The Sacred Work of Summer

Yesterday, my family returned from a trip to the Low Country to visit one of Graham’s sisters. We stayed on her farm in Tillman, SC population 224 according to the latest release of the U.S. Census Bureau. 

For four days, we rested and played which looked like golf cart rides and marshmallow launchers and alligator spotting on the pond. It wasn’t fast or fancy or efficient. There were no scheduled activities, tours, or tickets. Just a family reacquainting themselves with each other after a year of growing older and going in different directions. 

I’ve met a lot of people over time who have told me, in one way or another, they are most “in season” in summertime and I have a theory about that.

Sure, there are pools and beaches, books and backyard barbecues, celebrations and reunions. Those things are lovely. But, I think one of the reasons we love summer so much is because we really like our slowed down life. 

We have—I have—been conditioned to believe that slow is seasonal, not an everyday way of being in the world. Efficiency must return sometime in August, as it does every year. 

But what if that’s not what it looks like to flourish? What if summer is so sweet because it’s the season that brings us closest to the way in which we’re meant to live? 

Unhurried.

Playful. 

Slow.

In his book Three Mile an Hour God, Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama wrote, “God walks ‘slowly’ because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is ‘slow’ yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love.”

Could it be that the slow speed of summer bringing us closer to ourselves and our families is also bringing us closer to the God who defines it and gives it shape? 

What if the sacred work of summer, then, is the work of play? What if it’s sleeping in on Saturdays? What if it’s noticing what’s growing in the garden and tending to it? What if it’s doing somersaults in the pool? What if it’s waiting with your kids for the first three stars to appear in the night sky? That’s called nautical twilight by the way. Fun fact.

What if you spent time this summer asking what you like and what you’d like to keep? 

Maybe it doesn’t have to go back to 100mph and tired all the time in a few months.

What if these slow summer days are for pondering—quietly and upon reflection—how now do you want to live?