STARFIRE

June 2008

June 2008 -Summer's Coming - And Not a Moment too Soon!
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Summer’s Coming—And Not a Moment Too Soon!

Mercury’s retrograde. The election campaign, until June 19th, will go over old ground. The real issues don’t have solutions that fit into sound bytes. We could all just go watch reruns for a few weeks while the candidates try to mend their fences and fix their gaffes. Yawn.

The excitement this month comes with the Summer Solstice. In spite of the political hoopla, in spite of the two national conventions, this is a very personal summer. The personal and the political are more closely linked this year than they have been for several years.

For one thing, there’s more personal talk going on. Gas prices have slowed us down. We’re carpooling, using public transportation, and staying home with friends and family for company. We’re talking, not rushing around gathering the experience of the moment or shopping. We’re reading and talking about books. We’re discussing television shows, not just cramming images into our heads.

All that talk shapes our national ethics in the coming month, just as the Founding Fathers believed it should do. Mercury in the 7th house and ruling the 10th suggests conversations with partners, consultants, and total strangers will change and shape our view of the world, our politics and our personal missions. Along the East Coast, Venus in the 7th and ruling the 10th will focus conversation on the economy, personal spending and personal values. Either way it’s a personal conversation shaping the political atmosphere—and the Washington politicians and lobbyists may be out of touch with the rest of the country. Again.

Still, it’s good to know what’s hot air and what’s significant in this very talkative, blogging, wordy campaign. Personal creditworthiness, personal financial security, gas prices, the cost of alternative fuel vehicles, and personal integrity all count more in this campaign than in recent years.

The Rise of the Blog

The summer solstice chart is the perfect background for a major expansion in blogging. Unlike websites, blogs generate live and lively discussions. Blogs sell books more effectively than live book signings. My hunch is that we’ve barely begun to discover what blogging offers. Think of blogs as the new neighborhoods, full of front stoops and daily conversations, even if the neighbors live thousands of miles away.

As we try to define security and family for ourselves in new ways this summer (Pisces on the 4th house cusp, showing we’ll be looking to the past and the future this year), blogs will carry some of the important conversations. With all the Cancerian issues arising as the Summer Solstice theme, the relative safety of blogs for the spam-averse lurkers can only contribute to their popularity.

Expect blogs to become more commercial as the summer progresses. Capricorn is on the 3rd house cusp, ruling informal communications. They’ll still be the neighborhood—but they’ll also be the neighborhood store. I’ve been following a blog at www.FreeSoul.net where long-time students of the group’s live-and-taped workshop are talking about ways they’ve used the lessons. There are bloggers I know from live instructor gatherings, and new members of the community; visiting the blog is a little like going to a small town coffee shop to see who’s around and what’s happening. Oh, yeah, with information I can actually use.

Capricorn on the 3rd also suggests more structures, more indexes, and better ways to get around the blogging world and find topics that interest you. Uranus and Neptune are in mutual reception (Uranus is in Pisces, ruled by Neptune, and Neptune is in Aquarius, ruled by Uranus), so we do have a Uranus (electronics and internet) influence. We also have Neptune retrograde, which may mask the real growth in blogs so that we only “see” its impact later in the year.

The Summer of Relationships

The most important activities of the summer may also be the least comfortable in the beginning.

It’s a summer of personal growth and relationship work. Four planets fall in the personal growth quadrant, five in the relationship and codependence quadrant, and one in the quadrant for home, family and foundations as the basis for creativity.

So this summer we’ll seesaw between working on ourselves and working on relationships.

Old relationships will change. It’s time to dust off the baggage and emotional clutter and rediscover the basis of the relationship, time to put more energy into what works and less into what doesn’t. If the relationship is codependent and beyond salvaging, it may not survive the summer.

Personal growth and attention to boundaries within relationships will revitalize friendships and romantic relationship, as well as business connections, but boundary work is work you have to discuss and align to personal values. Remember, this is the summer when our values and communication shape our personal as well as our public ethics.

Old friends may reappear, and we’ll dust off what we do have in common and have pleasant surprises. Networking, if it’s based on genuine curiosity about how old friends are growing and changing, leads to important insights and important life changes.

New relationships, based on self-discovery, are also a summer possibility. Follow your interests, your values, and seek out people of all ages and races and genders who share them. You’re not looking for purely sexual relationships this summer (although the East Coast is more sensual than the West this year). It’s the connections from mind to mind that are highlighted now.

Get to Know Yourself Again

The summer’s most important relationship is with yourself.

If the winter and spring were hectic, plan time with serious reading, time with entertainment reading, or stock up on new DVDs and music. Spend some time alone and read at least one of the new personal growth or spiritual growth books.

The Cancer theme of the Summer Solstice invites you to rediscover your own foundation beliefs, your core interests—and revise your life to emphasize your own strongest interests.

It’s time for tiny steps, baby steps, like throwing one pebble into the pond and watching the ripples.

Pick a small discipline—perhaps a breathing exercise—and do it day by day. Start a gratitude journal. Keep a record of your daily practice and take a few minutes at night to jot down what the day taught you. Or maybe it’s time for you to start a Pisces-inspired dream journal and record the flow of images in your life night after night.

The practice is up to you.

The unexamined life will be difficult and frustrating this summer. The personally focused life that leaves time for meaningful interaction with other minds will be intriguing and rewarding. We each get to choose what our summer will bring.

Mary O’Gara, Ph.D.