Summer Solstice and the Passage of Naomi

Solstice means "sun stands still," defining a moment of change, and so summer solstice celebrates the moment of entering the fullness of summer, a pause in our passage to a new era, which despite our names and sense of cycles has never been and will not be again. Such passage is unique.

Through the portal of my awareness, Naomi was always present as a distant recognition of a time gone by when she was just beginning to recognize the journey she would take to remote and unexpected adventures. The images of her youth and energy that echo in my memory of times in the past were restored relatively recently as somehow we reconnected through the fabric of cyberspace. I picked up the threads of her journey as she became aware that there were new regions of experience awaiting her, a deeper fulfillment of an expedition begun long ago. Our messages began and continue in a natural and unforced exchange, as though we are on the crest of a dynamic expansive wave cycle whose frequencies are measured in decades rather than seconds. After decades of absence, our worlds coincided once again, revived by these new communal powers of the Internet.

On this day of summer solstice, our orbits brought us face to face. We met in the lobby of the building that had served as a mutual enclave, where our pursuit of wisdom was tempered by the ravages of the 70s. We also shared in a distant way a musical odyssey, which would serve as the crazy glue binding the parallel paths that were separate and highly divergent.

Her musical sensibility would continue to inform her future, even when she pursued a world of advising and coaching leaders of business. She understood the performance values of her own work and the performance needs of her clients.

Hers has been a search for clarity, enduring the brambles and pitfalls that obscure our vision, fighting through to the clearing just ahead. I am reminded of Robert Frost's In the Clearing, his last volume of poems with a metaphor of discovery just up ahead, in the clearing. For me, the metaphor extends to the solstice as the "sun stands still" in a moment of clarity before moving on.

Naomi has reached a clearing, the passage to her renaissance. She has founded her own company, Practice Clarity, which reveals her passion for guiding others through the brambles and thickets to their own clear places where they are empowered to understand and act in the fullness of all they can become.

But perhaps the crowning centerpiece of Naomi's passage is that she is in the final stages of completing her Ph.D. As she pauses in this clearing and looks back over the rugged terrain she has had to endure, she appears to look in wonder and amazement as she enters this final phase of academia while launching an entirely new season of creativeness.