Summer Days by Rev Dr Jenny McKay

Well, we are now at the height of the summer and by the time you read this we will be past the Summer Solstice and the Longest Day. As I write, my husband, Dave, and I are determined to get up at sunrise this year on 21st June, and stay up for the full length of the day. We want to celebrate the light from sunrise to sunset in what has been an extraordinary year. It seems right to seek out this light in a year which has had months of emotional darkness, to remember that as the sun rises and sets, so are lives cycle too between raw sadness and uplifting happiness. Light and shade sit with each other, the one defining and celebrating the other. It has always been since God divided the light from the dark and we had morning and evening, the first day. And in the present moment, those early light waves are speeding an original goodness to us from back in the beginning, to illuminate any one particular, precious, present, moment. In his book, Anam Cara, John O’Donohue writes “There is such an intimate connection between the way we look at things and what we actually discover. If you can learn to look at your life in a gentle, creative and adventurous way, you will be eternally surprised at what you find”. Imagine if we could bring this wakefulness to the ordinary, mundane days of which our lives are mostly made up. What difference might it make, remembering every morning, every evening, that we gather, as humanity, within this towering cathedral of the Earth; our passing lives, the act of worship? As lockdown restrictions ease and we enter into a “noisier” world let us not forget that peace and beauty which these few dark months offered us, a re-connection with the created world around us, and God’s ever present love.

I hope that we manage our long day experience and maybe you will have succeeded too. To see if we did, do check out Facebook page Rev Jenny the Vet. Also on Twitter and Instagram.

Blessings,

Jenny