The Destruction of USAID: It's About Cruelty

“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”― Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Russian activist, and political prisoner

The cruelty is the point. That's all I can conclude.

The heartbreaking and people breaking cuts made to a wide variety of social services paid for by Uncle Sam—these seem designed intentionally to inflict as much pain as possible, especially on the vulnerable. To wildly cut federally funded programs for folks in need with no clear blueprint or coherent plan. Just slash, slash, slash, the slashing led by a person whose only qualifications seem to be that he gave a quarter of a billion dollars to get the new president elected.  

Why else pick The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as the very first government agency to be laid waste to? USAID is, or should I say was, one of the largest, most generous, and most effective funders of humanitarian projects in the world. Let’s say that again. Humanitarian projects. That’s doing good because we decide that our country is morally called to help the less fortunate around the world.

You know, the basics of helping. Like feeding the hungry. Housing for people with substandard homes. Working to provide clean drinking water to people. Helping refugees find new homes where they can be safe and thrive. How about helping to fight endemic diseases like malaria, Ebola, tuberculosis, and bird flu? Or providing HIV/AIDs treatment to mothers and children? Started under former President George W. Bush, that program saved or extended the lives of tens of thousands of people.  USAID funded polio vaccinations reached some 400 million children.

But now that work is wiped out and the fallout is awful. For example: according to the Associated Press, 600,000 women and children in Bangladesh alone will lose access to maternal health care, and domestic violence prevention programs.

Gone. All gone. 

Terminated contracts that awarded grant money to so many lifesaving programs.  Of 6,200 contracts, 5,800 have been ended. How many lives will be lost because of this cruel and callous action? Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands? Millions? Folks will die from malnutrition, disease, violence, war, and it’s all unnecessary because the money was already there and being spent to help people. To be our American compassion lived out in the world. American care in action.

It's not as if the $63.1 billion USAID 2025 budget and it’s zeroing out is going to put any kind of dent in the feds’ 2025 total budget of $6.75 trillion. USAID makes up .93 percent of that total figure.  Which tells me it is not really about sincere cost cutting or thoughtful belt tightening.

No. 

All I can surmise is that the current administration has adopted the golden rule. Not the one that says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Jesus had that right but I’m not sure his voice or teachings about kindness and mercy are being followed by many folks in power right now. Instead, they have adopted the modern golden rule: “He who has the most gold makes the rules.”   

So, a billionaire asks another billionaire to cut, cut, cut. That’s not fair nor just nor Godly nor merciful. Nope. The folks suffering under these cuts to USAID are about far away from being a billionaire plutocrat as you can get. Plutocrat meaning, “a person whose power derives from wealth.”  Which leads to a plutocracy, meaning, “a society ruled by such people of great wealth.”

When you are that far up the food chain, when your best friends are mostly other millionaires and billionaires, when the closest you get to a poor person is whizzing by them in your limo as you get a vague glimpse of them through tinted windows, well, what can we expect from these cost cutters? Do they really even have the moral imagination or decency to recognize the human damage and human pain and suffering that they are causing? I don’t think so.

It has got to be about cruelty.

If not cruelty then willful blind defiance to take any responsibility for and to face the consequences of what the budget destroyers are doing right now. Jesus’ command was pretty simple.  “Whatever you do for these, the least of my brothers and sisters, you do for me.” Meaning that when we show mercy to fellow children of God, we directly reflect God’s amazing mercy. For those of us who are Christian, it means we are called in love to directly serve Christ. 

Feeding. Housing. Sheltering. Healing. Caring. Saving.

But now that’s gone. All gone. So cruel. So, so cruel.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

      

 

 

America in 2025: Defender of Liberty or Friend to Despots?

"Appeasement is feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last."            --Winston Churchill

All history repeats itself, for worse, for better, for sure.

