Let it be.

When I was a child, summer was a vast country with infinite possibilities, and it lasted a very long time. Endless days, some full of activity, some spent in a tree with a book, some walking from Hilton Pier to the Lions Bridge, a crab net in my hands and a bushel basket trailing behind me, tied with a rope cinched around my waist. In those days, low tide yielded a bounty of crabs. We walked in the water and lunged with the net, scooping them up and then flipping them back into the bushel basket. it was summertime, and the living was really easy.

I'm writing this as the clock strikes midnight, and suddenly it's August first. I haven't walked on the beach, I haven't read a book for the pure pleasure of a good story, and it feels like Memorial Day was a couple of weeks ago.

Is time moving faster? Are the days shorter? Where has this season, my lifetime favorite, gone? Can I make something different of August?

All of scripture invites us to live in the moment, to be fully present tothe here and now, and my failure to do that is where my summer has gone. As an adult, I am sometimes torn between the incompleteness of each day as I reflect on it (what has been left undone), and trying to make a plan for the next day, or the next week. The times I feel fully present are when I am with my patients as they share their thoughts and feelings, joys and sorrows, with me. My interior life is the one that races, meanders, and takes me down the rabbit hole of regret and/or anxiety. This is where my summer has gone.

There is a prayer in the New Zealand prayer book that I am incorporating into my evenings from this day on:
Lord, it is night.
The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.
it is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done;
what has not been done has not been done; let it be.
The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness of the 
world and of our own lives rest in you.
The night is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,
and all dear to us,
and all who have no peace.
The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys, new possibilities.
In your name we pray.
Amen..

And so, my brothers and sisters, may August be a long month, filled with peace, quietness, joy and possibility for each of us. That should slow time down a bit. Let it be.

---Kathy Gray