It is August, the time of year when I get geared up and begin thinking about back to school. I am a teacher, and it occurs to me every year that we make our own rhythms in the Wheel of the Year. Each June, It feels like my year has ended. I get some time to unwind, reflect and ultimately look at what I will do with the 2 months ahead for myself. During that time, I am free to pursue art, study, visit museums, immerse myself in good books, travel, and indulge in guilty pleasures (like that silly video game to which I am now addicted). But as August approaches, I begin planning. It is a renewal for me. I plot out what I would like to accomplish in the upcoming year. I immerse myself in teaching books and materials and set goals for self improvement in my craft. I am proud of what I do, but I am not what I do. As much as I love teaching children, I always have to remind myself that I must take the time to work on myself. This is hard to do, especially when faced with the many responsibilities of caring for family and loved ones. This was an especially difficult Summer for me, and it was difficult to focus on my renewal needs. But this set of circumstances got me to thinking about the natural rhythms we have in our lives. When I think of the Wheel of the Year, the holidays and rites of passage, sometimes seem foreign to me. But the ending of the school year, the beginning of the next, and the investment which I must make to myself, all seem so clear. We need to look deeply into our own rhythms and seek out how they affect us. We need to pay attention to those everyday rites of passage and mark the days in ways that we might not think of as “spiritual”. Because this life we have, all of it, makes up who we are and needs to be integrated into our own Wheel.