1938.  Germany, led by the fascist dictator and Nazi party founder Adolf Hitler, threatened to seize the Sudetenland, the German speaking part of Czechoslovakia.  British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went to Germany and negotiated, acquiescing to Hitler’s demand. In return, Hitler promised that Germany had no further plans for territorial expansion. Chamberlain then infamously proclaimed in a triumphant speech, “My good friends…[I have]… returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time….Go home and get a nice quiet sleep."

Less than a year later Hitler invaded and conquered Poland. Great Britain and France declared war.  World War II began, a cataclysmic conflagration that spanned six years, and plunged the globe into all out war. Hitler and his Axis allies were finally defeated in 1945. Human freedom and human liberty were defended. The United States became the de-facto partner and ally with Europe in defending against a new worldwide threat to freedom: the Soviet Union, aka Russia.

2022. The United States, sided with and helped to fund Ukraine’s efforts to repel Russia which invaded and seized territory, costing hundreds of thousands of lives, many civilians. In the past week that policy has radically changed. We’ve now decided to acquiesce to the Russian dictator Putin. Vladimir Putin. The leader who regularly murders his political opponents, even on foreign soil. Putin, whose rise to power began in 1999 with the mysterious bombing of four apartment buildings, supposed terrorist events. Fear gripped that nation and laid the groundwork for Putin to seize power, and he did, ruthlessly.

Now Putin has apparently become our nation’s new best bud, a “friend” who can be trusted to be a person of peace. That is as long as Russia gets to keep the land they stole. Sound familiar? Representatives of the United States and Russia (I mean, why include Ukraine?) are meeting for talks to end the war.  To do as much as he can to prop up his pal Putin I suppose, our President now accuses the leader of Ukraine of being a dictator and also blames that innocent country for causing the war. Even though Ukraine is the victim here, not the criminal.

Is this who we’ve become in this new era in our history? An appeaser of murderous dictators? Fickle ally to Europe. Chummy with any country that strokes the ego of our appeaser in chief.

“Americans will always fight for liberty!” 

That’s the stirring sentiment of a 1943 U.S. government poster I have a framed and hanging in my living room.  It depicts three Revolutionary War soldiers standing at respectful attention as three modern day army soldiers march by, with grim determination written on their faces. They represent the fighting force that beat Hitler, and fascism, and violent dictatorial rule. Hence the hope then and now that our country will always fight for liberty.

We as a nation haven’t always gotten that ideal right.  But it is still our ideal. Our idealistic dream, in the least how we want to see ourselves, maybe even need to see ourselves.  As always being on the side of democracy and not despots, the oppressed and not the oppressor, the war-torn innocent and the not the war mongering bullies.

Which makes me wonder…is that cherished value—fighting on the side of liberty—dead? And if not dead, then seemingly on life support? What else can we conclude when our nation’s leaders abandon the country that was attacked to the country that did the attacking? The act of throwing Ukraine under the bus (or in this case a Russian tank) is immoral and obscene, and insulting to all of the American women and men who sacrificed their lives to actually defend freedom and liberty.

What does it profit a nation to gain the world but lose their soul? I guess we are about to find out. 

God help us all.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

         

January 6th Pardons: It's Official. The Mob Now Rules.

Thou shalt not kill.  --Exodus 20:13* (*unless you get a pardon)

His forty-two-year life on this earth was ordinary and extraordinary, as many human lives are. Ordinary, and beautiful, in that he was a good son and good brother, a devoted boyfriend to his partner of eleven years, Sandra, and he so loved his dogs. Two dachshunds, Sparky, and Pebbles. Watching hockey too.

His was an extraordinary life, as a lifelong public servant: a soldier, a first responder. Brian Sicknick served in the New Jersey Air National Guard, deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1999, and Kyrgyzstan in 2003. He was honorably discharged that year and went on to serve as a United States Capitol police officer from 2008 to 2021. 

January of 2021, with a last day of service, end of watch, January 6^th.

