desire, to nurture that plenitude. That is why, on each day of its approach, you will note the rampant timelessness of evening. In the morning, you will let your eyes drift from the wartime news to the red-breasted bird on the window ledge, to join in its watching.”
With love and hopes for healing,
Tucker