I think of summer with its luminous fruit,/ blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,/ handfuls of grain. -Mary Oliver
With so many things to do in our hectic lives, we may sometimes wish for nothing to do. What better season than summer to fulfill such a wish?
In our school days, we yearned for long summer break. I remember chapters of my childhood when I played alone in my California neighborhood. I hid behind trees firing at enemies with my Hopalong Cassidy cap pistols. Then I jumped on my horse (a red Schwinn bike) put my U.S. Keds to the pedals, and sailed off like the wind, hundreds of cavalrymen following my lead.
Sometimes, we drove east to my parents hometown of Elyria, Ohio. There, on the farm where my father grew up, I swung from trees like Tarzan and jumped into the Black River, swiming to my heart's content, fishing with my dad, and rowing an old boat upstream.
Doing "nothing," of course, usally means doing something we deeply enjoy.
Sometimes, I actually tried to do nothing. I lay beneath a bush, looked up at the eucalyptus trees, and daydreamed about cowboys and generals and Presidents. But, it wouldn't be long before I felt called to action to protect the neighborhood from marauding bands of pirates and bank robbers.
It's interesting to see how many of my contemporaries, now in their sixties, spend more and more time recalling their childhood summers – almost as if it were impossible to create any kind of joy in the current season of their lives. They may harken back, as well, to their first days as a doctor or nurse or social worker.
Through the misted lens of memory, they often see a special glow haloing their early days of caregiving.
Other than a week or two of vacation, there is no summer break for most caregivers. What life can teach us now has to do with something we may not have understood as children: How to savor the gifts of the summer can offer us right now.
Of course, we can choose to complain about summer's heat or her thunderstorms. But what about summer's "luminous fruit,/ blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,/ handfuls of grain"?
How do you experience summer's most joyful gifts? How do you "do" nothing?
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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