That day Brian, while bravely defending the Capitol building along with his fellow officers, from a mob of thousands of rioters bent on overturning the 2020 election results, was sprayed at close range in the face with pepper spray by two of those assembled “protestors”. Officer Sicknick seemed to be okay but at 10 pm that night, he collapsed and was hospitalized. The next day, he suffered two strokes, was put on life support but then died, 32 hours after the rioters violently attacked him. Months later, the D.C. medical examiner Dr. Francisco J. Diaz concluded that Sicknick died of “natural causes” but, “all that transpired played a role in his condition."

He died serving his country. The two men who assaulted him were arrested, tried, and convicted, and sentenced to jail. They were serving out their punishment until this week, when they, along with more than 1,500 other insurrectionists, were pardoned by our new President. With the stroke of a pen, the President pardoned every last one of those so called “patriots,” they who marauded through the cathedral of our democracy.  Who unrinated and defecated throughout the building.  Who so traumatized Capitol police officer Jeffrey Smith that nine days after the riots, he committed suicide. Who cost taxpayers $1.2 billion for cleanup and the hardening of that building to prevent other riots.

Brutes. Bullies. Haters. Crazies. They all walked out of jails and are now free. 

I guess this is the country we are living in now.  You can cause the death of a first responder doing their duty and defending the democratic process and you can still get away with it. Walk scot-free with bloodstained hands, none the worse for wear apparently. Go back to rioting and using violence as a political cudgel against anyone who dares to opposes you or your beloved leader.

As a citizen and a person of faith I don’t know what breaks my heart more.  The unjust, unnecessary death and suffering of all those Capitol police and D.C. police officers who tried their best to hold the line on that darkest of days in American history? The descent into government sanctioned lawlessness? Do the crime and you don’t have to pay the time!

Imagine how hurt and insulted the survivors must feel, like their loved ones’ lives meant absolutely nothing, at least not to the commander in chief and maybe not even to some of the millions who voted for him too.

And of course, my faith always tells me, “Thou shalt not kill.”  That’s religion 101. Morality and ethics for beginners. If we as a country can’t get that right then we are doomed to more chaos, more suffering and the destruction of democratic ideals and values that really makes America great.

Mob rule? That’s not America.

Or is it?

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

     

 

President Carter: Thank You For Your Service and Faithful Life!

"I have one life and one chance to make it count for something… My faith demands--and this is not optional--that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can, with whatever I have, to try to make a difference.”                 --President Jimmy Carter

It was getting late. The sun was setting on a warm July Thursday night in South Dakota thirty summers ago, on the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation. That community was the site of the Jimmy Carter Habitat for Humanity Blitz Build, a yearly mega-building event. Thousands of volunteers from around the world like me arrived in Eagle Butte, to put up more houses than you can imagine, 30(!), all in seven days.

That’s right: one week to construct simple, decent housing for God’s people in need, as Habitat’s mission statement proclaimed. The dream was that from bare foundations on Sunday night, by the next Saturday night folks would be washing their supper dishes in the sink.  

I was one of more than 1,500 volunteers, and though I saw President Carter building a home’s front porch and heard him speak and offer prayers at the opening ceremony, my hope to meet him had yet to come true. Until that Thursday night. The house I worked on needed to be fully sheet rocked by midnight, when the crew with tape and spackle would put the final touches on, before painting. 

Despite our best efforts, by dusk we still had lots of sheetrock to hang. Then President Carter showed up, called us together and challenged us to get the work done. “We’ll bring in pizza, so you won’t miss dinner, but we need sheet rocking to continue until we’re finished.” He said this with a smile but in a tone that made clear we could not let our future homeowners down. We owed it to them to complete our service.

We hung the last sheet with about fifteen minutes to spare before the finish crew appeared.  I went home to my temporary digs and fell into bed exhausted but so happy and excited to have cut all those sheetrock pieces and met President Carter too!  

He was my hero then. He is still my hero.

