Summer Daze

August this year in Minneapolis is filled with full on hot summer days —steamy, warm, and hazy with smoke from fires far away. Breathing becomes an effort and the sun is often obscured by the haze in the air. The ample rains of this summer have resulted in a sea of green everywhere, surprising me with delight each time I look around. A small amount of activity outside in this weather makes me drip with sweat.

A good time for sitting in the shade

It’s the kind of weather for sitting in a breeze on the front porch or under the shade of your favorite tree. This morning I spent time with a friend on her front porch and the breeze felt so fine. It was delightful to have a lazy conversation about diverse topics that was laced with laughter and joy. After a time though, because of the poor air quality, I found myself feeling like every breath was an effort, something that is quite unusual for me. It made me thankful that days like this are infrequent and also hope that they continue to be infrequent.

But a silent voice in the back of my head says, “Maybe this is going to be the new normal.”

Summer morning on the front porch with a friend

Noticing that I’m in a somewhat pessimistic mood about humanity’s future I remind myself to

Open to the world as it is.

There is great beauty and terrible pain. Good and evil do battle in ways seen and unseen. I have been blessed to be born in a time and place of abundance but no life is without pain and suffering. We all lose lose loved ones. And we all die in the end. In moods like this I turn to poetry to remind me of all that is beautiful, wonderful, and miraculous in life.

Mindful

Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

“Mindful” by Mary Oliver from Why I Wake Early. © Beacon Press, 2005.

Poetry and my photography help me remember that there is beauty in the ordinary lives we lead, in the great diverse beauty of the earth, and in the bright light that shines out of the eyes of a child. Life is a miracle every day whether we see it or not.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

May you walk in beauty.