Someone once said, “A life without love is like a year without summer.” This sentiment draws our awareness to just how significant and important this summer season is.
The sun shines brightly, the days are long, and life in all its aspects is in full bloom. So many incredible life-affirming things unfold naturally, bringing joy and happiness into our lives. It’s a time for community, spontaneity, and adventure. Concerts in the park, picnics and bar-b-ques, camping, hiking, lazing on the beach, and all manner of recreation and relaxation fill our days. And yes, the love that is so important. From loving all the fabulous activities and opportunities, to summer romances, to full-orbed love and gratitude for the One Power and One Presence that has created everything for our enjoyment and benefit.
While we are reflecting on the joys of summer, it is important to recognize and remember that the gifts of summer, like all the other gifts we are blessed to receive, are gratis. Free. Ours for the taking. We need only to open our hearts in acceptance and enjoy the riches of this season. The long, bright, warm days filled with excitement, love, and satisfaction are analogous to those periods when our awareness of the oneness of all life reunites our individual souls with the eternal, infinite Consciousness that grounds all being.
Life has gifted us beyond measure. Against all odds, several trillion cells have joined together to manifest as each of us so we could enjoy our time in the sun. We are all rays of the one infinite, eternal light. We are all driven and informed by the One Power, each in our own way according to our understanding and awareness of the Life Principle that created and sustains us. Some of us refer to this power as Spirit, some refer to it as God, others as Life.
“A rose by any other name…” as Shakespeare said. Let’s not bog down in language. Let’s just give gratitude to the god of our understanding for the gift of life and the opportunity to bask in the sun together. We are a community of One. A unit. The sonship. Conceived and created as individualized expressions of the One Power and animated by the One Presence. This is our summer. Our time in the sun. We are flowers in the same garden, each of us adding to the beauty of the whole. Each of us is necessary to the whole. Each of us has “the reason for the season.” And so it is.