Meditation: Summer!!

So the summer is here.  School is almost out if not out already.  What’s cool about the summer, at least at the beginning, is the change of routine.  You’re free of routine the first few days or weeks, and maybe even the whole summer for some.  I think that’s why the summer is the time for planning and intention.  Routine kills so many of our plans.  But then there’s always summer.  “This summer, I’m going to…”  We really live in the summer.  But how do we live our faith in the summer?  If the summer is the time to break with routine, it should be a great opportunity for our faith, a time to freshen it up, break out of mechanical mode—a time to really live it.  What does that mean, though?  I suppose it will mean differently for each person.  For many of us, summer is the time where we break out of routine walls and enjoy nature.  I realize that the God of and in nature is a God I’m not too familiar with.  I’m a city person.  I see God in art and architecture and man-made structures.  It’d be cool to take this opportunity to see God in what He’s made.  Nature.  Then there is love.  Literature and film are filled with stories of summer love.  The rule with the summer love, what makes it so special and exhilarating, is that it must end when the summer does.  How to translate this element to the faith will be hard since, of course, you don’t want your love story with God to end.  Of course the thing about the summer love is that though it ends, it really doesn’t.  That’s what the story is about, the enduring impact of that summer love.  The encounter ends, but the impact does not.  So it’s about being open to a temporal spiritual encounter with a lasting effect.  For me, my summer loves have been with the saints.  I’ll try to find a new saint to meet in the summer, and read his/her book or biography and see if I fall in love.  Sometimes there’s no spark.  It’s edifying, it’s a good read, but I didn’t fall in love.  Sometimes I fall in the gradual love, where I reflect with the saint for a while and realize this relationship is going for the long haul.  But sometimes you have that real summer love.  It’s intense, your soul is on fire, you remodel your whole life by this saint’s wisdom—but only for the summer.  When the routine starts up again, you go back to your old ways, you never pick up the book again but the memory of its wisdom and how it touched your life that summer lingers and though everything goes back to normal, normal is just a bit different because of it.  Last but not least: throughout the school year, it’s the three r’s but in the summer, it’s the two.  Rest and relaxation.  Summer can be a time of spiritual r& r, too.  A good time maybe for a retreat, if you can.  But when you can’t make an external retreat, you can make an internal one.  I think of the boat method in contemplative prayer.  Sitting on the beach and just letting your thoughts pass by on the boats or on the waves.  Summer’s a nice time to let your soul rest, to stop beating yourself up about whatever it is you’ve been beating yourself up about, to hang out at that contemplative beach and let your spiritual body hang lose and say “it is well with my soul.” And if anything isn’t well with your soul—drop it off at the confessional and let it sail away.