I recently came across a poem by Mary Oliver called “Just as the Calendar Began to Say Summer.” It’s great and is really speaking to my experience of summer this year. She laments that just as she’s starting to forget and “heal” from the memorizing of multiplication tables, learning how to be “successful”, and making sure to always produce results; she finds herself at summer’s end, “summoned back to the chalky rooms and the desks,” trying to hold onto the memories of how “the river kept rolling its pebbles, the way the wild wrens sang though they hadn’t a penny in the bank, the way the flowers were dressed in nothing but light.”
As I wade into the waters at St. Paul’s, I’m reminded a bit of the magic of summer. Wandering through empty school buildings, I can almost feel the way these walls are resting, breathing, renewing themselves as they await the return of students and teachers, shouts and gasps, lessons and promptings, laughs and tears, cheers and jeers.
I imagine our teachers and students as well. Some have traveled to other continents while others have poured themselves into summer jobs. Some have muddied their boots on many a trail while others have set new records on video games and streaming platforms. Many have allowed themselves to be enchanted by the mystery of the world about them. I hope that to some degree they and I have all found a bit of renewal, rest, and healing.
The pattern of the school year taking its rest during the summer months provides a great metaphor for our lives. There are times that are heavily packed with frantic energy and a seemingly endless list of to-dos. There are times that feel effortless, organic, natural, and unburdened. There are cloudy, sad, and confusing times, and there are times that are bright, clear, and defining.
What Mary Oliver’s poem is telling me, in this season, is to be sure to celebrate the pebbles dancing in the river while they’re dancing. I want to be so present to the goodness, the beauty, and the eternal of this moment right now, so that when things pick up and get a little crazy, when the rooms get chalky, I can spiritually go back to the well of pebbles dancing in the river and be renewed once again, almost just as much as if my feet were still in the river, and I was still breathing easy, deep, and healing breaths.
What are the pebbles dancing in the river for you? Where do you find rest, renewal, and healing? How can you store these moments up so that you can go back to them, just like a spiritual well, to draw some more of that same rest, renewal, and healing?
Love,
Josh