Summer Lessons We Can Use

Thresholds. Doorways. Edges. Gates. Borderlands. Ridgelines. Cusps.

These are places where opposites meet: exits and entries, openings and closings, beginnings and endings, leavings and arrivals, risings and fallings. These are places of change.

The time when seasons turn is ripe for reflection. When change arrives, sometimes I feel ready, sometimes reluctant, and other times I am taken completely by surprise. I have been marking these changing season for more than 5 years now and it has proven to be a healthy practice.

As we accept the standing invitation to look back at the passing season just before we jump into a new one, we can know ourselves a little better, lean into our growth, and ease the coming change.

Ready or not, change is here! Summer is fading into fall.

Here are some lessons from summertime that might just guide us into autumn with greater awareness and wholeheartedness.

1. We could use the wisdom of bees.

I am fascinated by bees.

When Mike had double bypass heart surgery, we quickly began dreaming of moving to the country where he dreamed of a woodworking shop and I dreamed I would plant lavender and keep bees. That move still hasn’t happened yet, but the dream remains. It’s not only the bees themselves, it’s the hive community, the honeycomb, and the harvest of thick amber honey.

On one of my favorite walking routes is near a culinary garden where I pass a series of bee boxes glowing in the sunrise. On several walks this summer, I noticed the bees spilling out of the doorway and down the face of the box. They weren’t leaving the hive, just gathering outdoors. I learned this is called bee bearding for the way it resembles a beard.

Bee bearding is the phenomenon where bees gather outside the hive in a cluster near the entrance. It can indicate an impending swarm which comes with a kind of angry energy of finding a new home. But most often it is normal behavior with the bees in a calm demeanor to keep a healthy hive community especially in late summer to regulate conditions within the hive, cool high temperatures, alleviate high humidity or overcrowding, or ventilate the hive.

Some rough bee-keepers pour the bearding bees back into the hive, some use water to force them back in, but what if the wisdom of the bees is in cooling off and making room for other bees within the hive?

When I walked closer, the hive was quiet and still as if the bees just needed to get out of the house and sit on the front porch a spell. Sometimes a porch sit is exactly what I need. The calm felt like the bees taking care of each other without leaving though they needed a different configuration to accomplish it.

With all of our stress, division, and world events, I wonder if we humans could use a little bee bearding to cool our inside temperatures and create thriving community?

2. “A child is always in the room. Always welcome.” Kaisa Stenberg-Lee

We had five weeks together this summer.

My oldest son, his wife and three children came for a generous visit at the start of summer. They live many states away and between the Covid pandemic and keeping three young children safe and healthy, we missed so much visiting we had planned over the previous 18 months.

In the midst of work from home, early morning walks to the culinary garden, trips to the park, the rivers, and the mountains, cookouts, and building Lego kingdoms, during our downtime, I began reading aloud the Chronicles of Narnia. It was one of the highlights of my summer, introducing the kids to the talking animals, the kings and queens, Lucy, Peter, Edmund, and Susan, the White Witch, and of course, Aslan.

Even reading so long each night to need a recovery Popsicle, we only got through “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” and part of “Prince Caspian” before they had to head home. Still, we began something beautiful that miles could not halt.

Not even for my grown-up heart.

There was snuggling, asking questions, imagining the battle scenes, and Aslan’s strong velvet paws, mostly for the six-year-old (Blueberry), but the younger ones played nearby, listening on and off.

It reminded me of something spiritual director and founder of Kutsu Companions, Kaisa Stenberg-Lee, said,

“A child is always in the room, and always welcome.”

Even if we aren’t reading aloud to our children or grandchildren, reading a children’s book is one way to be tender with our inner child. Jesus always invited children to come. That includes us.

I wrote this from Prince Caspian into my journal,

“Lucy woke up from the deepest sleep you can imagine with the feeling that the voice she liked best in the world had been calling her name.”

It reminded me of my own experience of waking and knowing that Jesus had been speaking tenderly to me in the night even though I don’t always recall what he said.

One perk of this long pandemic. We have since finished “Prince Caspian” (over Zoom) and have “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” waiting in the wings.

What is your favorite children’s book that you have re-read as an adult?

*Custom bookends handmade by The Blueberry and his other grandpa, Gramps.

3. Cloth napkins for life!

I love a cloth napkin.

When I shared a list of summertime cup-fillers (ordinary things that are bringing joy and life in this season), one of my friends (Jenn) listed drinking tea from a cup and saucer rather than a mug. Those words from Jenn reminded me to enjoy my love for cloth napkins on every ordinary day.