I met him again on the last day of the build when he and his wife Rosalynn stopped at every new house to present homeowners with house keys and a Bible and to pose for a group photo. For a couple who had spent so much time in high powered places with high powered people, they were so down to earth. Kind. Attentive. Patient. Gracious. Humble. And I finally got to shake Carter’s hand that day long ago!

I’m grateful, we as Americans should all be grateful, for this good man and all that he did in service to others. Service to his nation as a nuclear submarine commander and President. Service to humanity in his post-presidential endeavors, everything from building affordable housing to helping wipeout diseases in Africa, like guinea worm, that once blinded tens of thousands.

And this life of service to others was always undergirded by Carter’s deep religious faith.  As a pastor and person of faith I think that is why I so admired him. He didn’t speak hollow words from the Bible, or pretend he knew what they meant. He taught Sunday School for thirty years! He never used faith as a cynical ploy to garner votes or to hoodwink or exploit believers. 

Carter talked the talk and walked the walk of faith, a rare trait in so public a believer. Yes, history reports Carter was not perfect. He could be arrogant and self-righteous. He was stubborn. He did not get along all that well with his Presidential successors. If Carter saw an injustice, he spoke up, political politeness be damned. Some judge his Presidency a failure, though the truth is he actually got a lot done.

So, Godspeed Jimmy.  I’m sure the pearly gates swung wide open when you arrived in heaven.  For you took the one life God gave you and used it well and wisely. You lived with compassion and mercy, especially for the folks most of us don’t even see.

Thank you for being a role model. And for the pizza too!  

Rest in peace.   

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

In the photo the Carters are in the first row and I am in the back row on the right with the oversized mustache and UMass baseball cap! 

 

Breathe. Just Breathe. A Prayer for the Week Ahead.

“Remember to breathe. It is after all, the secret of life.” --Gregory Maguire, “A Lion Among Men”

Breathe.  Air in. Air out. Repeat.

On the days in this life when I am feeling anxious, or feeling like the world is out control, or when I am wondering just where the heck God is and when is God showing up; those are the days I most need to remember to just breathe. And this is certainly a week I know that I MUST remember to breathe.

Just breathe.  Air in. Air out. Repeat.

Breathe and connect myself to this present moment, the only moment that is real.  Past is past, long gone, out of my hands and the future isn’t here yet, and though I far too often assume the worst of outcomes is coming, that story isn’t written yet.

Yes, absolutely in these fraught times, I need to do all I can as a person of faith, to work for God and hope and peace and justice and mercy, in my life, in our shared life as citizens and neighbors. Jesus calls me to push back against bullies who would hurt and hate. In a way my activism and my vote are akin to civic breathing. Community dies when we forget how to breathe with and for one another.  Community thrives when we remember we all share a common body, a commonwealth, common breath.   

So, I am reminding myself to just breathe today and then tomorrow too, and then on and on and on. Day by day. Minute by minute. Even second by second.

Breathe and listen for God’s spirit in my inhalation and exhalation.  Sometimes when I pray, I can be a bit verbose with God, get all wordy, ask all kinds of questions, even demanding, all kinds of answers. Then I can treat God as some kind of divine “room service” of sorts.   

But other times my best prayers are simply like breaths, offered straight up to heaven, and then in the quiet, I listen for the breath of God in response, I suppose, to return to me on earth. Trusting not so much in God’s absolute answers but more so trusting in God’s absolute presence. Having faith that God is right here in this world, right within me, and within you, and within our communities, and as close as, well...

A breath.

Breathe. 

A confession. At times in my adult life, I’ve struggled with actually forgetting how to breathe. Some call these episodes “panic” attacks. Then I can get anxious. Then I breathe faster. Then that makes me more worried. Then that makes me breathe even faster. Then that can lead to panic, feeling as if life is just closing in on me. Or that I am responsible for everything, everyone, forgetting God’s got this.

