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.

 

 

    

      

 

To Make a Difference, Find Hope, and Fight Cancer. RIDE ON!

“I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”     --J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

It’s just a bicycle after all.

Just a two wheeled conveyance, to get me from point A to point B and under my own power too.  It’s got two pedals, twenty-four gears, two jet black tires and sleek levers on the handlebars for shifting up or down. There’s a granny gear for a big hill and a speedy gear for when you get to fly like the wind down a long winding road. Throw in a water bottle or two and a spare tube, maybe a banana in the back pocket of your bike shirt, and that is about it.  Oh, almost forgot. A helmet to keep the rider safe.

You’d think that such a humble contraption couldn’t do much good, not in a world changing way, not in this oh so complicated and huge and often broken place called earth that we all call home. 

I mean what’s a bike up against poverty or war, or violent political rhetoric or all the ‘isms that so hurt God’s children, hurt you, hurt me, hurt everyone? What can one bike do, or perhaps a group of bikes, a team of bikes, maybe even several thousand bikes…what can all those cyclists and bicycles do?

A lot of good, it turns out. A bike can actually carry much hope, and love too, and compassion. 

You see, every year since 1980, tens of thousands of cyclists from around the country and world have ridden in the Pan Mass Challenge (PMC). The PMC is a two-day charity bike ride that for more than forty years, has raised funds for Boston’s world class cancer care institute and hospital, the Dana Farber.  This year the PMC will surpass $1 billion raised to help find a cure, so that one day we might actually make cancer history.

I am blessed to be a PMC’er, have been for fifteen years, and am on a church team of seven amazing fellow riders.  In total more than 5,000 of us will be riding this weekend, through eastern Massachusetts, with many of us biking all the way to P’town on the tip of the Cape.

So, if you find yourself on the roads and byways of the Bay State this coming Saturday and Sunday, you may just see some of these do-gooders, these world changers, these cyclists who just want to work and share some kindness, and work for the dream that we will one day beat cancer once and for all. Beat the disease that takes the lives of more than 600,000 Americans each year. Those folks are our loved ones. Our neighbors. Our friends. The amazing scientists and doctors and helping staff at Dana Farber have come so far in their work. But there is still much to do and many miles to go.

Why do I ride?

I ride for the people I love who are either sick with or have been taken by cancer. I ride for uncles and aunts and mentors and church members young and old and friends and cousins. I ride because I need to be amongst big-hearted people who actually sacrifice and work for a cause greater than self alone, and for the common good. When people work together like this, anything is possible. When people don’t or can’t work thus, well, nothing is possible. Not really.

So, here’s a suggestion. Put down your device that is trying to preach to you a litany of bad news and instead look out on the road for the bearers of some good news. Very good news.  For me and my fellow PMC riders: we can use something as simple as a bike to save lives. We can pedal and reassure a cancer patient that they are not forgotten, that they are in fact, loved. We can ride and remind the world that each of us can do good, lots of good, in our corner of the world.

All we have to do is decide to make a difference. For nothing, nothing is more powerful than a community that commits to come together and then build a new world, just one act of goodness at a time.

God knows we could all use some goodness and good news. 

RIDE ON!    

(Donations can be made at pmc.org)

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.