Summer Greetings, dear Friends! It is the season of vacation trips, bright summer colors, gardens in full growth preparing for a bountiful harvest, blue skies, sunshine, swimming and picnicking. In short, a busy, outward-oriented time of year. Where is there time for prayer in all this activity? We tend to think of prayer as a quiet, inward-looking pursuit, and it feels more natural to focus on it during deep winter months when nature herself draws inward into silence. But there are many ways to pray. As we eagerly look for new flowers in bloom, as we are stilled for a moment before a blazing sunset over the ocean, as we are humbled by the miracles of growth all around us . . . are these not prayers of gratitude? And when we watch a summer storm approaching over distant mountains, clouds gathering, darkening, moving faster and faster, wind picking up and then the rain coming down in sheets; and it moves closer and lightening zigzags across the sky everywhere, and we are filled with awe before the sheer power unleashed; and then it moves away, and deep silence remains in its aftermath, and for a moment we, too, are silent before the power and majesty of nature . . . is this not worshipful prayer? Let us be attentive to these moments of spontaneous prayer as well as our times of inward, more intentional prayer in silence.
The survival of wilderness -- of places that we do not change, where we allow the existence of creatures we perceive as dangerous -- is necessary. Our sanity probably requires it. These places function, whether we intend them to or not, as sacred groves -- places we respect and leave alone, not because we understand well what goes on there, but because we do not.