If you're like me, you really enjoy this time of year in Cascadia, as it goes a long way to making up the darkness and cold of winter. As some have noted, we have just about two days in one during these summer months - great for making time early or late to play outdoors with family and friends. 

Maybe, also, you are paying attention to what is going on inside of you during this season of long days. Do you find more room in you for wonder? For allowing - no, welcoming - the unexpected? Can you imagine yourself feeling okay with doing absolutely nothing? 

I think summer makes it easier to feel all of these things.

Our songs we sing are changing, too. In late June of each year, we move over the course of a few weeks from Trinity Sunday into St. Columba's day and the few Sundays following, singing Celtic-flavored songs from many places. (Some examples are Peace before us; I bind unto myself today; I will kindle my fire; This day God gives me; Gather us in; and God be in my head.) 

As we transition into the more spacious days of mid-July, we'll be singing summer songs - songs that are easy to sing at home or on adventures with family. Some you might listen for are Good Soil; Jesu, Jesu; Earth and all Stars; Seek Ye First; Draw the Circle Wide; Joyful, joyful, we adore thee; Let us talents and tongues employ; and I want to walk as a child of the light.

This summer, we are doing readings from the Hebrew Scriptures from the words of the great prophets of the Jewish tradition: Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah. Each of these forth-tellers were bold in speaking truth to power. They were not popular: their words for those who were living large at the expense of the poor and persecuted are especially timely today. 

So alongside summer songs we will also sing a few hymn and songs that remind the rulers of the earth to "do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8) The song, The grain is ripe reminds those who would forget that "justice will stream from hill and river" for "God comes in truth, the sharpest laser." 

I hope for me and you that this expansive time of summer makes us all more able to pray, "Lord, let my heart be good soil" that we might sow "a good seed of hope" for a time when "all famine gone and thirst and bleeding, the harvest comes from love's good seeding." 

- Martin