In a fit of honesty,
summer unsettles me,
its worship a liminal moment,
between the wind and fire of yesterday
and the seeming importance of all those tomorrows yet to come,
the calendar looking back daring us
to stake a claim otherwise.
Perhaps I am the exception, but
summer worship strikes me hard
like Lent,
I take slow, deep breaths;
everything being green with
a lot of time for thinking
about the enormity of God,
the demands of the baptized life,
the responsibilities of being ambassadors
for a gospel thus entrusted to beggars and fools,
with all we must unlearn to embrace our titles
in their fullness.
In their honesty.
The humility of believing who we really are.
In the summer,
shortfalls often pile up like
mud-caked shoes at the door,
our voices quieter,
resounding echoes filling empty pews.
We stare perplexed,
we stare through stained glass askew
at gardens rich in blooming passion vine
and butterflies,
gardens white like snow with countless milkweed silk
kissed by the wind, aloft,
longing to teach us the deep mysteries of God
that we claim to know, have always known,
rote memory, but do not.
Not in truth, not in faith.
Summer untethers some part of the mind,
introspection the rule of the day,
and all laid bare before us,
we turn, and turn,
a confession wrapped within
a lazy morning’s coffee
and warm afternoon thunder showers,
and the lightning bugs of early evening that bring smiles to the dusk.
We turn.
We bear in the late sunset
the curse and blessing of unstructured time,
until finally we admit the things we claim to know, unknown,
and the things we trust, uncertain.
This is no liturgical doubt, but a longing,
a summer sighing,
a turning from and turning to.
In the slower drumbeat of warmer days,
we may find the cross we left behind, before us, beckoning still.
