This summer reflection begins on a quiet winter evening last February, as two friends and I paused on our stroll along the shore of Lake Itasca, where we were staying for the weekend.

“What’s that drumming?” One friend asked. I felt a shock of surprise as I realized neither of them knew the origin of the wet, rhythmic and steady thumping we were hearing. “That’s the lake,” I told them, familiar with the phenomenon from living on a lake myself.

We stood transfixed for long moments, listening. My eyes filled with tears. It was as though I were an infant in the womb, hearing for the first time the heartbeat of her own mother.  Like the deep-sleeping turtles and fish being gently rocked in the water far beneath the thick spring ice with each new pulse, I felt the interior waters of my own body responding. The lake, beckoned by the moon, had come alive to thump against its ice-bound prison in response to its sky-bound lover.

As surely as I knew that evening that summer was on its way to liberate the living waters, I knew that something within me was being called back to life as well, and that it was my work to help free it from its long winter’s freeze.

Now it is full summer, the ice gone from all lakes and streams, the water free and sun-warmed. On clear evenings, I love to track the waxing moon’s passage across the sky by watching its dazzling reflection on the surface of our lake. Sometimes the water is still, providing a perfect mirror for the moon to admire her own luminous beauty. Sometimes the wind ruffles and tosses the water, and the moonlight dances and sparkles on the waves like loose diamonds. Always, this lover’s dance between Moon and Water resonates in my own body as deep mystery, as receptivity, as generativity. I too, like the lake, am teeming with life. I too have responsive cycles and dark depths within me. I too am the reflection and beloved of Mother Moon shining down, her light spreading over me like a sweet blanket as she draws me into her safe embrace.

This year, on the day after the Summer Solstice (when the sun will reach its highest point in the sky for the year), the full moon will hang in the sky at its lowest point in several years, making it appear especially enormous and bright. May this auspicious event be an invitation to each of us to attune to the nighttime sister of our bright summer days. May Mother Moon illuminate for us our own beautiful depths and call to life the generative waters within the womb of our wild, creative and dark feminine soul. May we be drenched in her warm and beneficent love, and may we love her back in return.

—Lisa