We traded photos of our kitchen drawers full of cloth napkins - random and mismatched, one-of-a-kind, new and vintage. We enjoyed a kindred moment across many, many miles. Jenn sent me a gift of cloth napkins for no occasion other than joy and friendship.

I grabbed some that were waiting in another drawer “for a special occasions” and moved them to the kitchen. What was I waiting for?

It reminded me of my beloved Aunt Tootsie. When she died, we discovered new scarves and undies in her bedroom drawers still in the packages. Waiting for the day. What day?

What are we waiting for? Use the cloth napkins, wear the new undies, send a card or gift for no occasion other than love, offer the kindness or the forgiveness.

4. Notice synchronicities.

Do you ever notice reoccurring images, people, words, events, sounds, or smells, the ones that keep coming around and seem to be calling to your soul? This is synchronicity.

Synchronicity is a cluster of meaningful patterns without a typical explanation. The term was first coined by psychologist Carl Jung to mean "the coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same meaning".

Synchronicities are spiritually significant events that invite us to pay attention beyond the obvious toward the Holy. These ordinary things seem to suddenly shimmer, leaving us with a sense of curiosity to explore their deeper meaning. Why here? Why now? Why again?

Over this last season (and even before), I noticed these recurring patterns: hawks in flight, crosscut wood rings, my nicknames, methods of mending, the small town of Newberg, Timothei the fence guy, and hourglass timers.

It is not only that these keep repeating, but that they keep showing up without me looking for them, in odd places or quantities or separated by large amounts of time and so bringing a kind of full-circle-feeling along. They become soul invitations for me to explore and discuss with Jesus.

What synchronicities are showing up in your life?

5. Invitations aren’t only yes or no. They are formative.

I love a good invitation. Don’t you?

Invitations make us feel included, seen, special, welcome.

This summer I was offered a beautiful invitation that I determined was not for me to say yes. And later, I extended an equally beautiful invitation (that I felt inspired to offer) and it was declined. In both invitations, my desires and calling came into view a little more clearly.

That has me thinking.

Perhaps the call is simply to extend the invitation, not to guarantee it’s acceptance and perhaps invitations lead somewhere surprising even if not accepted.

Rather than wonder whether we were wrong to extend invitations and opportunities, our energies might be better spent trusting the discernment process to do good work in us.

For I realized in the process that there were at least four kinds of invitations to be considered:

1. Invitations from others.

2. Invitations to others.

3. Invitations from the Holy Spirit.

4. Invitations from the culture.

I needed to be aware of and discerning in all four kinds. We all do.

Each invitation has several possibilities: yes, no, maybe later, maybe for someone else.

We can’t say yes to every invitation. Always, they require discernment. Is this for me or another? For now or later? For this world or God’s? Sometimes invitations bring clarity even if our answer is no. Maybe our no is to make way for another’s yes.

We can’t simply wait for invitations. Sometimes we are to be the one creating and extending the welcome to others.

And always, we are to notice the whispered welcome or warning from the Holy Spirit comes with the gift of our freewill to accept, decline, make ready, or make way.

What invitations are you pondering? How are they shaping you?

6. Buy the orange shoes.

I like a reliable routines in my life and go-with-anything separates in my wardrobe.

But every once-in-a-while, it’s good to surprise oneself.

I did that this summer by buying a pair of tangelo shoes. For me, orange is not what I would call a go-with-anything separate or a color that compliments my complexion. And to be perfectly honest, the camel colored shoes were out of stock.

Now, orange shoes may not be your thing. That is not the point. It is more in keeping with #3 Cloth napkins for life! It isn’t about what you buy. It is more about asking yourself what are you holding back on, saving for someday, afraid might not work, or you are not up for the endeavor?

Maybe that is your next beautiful invitation.

Like using my cloth napkins with wild abandon for absolutely no cause but joy, I am taking more creative risks, extending more invitations, entertaining less shame, and finding the beauty and authority of my calling in Christ. If that sounds dramatic, so be it.

The thing about the citrus shoes is, in some delightful way, buying them may have opened a door inside me, loosened a log jam, freed a sparrow from her cage. Or maybe the tangerine shoes came as the result of a deeper delight already opening toward heaven, the one that reminds me I am God’s poem.

You are too. We are together.

To paraphrase Ephesians 2:10 as I did in a summer sermon I preached,

We are God’s very good idea in Christ.

How will you allow God to surprise you with his love?

Those are my lessons from this summer. This was the season of noticing bee bearding, reading children’s book aloud, using cloth napkins, noticing synchronicities, being shaped by invitations, and buying orange shoes.