Dear brothers and sisters,
I will be taking a seasonal sabbath from Liturgy Lessons, and will return to them in September. Shy summer is peeking from around the corner, trying to escape the clutches of spring, and ready to make her grand entrance. I leave you with a few quotes to usher us into the months that Charles Dickens called “the prime and vigour of the year,” during which “all things were glad and flourishing.”
“The beauty of that June day was almost staggering.
After the wet spring, everything that could turn green had outdone itself in greenness
and everything that could even dream of blooming or blossoming was in bloom and blossom.
The sunlight was a benediction.
The breezes were so caressingly soft and intimate on the skin as to be embarrassing.”
– Dan Simmons, Drood
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, —
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
‘Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
‘Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: —
So this wing’d hour is dropped to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.
– Dante Gabriel Rossetti
As Christians, we recognize that all beautiful things are a “beam from the glory.” As we enter into the lush summer movement of the Great Composer’s Symphony of the Seasons, may its sunlight indeed be a “benediction,” a good word to our souls. And may the “song of love” find room to resonate in your heart, as you listen deeply for the voice of the Lord who “rejoices over you with singing” (Zeph. 3:17).
See you in the fall,
Ross Hauck