Summer’s Quiet Bloom
An Invitation to Embrace the Ordinary of our Days
I’ll be honest: Summer has been a challenge for me to categorize, to define. There would have been a season when I said, “Summer is for play.” Especially when our boys were younger, the arrival of summer seemed to invite us to plan all the fun, playful adventures.
Yet, as I wander through my garden, things are growing, nature is blooming, and I can’t help but feel summer’s invitation to produce beautiful things.
There is also a part of me that sees summer as an opportunity to take a deep breath, step back from the pressure to produce or perform, and embrace the chance to be present on ordinary days.
An invitation to bloom can feel counterintuitive to the idea of pulling back. And play can easily get lost among the growing demands of responsibility.
What if Summer does not need to be defined or categorized?
What if Summer can be a co-mingling of things and simply be whatever we need it to be?
Perhaps summer’s growth provides a slow steadiness to the rhythms of our ordinary days.
Perhaps summer blooming is not for others; it is simple, an internal work, humble even.
Perhaps summer’s lingering daylight gifts us an opportunity to take a deep breath, listen to our bodies, and rest or play as needed.
Summer always seems to be evolving, its rhythms changing with every stage and season of life.
Maybe Summer’s gift can simply be an invitation to embrace the ordinary of our days.
Pause to Consider:
I can’t help but wonder if Summer might ask us to consider if we have fallen prey to a pace of life that leaves us little space to appreciate the beauty of ordinary living?
In our hurry to complete tasks so we can move on to living life, we can fail to notice the beauty and liturgy in the ordinary task itself. We fail to see the way light’s reflection dances a rainbow across the kitchen table. We forget to breathe in the sweet scents filling our kitchen as we cook dinner, and do not allow ourselves a moment to pause to notice the warmth and softness of freshly laundered towels as we fold them.
Are we so enamored with the extraordinary that ordinary life has become a list of chores and a weight of things to get done?
Have we become so overwhelmed and assumed that this is life, and that we have no other option but to keep pushing forward? We dare not pause for fear of being left behind. And in our lack of pause, have we forgotten the simple beauty of setting the table for dinner, the smell of freshly baked bread, and the joy of hand-picked flowers from our weed-infested garden?
Have we forgotten that life is not a list of chores but something beautiful to create in the ordinary of our days?
What invitation is summer extending to you this year? A steady growth, a quiet blooming, a season of adventure and play, or perhaps an opportunity to step back and rest.
Wherever you find yourself, whatever this season of summer invites you to, I pray that you find space in your days to embrace the beauty of living an ordinary life.
While I wish we could sit with coffee or tea and ponder all these things together, that isn’t always possible. But I’d still love to connect and hear your thoughts.
A Prayer:
May we always remember that while nature’s seasons have rhythms, seasons are complex and varied.
May we pause to consider what this summer season is inviting us into.
May we release the demands of a fast-paced, extraordinary life to embrace the opportunity to create a beautiful, ordinary life.
May we exhale the weight of demands and inhale the opportunity of ordinary and beautiful things.
A Word to Ponder: Rest
Rest is a word I’m more likely to think about in Winter when nights are longer, and the cold invites us to spend more time inside. However, the word rest has been lingering in my mind, asking me to ponder what rest might look like in this season of summer.
While Merriam-Webster defines rest as “a bodily state characterized by minimal functional and metabolic activities,” I have come to see that a life rhythm of rest is so much more. In her book, Come and Rest, Linnea Bergstrom says, “Rest can be a mindset shift from the chasing to the accepting.”
So when I speak of rest, I am referring to a mindset shift, a rhythm of life to be practiced in a way that meets our physical, emotional, and spiritual needs for renewal in our specific season.
What might rest look like in this summer season?
Perhaps we need physical rest that restores our bodies. Or mental rest that invites us into deep listening. We may be relationally burned out and need to grow smaller and deeper into authentic community, or find peace as we embrace an emotionally restful season. Some of us might find ourselves in a season of needing spiritual rest or practicing a new-to-us sabbath rest.
Just as rest is not limited to a single season, neither is how we practice rhythms of rest a one-size-fits-all.
What rhythms of rest might we need to incorporate into this summer season?
A Book for the Season: Getting Through What You’re Going Through: Notes and Poems for Hoping and Becoming by Tanner Olson
Life is full of the unexpected, both good things and incredibly difficult things. Recently, it has felt like there are incredibly hard things happening everywhere around me. The unexpected cancer diagnosis, the phone call informing you that your son has been in a car accident and is being transported to the nearest medical center, aging parents, or the workplace downsizing that eliminates your entire department.
If you follow Tanner Olson on social media, you know his gift of bringing encouragement and hope with a few poetic words or a short story. This book brings together a beautiful collection of his words of encouragement. It’s a book you will read through and then pick up randomly when you need a few encouraging words to get you through what you’re going through.
I requested that our local library order this book and gifted multiple copies to friends. Because this is the kind of book we could all use right now.
A Quote to Consider:
“ Tis the season to trim some of the hurry and noise, prune away some of the hustle and overwhelm - so that you can come linger with the real goodness of God and reap the greatest harvest of your soul - as you make a real difference for good in the world.”
Ann Voskamp
This is just what I needed to begin summer. I was already making goals as this last week of school is here for some, and one is already off as of Friday. I've felt overwhelmed so I wanted to fix it with routine and plans. But maybe beautiful, restful ordinary days can be my goal instead :)