By Deborah McDermott

Not long ago on a Saturday morning, I stood with my garden rake surveying the vegetable plot. Just a few weeks earlier, it had still been barren, still holding onto the last vestiges of winter’s brittle mantle. No longer. The earth had yielded to the sweet grace of spring, and a cacophony of weeds and grass had sprung up seemingly overnight.

I had been looking forward to that day of preparing the garden, of sinking the rake into the dark ground rich from years of compost. The week prior had been long and far from fortuitous. For more than a year now, my colleagues at work and I have witnessed wave after wave of layoffs, people we knew and liked no longer at their desks. Now we are so few and doing so much. Earlier in the year, we’d learned there would be no raises come April. That past week, we’d been told there would be none in 2010, either, and other cutbacks were forthcoming.

And so I not only wanted, but viscerally needed the physical labor that morning -- needed to feel the earth in my hands, beneath my fingernails, ground into my old work jeans. For me, work in the earth is a spiritual practice, a time to connect with Gaia, with the Mother, a time to center and find peace and, if I am very lucky, a time for the quiet voice within to give me signs. I began to turn the ground, the strengthening sun warmly hugging my body like an old friend I hadn’t seen in a while. Still, I was aware that I was fighting myself, not ready to leave my woes behind and give over to this nourishing work. I was frustrated. I was scared. I was NOT centered. And then I heard the unmistakable ping of metal hitting stone. Bending over, I groped in the ground until my fingers closed around a small bit of rock. I opened up my palm to look, and I began to laugh. There in my hand -- misshapen, rough hewn, flecked with soil and unmistakable – was a heart.

Now, there are signs along the way that I’ve undeniably missed. There are others that I’ve noticed and chosen to ignore. But there aren’t too many I’ve come across that so clearly say, PAY ATTENTION. And the message here was so clear.

Take heart, said Gaia. Take heart.

Life is not always fair, nor is it always kind. There are people here today who have shared my path or gone further down it, to layoffs, to lost retirement funds, to a reordering of life. This is not an easy time for many.

Others here today travel down a different but no less bumpy path. Some of you have lost loved ones. Some have felt that gnawing, oh-please-no feeling of a coming depression. Friendships have been lost, marriages have been questioned, children have left, medical problems discovered.

Sometimes life leaves us scared. It leaves us waking up in the middle of the night, unbidden, only to have the mind engage immediately, start racing pell-mell toward the million questions that in daytime are so easily compartmentalized, tucked out of the way.

But I am here to tell you today that one of those bumps in the path could be a heart-shaped rock. Take heart. That is the message of the summer solstice. Take heart in the abundance that is everywhere around you. The winter is gone, the wheel has turned to the fullness of life.

As we sang at earlier, let it be a dance. For the good times and the bad times, too, let it be a dance.

That doesn’t mean the raise magically appears in the paycheck, or the illness disappears or the friendship heals automatically. Our woes are still with us. But what this time of year grants us is a new way of looking at them. We can hold them up to the light of day, to the light of twilight, to the light of night and seek the grace and guidance that is everywhere plentiful now.

And so I remind myself, my cup is way more half full. I have a job. I have a home. I have daughter’s love and a family to count on, a friend to share coffee and muffins or a bowl of homemade soup.

The Unitarian Universalist minister James Ishmael Ford said, “The simple truth is that this very moment is the only place we will find life and love and meaning. I think of this and I realize it is time to kiss a child, to pack a lunch and take a walk, to have that conversation I’ve been putting off. Perhaps we should all take the opportunity to do some such thing. This is a new season, a new beginning. Hope is with us, hope reigns, so long as our blood pounds through our bodies.”

As the Beatles have said so eloquently, Obla di, obla da. Life in all it’s misshapen, rough-hewn, magnificent glory does indeed go on. Take heart.

Blessed be.