My favorite way to begin a summer day is first to go on a walk and then to return to our side patio, an area I call “Paris, for devotion time. I have not followed that routine often yet this summer, although most days I have gone for a walk. Often, however, by the time I return it is raining or threatening to rain. How good it was Monday morning to say to myself, “Do it, Nancy. Go to Paris.”
And I did, after first bathing in a natural essence insect repellent spray.
I began by reading Padraig O’ Tuama’s opening prayer in his book Being Here, Prayers, for Curiosity, Justice, and Love. This book is my companion this month. Each of the 31 daily meditations begin in the same way:
Turning to the day and to each other We open ourselves to the day and to each other.
This is the day that the Lord has made and a day we'll have to make our way through.
...
Because this is a way of living That's worth living daily.
Each day O’ Tuama offers a reading, a piece of scripture, a collect of the day, and a “Remembering Prayer.” Often I reread the Remembering Prayer before going to bed at night.
In that post I shared a collect I wrote addressing the trees and since then I have occasionally written other collects. Sitting in Paris yesterday morning, I wrote,
Oh, Pleasing "Paris" provider of sanctuary, even as I peer beyond the entrance, my place of inspiration, of contemplation, may I enter this day, in the same way I enter this space: open to beauty, open to a new day, a new week, open to moments of pause, open to the Presence. Amen.
I wrote in my journal. I reread a chapter in Emily Freeman’s How To Walk into A Room, The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away. I read this book fairly quickly in May, underlining so much and noting questions and sections that demanded more reflection. Sitting in Paris, I was ready to enter into deeper conversation with that book.
Today’s chapter, “Remembering Your Path,” reminds me once again to name my personal core values: “What embodies you with God and gets you back to yourself?” (p. 72). I paused and allowed the words I have identified for myself to rise yet again.
Being a presence.
Knowing the Presence.
This morning time–walking and sitting in Paris–brings me into the present, strengthens the way I live in the world, and deepens my awareness of the movement of God.
Once again I was ready to walk through our garden gate, where a Swahili word is posted, “karibu,” which means “hospitality.” I was ready to be present to the fullness of the day.
An Invitation
What summer routine increased your awareness of the movement of God? I would love to know.
Summer days –and nights–stretch out in front of us. Many of us wait for these summer months throughout the long winter months and the sometimes indecisive days of spring. How often do we daydream in March about what we will do, where we will go, and whom we will see when Memorial Day finally leads us into summer?
Several years ago I led an adult forum about summer spirituality at our church. The following material is adapted from that forum and the guide book I wrote as part of that presentation. I invite you to consider how you might savor this summer season.
Enter the First Days of Summer: Reflection Time
Before immersing yourself in summer activities, sit in a comfortable and favorite outdoor space where you won’t be disturbed. Close your eyes lightly, not tightly. Take a couple deep cleansing breaths and ask yourself, “How am I as I enter this summer season? What do I need now? Do I need rest? Change? Inspiration? Connection?
What have I learned during the winter months that will enhance these summer months? Is God directing me in a new or different way?
Consider Possible Summer Themes
Consider the following themes. Which ones seem to shimmer for you? Which ones open your heart? Or challenge you?
Summer Spaciousness. In what ways does summer feel more spacious? How is summer different from other seasons? In what way is summer a time of rest and restoration? Is there anything that needs to be released, to be set aside?
Summer Senses. The senses are doorways into the holy and offer us opportunities to encounter God. Explore the senses–the tastes, touches, smells, sights, sounds of summer. What dazzles you? What sensual memories do you have of summers in your younger years?
Summer Simplicity. Summer invites us to discern what is essential. In what ways are summer days easier, simpler? If you travel this summer, can you pack lightly?
Summer Shifts. What signals the start of summer for you? What changes in your life during the summer? What do you notice about yourself in the summer that is different from other seasons? Where do you feel that shift in your body?
