The way to find the real “world” is not merely to measure and observe what is outside us, but to discover our own inner ground. For that is where the world is, first of all: in my deepest self…. It is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself my own unique door.

Thomas Merton

EPHEMERIS
The crescent Blackberry Moon waxes throughout the week, ripening blackberries and entering its second phase on July 28 at 5:00 p.m. Rising in the middle of the day and setting late in the evening, this moon moves overhead during the afternoon.
The end of July brings the Delta Aquarid meteors after 12:00 a.m. in Aquarius and the Capricornid meteors in Capricorn. By July 30, the sun reaches a declination of 8 degrees 20 minutes, a little more than a third of the distance between summer solstice and autumn equinox.

JOURNAL – RAMBLINGS
Space has a spiritual equivalent and can heal what is divided and burdensome in us.

Gretel Ehrlich

July 19: I ruminate in this dark, unseasonably cool morning, tempted to build a fire in the wood stove. I haven’t even heard cicadas yet, and now near record cold temperatures. Yesterday afternoon, a high-pressure system arrived with wind that brought a shower of yellow locust leaves across the yard.

I can feel the seasonal changes going on inside of me, but I have no names for them. I watch the gray sky brighten slowly, my thoughts wander, and I page through the books on the table beside my chair. I open the I-Ching, an ancient Chinese book of divination, to the 12th hexagram called P’i. “This hexagram,” states the book, “is linked with the seventh month, when the year has passed its zenith and autumnal decay is setting in.” The obscure commentary explains that at this juncture in the year “the dark power is within, the light power is without. Weakness is within, harshness without.”

If, as Gretel Ehrlich says, space has a spiritual equivalent, then there is some connection between dark and light in the landscape, weakness and harshness. I look for the spiritual equivalent of this morning and the chill, think about Merton’s inner ground, the deepest self that somehow bypasses or encompasses the outer ground, the harshness without.

When it is light enough, I go out and count the day lily plants in bloom to see when they peak and when they decline. Four days ago: 34 plants. Today, only 28. I notice that the oakleaf hydrangea flowers have darkened from white to pale green, some of the petals even reddish.

The opposite of the P’i hexagram is T’ai, which is associated with spring, when strength grows within, and the outward softens. Here on July 19, I meditate at one side of opposites that lie at either end of the year, yin and yang in opposing balance, a metonymy of reciprocity, the cause as effect, the effect as cause, Merton’s idea of world inside and outside, each side standing for the other, healing divisions and relieving burdens. I, between heaven and earth, am the door to each, the Taoists might say.

Who knows about things like that!

And the real problem is that I’m cold. I give in, crumple newspapers saved from April and May, put in the last of the spring kindling, make an autumn fire