From childhood on, summer and I have been the best of friends. When I look back, most of the good memories of my childhood are connected with summer.
A new summer has begun; we have the gift of another summer. God grant us the good sense to enjoy the remainder of this summer, to exult in summer. Grant us the wisdom to know that there is a time to play, a time to cease from our labors. It is a season of ease. Summer is meant to be the season of leisure days, a time to revel in life. Summer carries a sense of escape; we leave the office early on Friday and take long weekends. It is “the Good Old Summertime.” Life should be easier. I have a vivid memory of a day when I was 11 years old and it was a summer morning, and the day stretched ahead promising nothing but good and happiness. The summer morning air was streaming with the pulse of life.” As the Lebanese writer and artist Kahil Gibran put it: “to wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving”—to enjoy life while it was still fresh and new.
I love the sweet smell of summer rain, the blue skies with some cloud puffs, those long summer twilights, as John Keats put it, “what is more gentle than a wind in summer” (Sleep & Poetry). I loved the outdoor summer concerts. The world does bad things to us all. Still, the Creator intended life to be enjoyed; to enjoy thankfully all that God gives us to enjoy. There is the smiling side of life, when nothing is more important than the best choice of ice cream.
I’ve known dying people who prayed that they might have the gift of one-more summer.
There’s the words in Job 37:14: “Harken unto this, O Job, stand still and consider the wondrous works of the Lord.”
I recall a day when my family had a beach picnic at Valley Stream State Park. We were all together. It was a lovely day, and life was still in its bloom, dissolving age was far away. Why did my Mama and Pop have to grow old and die? My brother is dead too; he died of Alzheimer’s disease. But that day at Valley Stream, we were all together and happy. That day life was a very great gift. Did we realize it at the time? There’s that marvelous last line in the play Our Town:
“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? No … The saints and poets, maybe— they do some.”
Summer’s lease is all too short. The summer begins to wither away. As someone put it, summer is too beautiful to stay. Dusk comes a few minutes earlier, and sunrise a few minutes later than they did a month ago. Day light begins to shorten. The season begins to wither away.
I hate to see each day end. I let each of them slip away unwillingly.
For me, a deep loneliness always comes with summer ended. I can picture September’s barren porch where leaves are gathering. The end of summertime aways brings to me memoires of many lost and lovely things.
Summer, life at the apex. It is a time to take pleasure in beauty, in friendship, in being well, in being loved, in loving
Blessings on your summer. May God grant us all blue skies this summer. Let summer in.
I would suggest an attitude which wants to use summer to instill in a child a love for living, which gives him/her the feeling it is good to be alive, it is good to be on this earth enjoying God’s gift of life.