Summer Sacred Space. A sacred space is where you sense the presence of Spirit. Where are your summer sacred spaces–in the present and in the past? How do you create sacred space during the summer?
Summer Silliness. What role does play and silliness have in your life, especially in the summer? How does summer encourage you to “lighten up”? What memories do you have of fun and silly times?
Summer Stillness. In stillness you listen to yourself and to the voice of God within, clearing the space for new ideas, new connections, new deeper awareness. Where and when do you experience stillness in the summer? How does that feel?
Summer Stretching. Are there areas your life–body, mind, or spirit–that could benefit from stretching your perspectives, your ways of living and moving and being in the world? What physical activities engage you in the summer and how do they enliven and open you? Remember the summer activities of the past. How did they form who you are today?
Summer Celebrations. What do you celebrate during the summer? What are your summer rituals? In what ways do you celebrate the ordinary?
Summer Support. Where do you find community in the summer? Is it different from other times of the year? What support do you need this year? Who do you know who could use your support this summer?
Summer Sadness. As much as we look forward to summer, there can be disappointments–plans that don’t materialize, weather changes etc. How do you cope? How flexible are you? Do you have sad, difficult, or challenging memories of summers past? Is it time to let them go or allow them to transform into growth?
Explore Summer Spiritual Practices
Is a new spiritual practice beckoning you or is summer a chance to adapt your ongoing spiritual practice? For example, move your prayer and meditation time outside. Practice yoga or T’ai Chi outside, instead of inside.
Here are some possible summer spiritual practices:
Keep a summer journal. Pilgrims carried a small book with them, a vade mecum, which means “go with me.” They wrote prayers, poems and insights in the journal. Write what you notice and learn on these summer days. Where do you notice the movement of God?
Practice visio divina (sacred seeing), which is similar to lectio divina (holy reading). See with the eyes of your heart. Pay attention to what shimmers, what invites you, what startles or amazes you. Perhaps commit to taking one photo a day and at the end of summer print your photos. Do you notice any patterns? Where did God appear to you?
Go on Meditation Walks. For 30 minutes walk slowly and silently. Stroll. Amble. Pay attention to your senses. Stop and linger when you are attracted to something–birdsong, the colors in a garden, the scent of freshly mowed grass. Be in the moment.
Other summer practices include extending hospitality to guests, gardening, walking outdoor labyrinths, spending time in nature, stargazing, cloud gazing, volunteering in a new way, learning something new, sketching or painting outdoors. Change your routine in some way and notice what opens for you.
Invite a loved one into a practice of daily sharing with each other a gift, an expression of God, noticed or experienced?
Receive the Blessings of Summer
May the God of summer give us beauty. May the God of summer give us rest. May the God of summer give us joy. May the God of summer give us inner light May the God of summer give us what we need for healing. May the God of summer give us a sense of satisfaction in the work of our hands. May the God of summer lead us to amazing discoveries as we travel the inner roads of our souls. Amen. adapted from Joyce Rupp
An Invitation
What comes to mind when you think of summer spirituality? I would love to know.
After leaving “Paris,” our side garden and quiet, private space where I often enjoy lunch during the summer, and following the walkway to the back door to return to work time in the garret, this is what I see. Lushness. A multitude of colors and textures. Evidence of God’s creation, but also humanity’s creativity and effort.
I often say I am more of a winter person than a summer person, and that is basically true, but then I breathe in this beauty, thanks to the gifts of the master gardener with whom I live, and I think some part of me must be a summer person, too.
Perhaps acknowledging that I am more than one thing–that I am a winter person, a summer person, a fall person–is a reminder to continue the spiritual journey towards wholeness. To reach towards the person I was created to be, as my awareness of that whole creation continues to unfold.
Notice that I didn’t say I am a spring person. Minnesota often skips the spring season, going from snowstorm to heat stroke without the in-between of temperatures steadily and gently becoming warmer. The need for short sleeve shirts and open windows, along with a desire for trips to the lake, happens when our closets are still stuffed with winter coats, hats, mittens, and boots, and beds bulge with flannel sheets and heavy quilts.
