THEME    Time of fulfillment / Time of decision

THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION

1. The flowering of summer is only eclipsed by the flowering of the human spirit.
2. Flowering has no permanency – only the process remains. Indeed  the flowering only exists for the continuation of the process.
3. The time for completion is also the time for disengagement and for formulating the next project.
4. In the world of flowers, spring and summer are the times of the commencement of the next generation.
5. It is humbling to realize that the primary purpose of color and scent in flowers is to attract insects so that the process of pollination can be accomplished rather than to bring delight to human beings.  Maybe the original purpose is not so important as the manner in  which we relate to the current reality.  Don’t worry about how things came to be – just make the best use of what is.
6. Most Western gardens are created to be a thing of beauty – something to delight the eye of the beholder. Some Eastern gardens are there primarily to assist the viewer’s spiritual pilgrimage – something to enrich the spirit of the beholder. Could we not have a combination of both?
7. To work with the earth is to work with God.
8. Just as there is nothing automatic about the growth of flowers (it all depends on the quality of the soil, the amount of moisture, the absence of strong wind, the control of weeds etc) so our spiritual life does not automatically progress from great moments of awareness unless there is tender caring, wise planning and the allocation of sufficient quality time and thought to its concerns.
9. Deeper than the beauty of the flowers lies the mystery of the flowering.

PRAYER

O noontide God, flowing between the pain of birth and the grief of letting go, help us to use our times of fulfillment to your glory and the well-being of all your creation.

HYMNS                                

The Season of life’s flowering.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling

Everything has its own season.

http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
God molds the shapes of life.)

http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling

Christmas bathed in sunlight.

www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/aotearoahymns

Christmas in the Summer.

Singing the Sacred Vol 2 2014 World Library Publications

POEM / REFLECTION

SUMMER

I rejoice in Summer’s

flower and fragrance,

light and laughter,

aura and incandescence.

I celebrate warmed bodies and moist love,

petalled abundance and rainbow blossoms,

life teeming and torpid.

If only time could stand still in an eternal Summer.

But that would be to murder the season

as surely as the death of mounted butterflies;

for the wonder is in the dancing of the cycle

not the stopping of the clock,

and deeper than the beauty of the flowers

lies the mystery of the flowering.

FOCUS FOR ACTION

1. Summer is the noon tide of the year. In our lives the time of the height of success is also a noontide – a high noon – a time to emotionally prepare for retirement, a time to prepare for handing over to someone else, a time to take a back seat, a time to consider what we should be handing over to the next generation just as the flowering is the time of ensuring the continuation of the species.
2. Applying some of the principles of community development to the focus of our lives, we might well ask:

• Did what I/we achieved benefit others most or myself/ourselves most?
• Did it empower the people at work, the people in my family and especially the children or did it keep them in a dependency relationship?
• Do the people I live with, work with, have a better understanding of the processes of society and have they become potential agents of change because of their contact with me?

3. How easy will it be for me to let go without becoming either a bitter or an interfering old person  – interfering at work, at home, at church in the community groups I belong to and perhaps worst of all interfering in the affairs of my children although they are now adults.

Text and image © William Livingstone Wallace but available for free use.