Dreaming of an Endless Summer (At Least Until Labor Day)

“Over? Did you say over?! Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor??!!” --John “Bluto” Blutarsky, Delta Tau Chi House (aka Animal House)

Over? Did you say that summer is “almost over?” Or that school is “just around the corner?!” And that before we know it, Labor Day will be here?! Over? Nothing is over—especially summer—until we say it is!  

Now I hate to be a crank and a stickler for accuracy but to set the record straight, the summer of 2022 will officially end on Friday, September 23^rd, and that’s more than eleven weeks away. And even if, like me, you mark the unofficial end of summer as midnight (plus one minute) on Labor Day Monday’s eve, still, that’s 36 days away!  A lifetime in summer days.

Right? RIGHT?

What is it about some folks and our wider culture that creates this need to close the door so quickly on summer, which is for me and so many others, our absolute favorite season. I mean come on. It’s summer. SUMMER! How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Crispy deep fried onion rings. Hot dogs and a cold coke and a game at Fenway. Fireflies in the backyard. The buzz of hot bugs on a sultry August afternoon. Enough light to bike until well past 8 o’clock. There’s barely any traffic in the town I call home—feels like so many folks have gone away. Then there are the fireworks in Boston on the 4^th.and of course the Pops and the 1812 Overture. Or watching my Goddaughter play baseball on a perfect Midwest summer evening. Grilling and chilling with my best friends in the whole world on Independence Day and making baked beans from my dad’s recipe for the very first time, and hey! They came out good!

I could go on. And on. 

I do like the other seasons. Love the crisp cold air and the sharp blues skies and the crunch of snow underfoot in winter. At least for the first storm.  I love autumn and the colors on the trees but there is just something about the dying of nature and hunkering down for a long winter that makes me kind of melancholy. I do absolutely enjoy spring and all the life that comes back and the chance to take my bicycle out of storage and cycle again, but still, it is such a busy few months. School ending. Graduations. Moves. Calendars so full.

I always come back to summer.

And no, I would not want to live somewhere that had an endless summer, like southern California. What also makes summer so special is its relative shortness, on average just 93 days in the northern hemisphere. Maybe God knew if we were given too much summer we’d get spoiled somehow or too big for our britches. In this part of God’s creation summer is special because it shows up so quickly and then seem to depart in an instant. Where did you go?   

There’s also the truth that for summer to come back in New England it has to put up a good fight. Push aside the howling winds of winter and hurry up the sometimes slow as molasses appearance of spring.  We earn our summers here. It’s like our payoff somehow, for snowplows and blizzards and gray March days and those dark times of December when we arise in the dark and come home in the dark and go to bed in the dark and…repeat.

I was actually inspired to stick up for summer when I read a social media post by my good friend Charlene. In her words, “Please be advised that during the month of August, I will not suffer any discussion that includes ‘fall harvest,’ ‘apple picking,’ “flannel shirts” or sheets, or the worst offender … “pumpkin spice” anything. There’s a season for all this…. Be PRESENT, people!”

There’s clear wisdom in that advice to “be present.”  What is it about humans that makes us forever looking ahead to that which is not yet, and in the process of that projection, missing the beautiful now. The right now. As in this is the day that God has made. REJOICE IN IT! So, I guess that’s the core of my spiritual advice and not just for you dear reader but for me too, as together we walk into summer central, the heart of summer, the dog days of summer, August.

Make that summer list of things you still need to do, or the places you need to see, or the foods you need to eat, or the beloved people you need to visit before summer goes away. And then just do it! So, thank you, God, for summer. Help us as your sometimes impatient creatures to just slow down and enjoy the summer ride.

It ain’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

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.