Spring seems confusing to me, even irritating. I can do without the spring one day and the return to winter again the next. I have trouble finding a rhythm that works for me in the spring and spend time trying to understand what is basically unknown–as in “Is spring finally, actually here?” Probably not.
L. M. Montgomery, the author of the Anne of Green Gables books, once wrote , “I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.” Is that a wistful statement; a statement wishing it was always June? is that mainly an awareness of the beauties of June or is it a desire for the status quo, a comfort with the ways things are in the moment? Or is it a statement of concern? What if nothing ever changed? What if we didn’t grow? What if life was one way and one way only? What would happen if I remained tethered to my younger self and didn’t grow further into wisdom?
If I am to continue to grow into wholeness, as I know in my heart, the Divine, the Holy, desires for me, then I am called to be a spring person, too. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but perhaps summer will give me some perspective.
The seasons change. Today is a summer day and tomorrow will be, too. but it will be one day closer to fall. Today I am 75, two months, and 6 days old, and tomorrow I will add one more day to that tally or, if the unknown and unexpected occurs, I will no longer be any age. I think I am beginning to learn during these elder years how all the seasons of our lives add up to the wholeness of a life, the totality of who we were given the opportunity to be.
I hereby declare I am a summer person. I am a fall person. I am a winter person, and yes, I am a spring person, too. And I don’t want to waste one day or take any day, any season for granted.
Bloom where you are planted.
Mary Engelbreit
So you think this is just another day in your life? it’s not just another day. It is the one day that is given to you…today.
Br. David Steindl-Rast
An Invitation
At the recent writing group I facilitate, I posed the following questions for reflection:
What have you learned during the winter and spring months that will enhance these summer months? What do you bring with you from the recent months? What is unfinished? What do you need to leave behind?
What do you need this summer? A change of pace and/or place? Rest? Inspiration? Connection? What is the call for this summer?
What are your hopes for the summer? What is possible? What might the challenges be this summer?
Is there a spiritual practice calling you or a new approach or intention for something you already do? How might you open more to the presence of God in your life?
This is what summer looks like in our backyard, thanks to the resident gardener in our house.
Each time I walk from the backdoor to the garage or look out the kitchen window or sit, book in hand, on the patio, I am reminded to savor this season and to notice the gifts of God in these days and in our lives.
If you are an ongoing reader of this blog, you know that I am not a summer person. I am a winter person who relishes hibernation and cave time. I meet God in the stillness, the quiet, the dark that arrives early in the afternoon and leaves late in the morning. In stews and soups simmering in my small kitchen, in sweaters and shawls and cozy throws thrown over my legs. Winter feeds my introverted soul.
My Summer Story
Because my father worked for a large corporation and was transferred and promoted often, summer began when a moving van pulled up in front of our house, usually as soon as the school year ended. For me, summer was a time of loss, leaving my friends and all that was familiar and known. Instead of a time of fun and freedom, summer was a time of loneliness. I yearned for school to begin in the fall where I could meet kids my own age and find a place for myself in new classrooms. But I also felt anxiety during those summer months. Would I like my new school? Would I make new friends?
In my adult years I’ve reframed that loneliness into solitude, and I wrap my spiritual practices in silence and stillness. I realize, however, that I still carry with me the stigma of those empty summer days of my childhood.
Leave them behind, I remind myself, but also learn from them. What can summer mean for me now?
Now is the time, I tell myself, to open to the invitations of this season–to live beyond the irritation of mosquitos and sweat and frizzy hair and nonexistent breezes.
Now is the time to both create and respond to the rhythm of this summer.
Opening to this Summer
As always I begin in silence. Sitting in my comfortable chair in the garret, I close my eyes lightly, not tightly, and take a couple deep cleansing breaths, finding my own rhythm. I allow questions to emerge:
How am I as I enter this summer season?