Then I have breathing amnesia somehow and so I have to learn again, be guided by someone, recall and practice how to breathe well. Calmly. Slowly.  Clearly. That’s a lesson I’ve had to learn, and remember, especially when things seem bleak, or when I am convinced that God has left the house and that I am all alone.

I can’t breathe because I am afraid. Or I can breathe and be courageous. 

“Be still and know that I am God…”  the psalmist wrote.  Could also be “Breathe and know that I am God.” I like that too. To see breathing itself as an act of faith and resistance, a declaration that no matter what, God is here, God is with and in us, and God will give us the spiritual tools, energy, and wisdom to do what we must do.  To fight the bad. To embody God’s common good.

But first, we have to breathe.

This is a big week for our nation and our world.  I am praying and hoping and working for an outcome in this election that reflects the goodness of God and the goodness of humanity.  It is not clear that this will be the reality.  It may not be clear the next day or even the next week.

So, God, just help me to breathe. This day. To just breathe.

Air in. Air out.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

    

Dare We Ask Our Leaders to Act With Decency and Honor? YES!

“Have you no sense of decency sir?” --Attorney Joseph Welch, 1954

You have to be of a certain age (old, like me) or a history geek (yup, that’s also me) to understand the momentousness of the question and accusation that Joseph Welch put to Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, on June 9^th, 1954. 

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

The Oxford Languages Dictionary defines decency as, “behavior that conforms to standards of morality or respectability.” To treat others with decency means we show respect for people, strangers, and neighbors alike, and that we strive to be honest in all of our dealings. At our best, we try to treat others as we wish to be treated.

With decency. 

But in June 1954, decency was in short supply, when it came to the tirades, bluster, lies and cruelty of McCarthy. For four long years, beginning in 1950, McCarthy was a crusading, self-aggrandizing and oftentimes bullying leader in the drive to identify and remove communists from the United States government.  A climate of fear ruled our country then as the Cold War with the Soviet Union heated up. McCarthy claimed to have lists of hundreds of names of so-called subversives that he would soon unveil. The problem was that much of the time he had no names and instead used innuendo and half-truths to intimidate and attack his opponents.

By 1954 the country was beginning to tire of McCarthy’s narcissistic showmanship. That June, McCarthy led nationally televised hearings about his charge that there were communists in the United States Army. Boston lawyer Joseph Welch represented the Army. McCarthy decided to name on TV a colleague of Welch’s and accuse that young lawyer of subversion. Such a charge would doom the young man’s career and ruin his reputation. It was a despicable thing to do. But McCarthy pushed ahead. That’s when Welch asked his famous question.

From the United States Senate website, “As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy's career: ‘Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.’ When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, ‘Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?’"

Welch’s confrontation with the bully McCarthy brings to mind the indecent, mean, and callous ways that one national political candidate speaks about anyone who opposes him or his policies in any way. Yes, it our former President who wants to reoccupy the Oval Office.

A note: this isn’t about partisanship. I’m not a big fan of 45’s ideology. But neither was I a fan of, say, either George Bush senior or Ronald Reagan, and their policies. But I do have respect and even admiration for the decent, honorable, and often kind ways, in how they performed as commanders in chief. They carried themselves well as presidents and human beings. They spoke about their opponents not as the enemy or as subversives to be jailed or a threat to be despised, no. They worked across the aisle to find common ground. They made no veiled or direct threats of violence against anyone who dared to confront them. They actually laughed at themselves and their humanity.

But the one who names towers and hotels after himself? In the past eight years how we as Americans talk about one another and treat each other: its devolved and been cheapened. On the campaign trail but also in many public settings. School Committee meetings. Legislative bodies. Main Street even. That’s his legacy. This is not a red state or blue state issue, or Dems versus the GOP. It is about simple human decency and asking a legitimate question: does the ex-reality TV star ever show any decency in his politics? Or compassion? Mercy? Humility? Restraint of pen and tongue?

