Summer of Grace
Summer – what a wonderful word! The days stretch and relax. The sun shines (or not!). Warmth fills our bodies – winter’s cold becomes hard to imagine. Memories of childhood summers, lying back on the grass with gloriously nothing to do but gaze up at the deep blue sky and pick out animal shapes in the drifting clouds. A pint in a pub garden. The smell of suncream. Of bar-b-ques.
What are you doing this summer? Less traveling than in others, perhaps. In whatever way Covid chooses to cramp our summer style, the season will still sing for us its song of joy and life, of vibrant flowers and fresh air, of laughter and love.
By strange design the church’s calendar makes space for it. The year’s top performers cram into half the year – Christmas, Good Friday, Easter – with supporting acts from Advent and Lent, Pentecost closing the show. Then the stage clears. There is space 
for summer. Space to inhale more slowly the deep truths of those great festivals, of birth and death and resurrection. Space to allow grace to touch us in the everyday and the simple. Space simply to be.
So to finish, a poem of grace.
Sensing Grace
My days are full of possibilities,
none more exhilarating than
when I cross the threshold of grace.
Sky opens and space clears,
A radiant landscape
of belonging unfolds
And held, circled by love,
I stand in sunlight
And remember faithfulness.
Warmed and awakened
I am stilled by wonder
And breathe deeply
of this subversive beauty.
Grace never loses its power
to startle,
to wrong-foot
to scandalise.
Limitless and
immeasurable,
There
are
no
strings
attached.
Chris Matthews, https://www.presenceproject.com/