What do I need now? Do I need rest? Change of place, of pace? Inspiration? Connection? What is the call of this summer? What is possible this summer?
How can this summer season meet my needs? How can I invite God to be with me during this time?
Is there a spiritual practice calling me or a new way of becoming present to something I currently do in my life?
What have I learned during the winter and spring months that will enhance these summer months? What do I bring with me from those recent seasons? What is unfinished? What do I need to put down?
I open my journal and jot down a few words–“spaciousness,” for example, but I make no attempt to answer all these questions in one sitting. I know some questions will answer themselves as I move through the days, and others will emerge, but in the silence I become more aware of who I am and how and to what God calls me at this time.
Summer Spaciousness
Instead of that summer loneliness I experienced as a child, I relish these open days. Days that unfold. Spacious days offering time to read, to doze, to celebrate the glories of the June color blast garden.
When our children were young, we made summer lists –things we wanted to do and places we wanted to go–but now we mention in passing trips we could take or things we could do, but neither of us seems to be making the arrangements or plans. We are both content right here, right now.
Instead of a hummingbird who is in constant motion, vibration that delights, I am more like our big old dog, Boe, who lived with us at Sweetwater Farm. He was content no matter where he was. Stretched out under the harvest table, he opened one eye as I passed through from my office to the kitchen, and maybe he thumped his tail greeting me, but otherwise he didn’t move.
These days seem to stretch out before me, and I feel the twists and turns of life untangle. No, those twists and turns don’t quite disappear, but they feel more manageable, more breathable in the slightest of summer breezes.
Summer Themes
The arrival of summer solstice can be an invitation to notice the unfolding and opening of summer days in your life. Do any of the following summer themes resonate with you? Do any of them open memories of past summers? Which of these summer themes shimmer and tickle and lift an “ah” to your lips? Pay attention. God is moving in your summer days.
Summer Spontaneity
Summer Senses
Summer Spaciousness
Summer Simplicity
Summer Shifts
Summer Sacred Space
Summer Silliness
Summer Stillness
Summer Stretching
Summer Celebrations
Summer Support
Summer Sadness
Summer Sweetness
Summer Spiritual Practices
Is a new spiritual practice beckoning you? Or is summer a chance to adapt your ongoing spiritual practice in a new way? For example, moving your prayer and meditation time outside. Here are some possibilities:
Keep a summer journal. Pilgrims carried a small book with them a vade mecum, which means “go with me.” In the journal they wrote prayers, poems, and wisdom for the journey, but it would also be a way to record what you notice and learn and feel as you wander and roam. Where do you notice the movement of God?
Practice visio divina (sacred seeing), which is similar to lectio divina (holy reading). This practice invites you to see with the eyes of the heart and to pay attention to what shimmers, what invites you, what startles or amazes you. Where do you discover outdoor “chapels”? Perhaps commit to taking one photo a day and at the end of the summer print your photos. Do you notice any patterns? Where did God appear for you?
Other practices include extending hospitality to guests, gardening, walking outdoor labyrinths, spending time in nature, stargazing, pausing to send blessings out into the world as you open windows, volunteering in some new way in the community, trying something new that challenges you. Change your routine in some way and notice what that opens for you.
How about inviting a loved one to a practice of sharing daily with each other one gift, one expression of God, noticed or experienced?
I invite you and I invite myself to open to summer.
A Blessing
May the God of summer give us beauty.
May the God of summer give us rest.
May the God of summer give us joy.
May the God of summer give us inner light.
May the God of summer gives us what we need for healing.
May the God of summer give us a sense of satisfaction in the work of our hands.
May the God of summer lead us to amazing discoveries as we travel the inner roads of our soul.
Amen.
adapted from Joyce Rupp
An Invitation
What intentions do you have for this summer? I would love to know.
Living on Life's Labyrinth 