He has sullied and changed how we as citizens talk about and to each other, and how our candidates and office holders carry themselves. He has dragged our political and civic discourse down into the mud. We are all now splattered with the stain of his hyperbolic and mean-spirited rhetoric.

So…our ex-President retweets a tweet on X that used pornographic descriptions of sexual acts to defame Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton. Did he really just share that with his followers? He mocked a disabled reporter in a speech as the crowd laughed and cheered. How can someone be that heartless, that cruel? He claims Kamala Harris wasn’t Black until she decided she was Black.  I’m speechless. He’s decided that God saved him from assassination so he could save America. Must be great to know the mind of God. 

I write as a Christian pastor who has worked my whole career to build community in my small corner of Creation, and I am heartbroken at how divided the community called America has become since 2016.  I write because I love our country. I want to see it lifted up again, not torn apart more, nor torn down with negativity and the politics of grievance and menace.  

It is past time for all of us as citizens to call out the indecent and yes, despicable ways he’s tarnished and tarred, our public discourse. It’s time to just say, “No more. Please.” And to remember again Welch’s indictment from seventy years ago. It still rings true.

“Have you no decency sir?”

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

As Summer Fades...Gratitude and Melancholy.

“The summer night is like a perfection of thought.”    --Wallace Stevens, “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm”

Yes, I know it is still three weeks away and yes, I know some folks get really peeved when I name this time of year as the unofficial end of summer, but…. every late August the feelings for me are always the same. Maybe for you too. 

We experience and want to offer gratitude to God for summer and all of the gifts it offers. We experience melancholy, at the passing of one season into another and all the gifts going away.

Summer thanksgiving?

For me that list is so, so long. Sleeping late and no alarm clock. Hot dogs that snap with one bite at the ballpark and cheering on a homerun as a pale-yellow moon rises over center field. Eating supper under the stars with good, good friends. Something off the grill and fresh tomatoes and corn from the garden. Riding my bike on a balmy evening well past 7:30 as the sun seems so reluctant to finally set. That first day of vacation and how the time that lies ahead seems to stretch on for so long. Finding postcards on a road trip to send back home to mom. “Having a great time. Miss you!”

What’s on your summer ‘thank you God!’ list? Have you started to write it out yet, pray it up to God yet?  It may be time.  Labor Day will be here before we know it. And a return to school.  And increasing energy at work for many of us. And shorts and dock shoes that go back into the closet as fall jackets are retrieved.  And the cabin is locked up until next year, after one final BBQ blowout.

Summer melancholy?

Looking at the assembled loved ones in the photo from the July family reunion and knowing that the next time we gather there will more than likely be a few old souls that have passed on to heaven and a few new baby souls to take their place in our clan and the world.  By this time, the Red Sox baseball team that teased us all season has begun their September swoon and fall fade. Wait until next summer! Right?

Nothing and no one lasts forever, not even a summer that always seems to feel so endless to me in May, as the flowers blossom in full and the trees bloom beautifully and the sun rises hot in the sky, and it all begins again.  And then before we know it, September knocks on the door and we remember again that summer is finite. 

But by my calendar we’ve still got about a week left until summer starts to depart.  So, have one final soft serve ice cream and risk a brain freeze. Take a plunge into the pool or the ocean then lean into the warmth of the sun on your back as you huddle under a soft fluffy towel.  Sit out on the back deck and read that book you’ve been hoping to read all summer and read it far into the night, as the crickets chirp away in a summer symphony.  Get the last of the sweet corn and the ruby red tomatoes at the farm stand and dig right in.  Don’t spare the butter or the salt. Take a long walk with a friend at dusk and talk about everything and talk about nothing and just be with each other.

Then lift your eyes up and look to the Creator of summer, the one who paints pink sunsets and gives voice to the robins at the feeder, the power that raises a blue moon in an August sky. The spirit that invites us all to enjoy summer and the other seasons too.

It’s almost goodbye. Thanks again God for a great summer. We’ll miss it. Please make sure and bring it back again next year.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.