Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Happy September and welcome back to the Baltimore Beacon after our annual August hiatus! I hope that summer afforded you time for rest, relaxation, and recreation, along with opportunities to enjoy the company of family and friends in some of summers’ great venues: the family vacation, a day at the beach, the ballpark, the golf course, the big cookout, or maybe even the clambake!

Summer gives us all some opportunity to take a “break” from the experience of the rigors of our fast-paced, hectic, and demanding lives and selves. Summer invites to play and ‘chill out,’ and to enjoy ourselves, one another, and the beauty of God’s creation from the within and without of our lives. Thank God for the graces and blessings of summer!

The words on the picture at top right were painted on a canvas in the breakfast room of a hotel where I had stayed overnight the week after Labor Day. As I was enjoying my free bagel, yogurt, and coffee breakfast, I was struck at how the words captured so much of the ‘end of summer’ emotional experience for me, and I suspect, for many of us. Summer’s relaxation of the regular schedule and usual order of the day gives way to the return of the very regular ‘Monday to Friday’ grind! Back to school! Back to work! Back to life with all its demands, responsibilities, meeting schedules, and regular routines!

While the summer season draws to a close in terms of nature, weather, and calendar in this month of September, her graces and blessings thankfully need not come to an end from within our hearts and souls. As men and women of faith, we believe that God is with us in every age and season of our lives. The blessing of God in nature’s season of summer, as indeed God blesses us in every season, is a gift for our souls to ‘choose life’ as we journey through time unto eternity. While on a purely natural level it may feel like a bit of a struggle to say good-bye to Summer and hello to Fall, let us remember that even as the seasons of nature may come and go, the Spirit remains to make us whole and holy. We need both Monday and Summer, (and every day and season!), for the experience of our full humanity.

My hope and prayer for all of us is that we thank God for whatever blessings we have known this summer and bring the grace and good energies of all of them into the “Monday” return to the more regular routines of our lives. As September brings us Indian summer and inaugurates the season of colors and falling leaves, and the season of hearth and harvesting, may summer’s blessings linger in us and flow into our experience of being and living. Even as summer ends and Autumn dawns upon us, ‘more summer’ does not sound too farfetched to me as a person of faith. The Spirit, I believe, inspires what summer teaches for fullness of life in every season under heaven. A few lessons that stand out in my mind and heart as I ponder today …

Remember to take a break ... they are not just for summer!

Chill out….so you can become more tuned in!

Spend good and relaxing time with family, friends, and community … loving and being loved are the most important things in life and to the experience of God.

Make time for play and recreation ... There is more to life than work, however important it may be!

Look up to the sky and out to the sea ... you are held in the palm of God’s loving hand!

May the blessing of God in every age and season of our lives draw us ever more into the mystery of God’s presence, the abundance of Christ’s love, and the grace of their Spirit, now and always.