When the Fever Breaks

a devotional for summer

Photo by Olli Kilpi on Unsplash

Thank you for joining us! Before we begin our devotional, I wanted to share a Comment Highlight from last week:

As usual, last week’s comment sections were FULL of beauty and wisdom! Today I’ll share this one, from Pete Obermeier, on our essay “An Untidy Hymn”:

While attempting to clear some space on my tiny counter to engage in a two-hour cooking project, I had this thought about the white-gloved critics: I would rather be using my fleeting time downloading my hyperactive brain before I pass on, before passing on 80-years of my widely-varied experiences to younger folks, so that they might have a framework to help them make sense of their own missteps, with fewer repetitions of behaviors that led to remorse for my interference with the happiness of others.

I love the message of this, Pete! Who needs the white-gloved critics, anyway? Pete writes a newsletter-memoir here on Substack called Merlin’s Newsletter. Check it out!

As a little bonus, I also wanted to shout-out the newsletter Thanks for Letting Me Share, who wrote a beautiful meditation last week based on “An Untidy Hymn”! Tap below to read, and send the writer TBD some love!

Daily Gratitude List 8.19.22

If you want a chance to be featured in next week’s Comment Highlight, all you have to do is post a comment on any of this week’s posts or threads. That’s it!

Now, on with this week’s devotional…

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in the midst of a sticky August afternoon
I pause
to let a cool breeze
wander through;

are you lost?
I wonder aloud
to the breeze which feels
decidedly
autumnal,
premature;

but she is not lost.

I am prophet,
she says. 
soon you will forget
how this August fever feels;

when you're tending the fire
and warming your toes
and dreaming of sunshine

you will forget,
because you always do. 

she passed, laughing, 
a messenger of things to come;

for now
she is only a breeze,
here for a moment

then gone.

Sometimes I think that autumn is my favorite season, and then sometimes I simply imagine that the equinox seasons (spring, autumn) exist to give us peace after extremes. After the heat of summer, often all we want is the relief of cool breezes. After the barren cold and gray of winter, the warmth and green of spring feels like a miracle.

By the time August rolls around, I’m usually more than ready for relief. August is often our most humid month, sticky and close, warm without pleasure. But there is a paradox to hold, here: I want the relief of cooler weather, but as a gardener I hope to stretch the season out just that much longer, to harvest just that much more before the October frosts arrive. My body wants autumn, but my brain is holding on for a bit more summer. Just a little more.

The tension of this liminal space is important, I think. The now and the not yet, the yearning and the contentment to stay put. In October, the ancients will put a name to this spiritual gateway in the observance of Samhain, but this is still August, and we are waiting for the fever to break. The time to contemplate is not yet here. Soon, soon!

In the days when we marked time agriculturally, summer was the season to work your tail off so that your rest in winter could be truly earned. The larder is full, the garden is dead, there is no more work to be done. Time to sleep, feast, tell stories, and wait for the earth to thaw again. Obviously, we don’t live in a society built like this anymore, but I think something still echoes in our bones around this time of year: push just a little harder, fill the pantry, and enjoy your rest.

This year, instead of pushing impatiently toward autumn, I’m challenging myself to savor the paradox, to walk the boundary line between now and not yet. Preserving the small-but-mighty harvests, planning for next year, reorganizing the greenhouse, cleaning and tidying to make way for the season that will find us indoors.

Soon enough the fever will break.

Soon, soon!

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