Summer Pause...

Summer Pause

Theology in the Trenches

by Kathleen Kjolhaug

I hear the quiet. Breezes beckon a sit upon the porch. No need to chatter as nature’s surround sound becomes one with the soul. Content to focus upon sprawling green produces a crop of memories.

Garden spaces retrieve grandma collecting strawberries, dad gathering a fist full of horse radish from across alley, mom watering red geraniums or picking beans, or corn, or anything laden with soil fresh from the garden. Canning season labeled a delicacy of expectation as jars of dill pickles pop seals in tub. Kitchen table full of sweet corn sliced fresh off cob forming rows to place within baggies lasting the winter long.

Curtains swaying in rhythm through open window framing the out-of-doors. Laundry flapping upon clothes lined with wooden pegs pinning in place. Sheets upon bed bring scent labeled “Outdoor” … 100% organic, made by “Nature’s Way.”

Pasture’s steaming mist rises early morn offering praises that another day did dawn.  Haybales await. Their life expectancy lengthen as grasses do likewise…lengthen that is for nutritional greens are a plenty. Metal gate reflects light as it fractures into the day outlining its existence. Calm safety reassures cattle that healthy boundaries exist. Cows chewing cud pacing life to slow. Stillness.

Filling lungs as rain laden air clears mind. Billows of blue darkened sky filters. Pitter-pat begins as blankets upon porch bring front row seats. All the world is shut out save the rainy day scene exploding the feelings of safety as nestling in just feels right.

Splashes of water from lakes, sprinklers, hoses, or pools offer respite. Never mind feet are empty. It was either shoes, or not. They endure. Only foreseeable problem is fitting them back into shoes come fall…but this was summer…fall is far off in a distant memory.

Funny thing is…when summer comes, even one lazy day of it…one forgets. One forgets the flurry of fall, the fury of winter. Not only does one forget, but one forgives. One forgives because of pause. In that moment...in that one moment of monumental sacred summer…there simply is nothing else. All else is forgotten and what is here, what is now, what is in this moment will last forever…we are certain. And so, we simply enjoy the pause.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 prays, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”  A time to pause…and enjoy summer…simply because it is here.  Amen.