27 June :: Writing Project

What is one next step you can take to finish your current writing project?

My current writing project is eighteen years old! Here's my preliminary bibliography. Since then I've acquired and read at least another half-dozen books related to theology of creation / ecological theology. My one step won't finish it, but will be an encouraging update. Time to leave that old list where it is and add to it with this summer's date.

If I decide on two next steps, the second would be to design the book cover that hasn't happened yet, either.

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21 June :: reading recommendation

What was the last article or book I recommended to a friend, and why?

For summer solstice today, the Hope Writers prompt asks for a book recommendation. That doesn't fly for me because solstice is more sensory than most typical books—even more than a favorite beach read or cookbook. As summer 2022 opens wide, despite Covid continuing, over and against frightening political activities around the world, and in spite of my own relentless grief, I'll offer you the counsel I do my best to follow.

Plan your meals and snack around color-filled, seasonal, veggies and fruits. I especially glory in salads that have so many ingredients I can't count that high. Create your own salad dressings. Don't scrimp on flavor. Splurge on breads and bakery. Specialty lemonades and fruit drinks add glamour and flavour. BBQ with friends. Join a friend or acquaintance at the nearest ethnic café or popup place. Don't obsess incessantly about calories.

By the way, I do hope you'll still read all summer long.

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17 June :: Writing Life – Everyday Life

How has my writing life enriched my everyday life in the last three months?

Mental Health pastor Barry Pearman – Turning the Page told me he blogs every week "even if it's like shoveling fog." Although it has been close to as hard as shoveling fog, every single week I've written about one of the Sunday lectionary texts on Urban Wilderness and played Friday Five here (most weeks). As desert spirit's fire inches up on twenty years, I'm disappointed to have only seven subscribers, yet scrolling through months and years of blogging impresses me a whole lot. I especially love revisiting my monthly illustrated activity logs!

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08 June :: Summer Evening

A favorite memory of a summer evening

In his prologue to A Death in the Family that Samuel Barber musically interpreted as Knoxville: Summer of 1915, James Agee asked, "And who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth … in a summer evening … among the sounds of the night?" I wouldn't describe summer evenings on earth as full of sorrow, but they're sometimes so glorious that looking back at them fills me with sadness because they're no longer here.

Running through Faneuil Hall very late on a summer night after loving an al fresco dinner. BBQ at La Jolla Cove with waves breaking on the shore. Back stoop urban paradise with steaks on the grill, salad ingredients from the community garden, and endless conversation that's mostly about hope for the future that happens to be upcoming fall and winter activities. These people know me, appreciate me, and assume we'll belong to each other for a long time to come.

Looking back at these makes me sad they're no longer happening. Is there anything I can do to create updated versions?

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07 June :: Writing Obstacle

Identify an obstacle to my writing routine in summer (this summer). What can I do about it?

Easy one! Same as the obstacles to my living more fully. Lack of social interactions. Not enough people who get who I am. People do the best when and where they get the most support, but there's a huge limit to how much a person can engineer life; anyone's best life needs to happen organically. I've even stopped blogging my own sense of loss and devastation. The good news it doesn't take a whole lot of natural give and take, or very many conversations to establish a baseline to build on.

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05 June :: Flourish

I often say flourish, flourishing, bounty, bountiful, especially when I talk about God's bountiful gifts from earth, vine, and tree that help community and the land itself flourish, that make sacraments possible. You probably know about musical flourishes? Flourish is beyond bud, beyond blossom, beyond bloom. Flourish may be the best summer word! Flourish is bountiful presence that changes any status quo.

Many many of us have been asking how people, institutions, and organizations of a country can flourish. We look to revive to sustain both its natural infrastructure and its humanly built one. I yearn for the city to flourish, to come alive with hope. I ache for threatened wild places and rural outposts. What can we do to help restore and then maintain the health and integrity of everything we rely on that in turn relies on us?

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04 June :: Scent of June

The scent of June is the scent of summer. Imagine! After a rainfall. Just-picked tomatoes. It may be early in the season (summer in the northern hemisphere doesn't begin until late in the month), yet June smells full, rich, and complex. June's scent approaches complete! June's been through winter—it's known the promise and possibility of spring. Garden dirt. Farmer's market. City streets. Ocean at low tide. "Smells Like? An open air get-together. Smells like: hope.

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03 June :: Ideal Reader

Today's Hope Writers prompt asks what my ideal reader buys at the farmer's market and wonders why. They suggested the pronoun she; for simplicity I'll keep it.

My ideal blog reader goes to the farmer's market often, because living local is best all around. She lives at one with planet earth in the variety of fruits and veggies she buys, food vendors she enjoys, and buskers she contributes to. Her educational level likely approaches mine; her interests are parallel but far from identical. "Far from identical" is key here because I'm greedy. I need to learn new things, have new experiences, and get to know people who are different from me. When my reader buys a new to me fruit or veggie or says she'll prepare it in a way I've never done, I'll be excited to try it out. When she stops to listen to a style of music that intrigues me, I'll buy the CD if they have them for sale.

PS If my reader has a blog or other website, I'll be happy to visit it. Maybe I'll become her ideal reader?!

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02 June :: Beach

A time I visited the beach.

Truro. Malibu East, Malibu West. Revere (Ri-vee-ah). Easta Bost. Windansea. La Jolla Shores. Pacific Beach. My list's not endless, but my memories approach infinity. Lately a summer week at Truro each of three years in a row has been haunting me. A big group in a big house on the water with friends of my classmate's family. Sand dunes, lighthouses, and trips to nearby Provincetown were stuff of dreams.

I've been haunted.

Every year I drove back to the city late Sunday afternoon. Monday was grocery shopping, laundromat, and catch-up with urban buzz. Tuesday initiated a few days of final planning for our neighborhood summer program. I knew I'd "hit my stride," as they say in certain quarters. This is what I'd be doing most of the rest of my life. I felt God's call and claim on my life. It felt right and righteous.

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01 June :: Summer

Most months I look at the Hope Writer prompts; a few usually appeal to me, but not enough to blog every day. This month was different. I easily could write to almost all of them, but needed to set boundaries—mainly acknowledging this is a writing challenge and not an illustration one. As much as I enjoy finding or creating pics for my posts, I decided on a single peachy footer and gave myself permission to add images later.

Back then, no matter what else had been happening, summer always at least approached wonderful. Why had it been divine? Warm weather, so staying warm enough was easy as a cool fruity drink on the lanai. Long days. Summer school, summer programming. Fun food that included picnics and barbecues. Beaches, of course! Like peaches and nectarines, summer itself had a sense of ripeness and fulfillment, an aura of "I've made it! I've arrived!" Summer was driving up the North Shore of Boston. A trip up California's Central Coast.

Early in this century that ended. Not being able to wait for fall was a cataclysmic shift. Summer quit being wonderful when I started counting unproductive weeks and months and years. When my attempts to participate no longer worked. What now?

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