The Unashamed Exuberance of Summer
Think on These Things
Now it is time for the unashamed exuberance of summer,
Leaping and frolicking across emerald hills
Like an untamed colt who has just learned to run
Beaming like the freckling sun who celebrates her birthday each morning
With the trumpet of swans and a yellow jubilee of honey bees,
Wooing us like a tangle of jasmine and orange blossom on a starry night—
Shining so brightly it is almost as if winter never happened
And the bitter wind of fall never cut to the bone,
Almost as though the early spring rains never extinguished our last ember of hope.
Lest you forget,
Think of how much darkness it took to get here.
Think of the cold, the bitter burrowing deep into frozen soil—
The thin surround of a seed’s final exhale before surrendering to death.
Think of how long the birds stayed silent, wrapping their feathers around fluted bones and
Fragile beating hearts, just to preserve what they sing in the light of a distant sun.
Think on these things, and be glad—for dark, for silence, for deep—
For the countless ways that death yields to life, turning
What we hardly dared believe in the long ache of months into a dream true as roses.
Welcome, dear unimaginable summer: Long have we waited for you.
Summer is a dream I hardly dare to believe could be true, yet secretly hope and wait for all year. Summer is the gift that every other season has been working towards, silently forming a whisper of truth underground that emerges slow as time before peeking above the surface of earth and rising again to proclaim the return of life. It is an overflowing basket of sun-ripened strawberries and the bursting juice that runs down my chin. Summer is the fullness of the earth’s lushness—creation’s most perfect blossom.
Summer makes me blush. It is so forthright with its offering, so bold in revealing all its colors at once. Summer demands our presence and attention, and it will do whatever it takes to turn our gaze upward until we erupt with spontaneous hymns of praise. In summer, we are no longer in a transitional season. This is it. And to be anywhere other than wholly present to this miraculous abundance of life in its fullness is a great loss.
Summer scares me. Being fully here is daunting—it is much easier for me to daydream of elsewhere, spellbound by the illusion of living in the future. But summer stubbornly insists on itself, whether or not we choose to partake. When we say yes to the goodness, beauty, and truth to be found in the present—no matter how closely our laughter resembles tears and our singing houses the echo of past lament—we say yes to life. We say yes to our Creator, and with that yes we partake in some small yet surely significant way in the Feast that is to come, where all of time is present in one eternal summer. So what if we dared to live like summer is true, in all its lushness and joy? What if we entered each new day exuberant and unashamed, no matter how long it lasts, or how quickly the light dims and sunset draws closer and closer in?
Dear child of the Light, my invitation to us this summer is this:
Be here.
Dare to live like summer is your inheritance,
Like the promise of a sun that never dims will be kept,
Like beauty and goodness and truth will outlast darkness, pain, and lament—
Because they will.
Amen.
Going deeper: Listen to Endless Summer by Lovkn.
Welcome my dear
To the endless summer
Welcome my dear
To eternity
Welcome my dear
To the great adventure
The gift of life
Everlasting