This past winter was rough; the snow simply kept coming and coming, and got deeper and deeper. Well, that’s a distant memory. When you look at the landscape now, it’s hard to believe how much snow we had.
    Yesterday was Memorial Day, traditionally the start of summer. The roads had less traffic this morning. A few nights ago, I made a late-night run to the Safeway, and the warm air felt like the summer evenings of my childhood, when my family would go for a drive with the car windows open.
    Each season has its own spiritual feel, it seems to me. Fall is a time of preparation, getting ready for winter and Thanksgiving and Advent and Christmas. Winter is when we hunker down. Christmas is over and Lent is looming; we’re just trying to get through it. Spring is Easter, with the joyful good news of new life.
    Summer spirituality is light and airy, hopeful without a lot of heavy doctrines going through your mind. It is picnics and outings, and open doors and windows. Summer faith is wide open and sunny.
    George Gershwin penned these words,
        “Summertime, And the livin' is easy
        Fish are jumpin' And the cotton is high...”
    Yes, there are a lot of important issues facing each of us, and facing the nation, and facing Sixth Church. But summer is also a time to live in the free and easy trust of God.
    David Souter, the retired Supreme Court justice, spoke recently at Harvard Law School. One line stayed with me. He was speaking about how a judge judges, in his view, and he said, “. . . in an indeterminate world I cannot control, it is still possible to live fully in the trust that a way will be found leading through the uncertain future.”
    That seems to me to describe the summer faith: the future may indeed be uncertain, but we live in trust, and are freed by that trust to enjoy life. Of course, Souter didn’t speak of God, but for us, that trust is what we call faith in God.
    Have a great summer.