keeping time
on the music between beats
Welcome to your weekly Portal. I hope it finds you in the quiet.
THE THRESHOLD
Tonight marks the solstice, the longest night here in the southern hemisphere and the longest day in the north. Whichever you are living, it is the year’s great pause. The moment when the earth itself holds its breath before turning.
The stillness between beats.
We live in a culture that worships the beat of productivity, momentum, and more. We are so practised at outrunning time that we have almost forgotten how to inhabit it. The solstice asks something different of us. To let the stillness between this moment and the next be enough.
This week’s poem is about what it really means to keep time and the music we miss when we can’t bear to pause.
THE POEM
KEEPING TIME from Reunion Songs Most days I wonder where time goes, if there will ever be enough of it to live and to love in all the ways I must. Sometimes I try to outrun the beat of my own heart or brace for what's coming, neither in nor out of it. Other times I know there is nothing I can do to stop its unfolding, that this, not death, is the price of being here. Now and again, though, I remember to rest, that in between every beat is a stillness: miss it and you miss the music. Guard it with your life so that when you are done you will know you are in the right place, in and out of time.
THE PRACTICE
The poem names three ways we relate to time - outrunning it, surrendering to it, and resting inside it. Most of us live almost entirely in the first. The solstice is an invitation to find out where we actually are.
This week, take a quiet ten minutes and sit with these three questions. Write whatever comes, without editing or judging.
You might also like to respond to the prompt below that feels most true and write from it for five minutes without stopping. You don’t need to answer all three. The noticing is the practice:
“Where in my life am I outrunning the beat?”
“Where am I surrendering to time’s unfolding and allowing myself to be carried by something larger than my own will?”
“Where am I resting inside the stillness?
THE THREAD
This week, on the solstice and in the days that follow, notice the stillness between beats. One breath held. One moment before the next thing begins.
Guard that stillness. It’s where the music is.
Yours in radical hope … Amanda
P.S. To mark the solstice, I’m offering 22% off all my on-demand courses for the next 72 hours. Poetry as Portal, Poetry as Sacred Activism, and Meeting and Mapping Your Creative Project are all waiting whenever the season feels right.
Use the code SOLSTICE22 at checkout. Valid until midnight AEST Wednesday 24 June. Find all on demand courses here:
You are receiving this because you chose to. Thank you. If this moved something in you, would you be willing to share it? Together we can create a more just and loving world.