Sun Worship and Other Paradoxes

Happy Solstice! I hope the summer sun is brightening your world!

I was blessed to be born on the longest day of the year and I do have a very special affinity for the sun!

And yet...I always wear sunglasses, and not just because the risk of ocular melanoma is rising exponentially with the loss of the ozone. My pale blue peeps are remarkably light sensitive and I am easily blinded by any form of daylight.

And I own stock in the makers of SPF. My fair skin (a kind euphemism for my particular shade of pallor) is prone to horrific burning, though I do make a better run of it than my sister, who has on more than one occasion found herself hospitalized for sun stroke, sun poisoning and high altitude burns. The up-side, from what I understand is that we melanin-challenged individuals are far less prone to frostbite than others.

And frankly, I hate to be hot. I live the Pablo Neruda line: "In the full light of day I walk in the shade."

As I have been watching the recent flooding in the mid-west and the onset of the fire season in the far west, it's occurred to me that we all suffer from this kind of weather-related paradox. In farm country, run-off is a blessing, an anticipated ritual, a marker of time, and a signal that the new season for growing crops has begun. Run off brings a torrent of plenty and the promise irrigation throughout the summer. And yet too much rushing water brings dread, anxiety and destruction.

The ancients believed they might gain an upper hand with Nature by praying and sacrificing to the gods. Bringing pleasure and satisfaction to the spirit world was meant to appease those forces that would otherwise bring flood, famine, lightning and forces of destruction. Sometimes it appeared to work...

Today, we build levees and dikes, dams and reservoirs. And at times, it appears to work.

I think it is inevitable that we humans will keep trying our hand at this. Just as the sun will bring the solstice again and again, we will make our efforts again and again. What's most interesting to me, though, is our relentless optimism, our apparent belief that we will some day find the way to prevail.