By some reckonings, today is the first day of Summer. Hooray!

Other ways of counting time call this day Midsummer. Half over already? Didn’t I just put away that sweater I wear in the chilly mornings?

I find them both helpful, to be honest.

Seeing today as the first day of a new season – one of kayak trips and fireflies, long dusks and juicy peaches – offers us yet another beginning, and I tend to rely on those. I need multiple New Year’s in the one year, and multiple dawns in the one day. These offer me the chance to take stock, regroup, and start again. Choose again, they invite. Set off in a better direction. Refresh your mind and heart. You can start again as often as you like.

Seeing today as Midsummer puts me in tune with the old Celtic way of reckoning time in which Summer began on the first of May and Autumn commenced at the start of August. This is a farming calendar, and it’s meant to put the most essential things in perspective right quick. Don’t waste a minute, it urges. The light is here now but it won’t stay.

The older I get, the more deeply I understand: it’s a sacred art to move through time gracefully.

Sometimes I observe myself being positively profligate with time. I dawdle, I lose myself in trivialities, I allow myself to be caught in the net of some foolish story or drama.

Other times, I subject myself to a forced march of productivity. I am a doer by nature. I have a lot of energy, and I drive myself hard, often overestimating what I can accomplish and winding up working long, weary hours to fulfill my vision.

Sometimes I pretend time isn’t passing. Sometimes I terrify myself with the idea that time is running out and I stuff the hours with tasks and obligations.

The best times – the happiest, most fulfilling and sensible – find me sailing not through but in time. I’m a captain at the wheel, glorying in the sun and the waves, quietly joyful as the boat moves with its own kind of joy through time and space.

I remember that the heart of graceful living is choosing, and the best choices are those that emanate from the heart.

It’s simultaneously true that there is plenty of time and that it’s a precious resource.

It’s also true that the way we relate to time is a mirror for the way we relate to ourselves.

One Irish proverb reminds us, “As long as Summer is, so Winter comes eventually.”

Let’s open our hearts to this beautiful Summer.

Let’s step up to the wheel and sail in its infinite, finite, shining Sea!

Photo by Marc Wieland on Unsplash