10 Ways to Savor the Summer

Warm days, cool nights, fireflies, shooting stars, bare legs, iced tea, watermelon, sweet corn, and swimming — all summer long, God lingers around every corner, in the shade of every tree, around every campfire.

To make the most of this season, here’s an invitation to be as intentional as possible about savoring the wonders of summer — and growing closer to the One who makes it so sweet!

So try these tasty summer practices, and add your own to the list:

+ As the summer evenings come, go for a walk with God in the cool of the day. If this primordial form of meditative enjoyment was good enough for God (see Genesis 3:8), it’s good enough for all of us!

+ Go barefoot with Moses. You don’t need a burning bush or an embossed invitation to set those tootsies free. Take a walk around in your backyard, a local park, or farther afield — it’s all holy ground!

+ Whether it’s big-back-yard gardening or community garden gardening or little-window-boxes gardening or something in between, we were created to till and to keep the earth (Genesis 2), to plant flowers and eat cherry tomatoes right off the vine.

+ Take a Wifiatus! Wifi + hiatus = Ahhhhhmazing…

+ Find the nearest “dark sky” spot and go stargazing. See if you can find Andromeda, the only celestial object we can see with our naked eyes that isn’t in our own Milky Way galaxy. Andomeda’s a galaxy, too, the nearest one to us: a swirl of a trillion stars! See if you can feel that we’re slowly, slowly, slowly approaching each other: in 7 billion years or so, Andromeda and the Milky Way will meet up and combine into an entirely new galaxy…

+ On an especially hot day, get five ingredients: water, lemons, sugar, ice, and a few mint leaves. Mix to taste, find a shady spot and some tall glasses, and enjoy!

+ Get to know one of God’s amazing creatures, in person or online. The spider in the closet, the chicken in the neighbor’s yard, or a sea lion in the surf! Pick a creature, and then learn at least five amazing facts about it before the sun goes down!

+ Instead of ice cream, try making this Raspberry Coconut Mango Sorbet from Minimalist Baker. First of all, it's delicious! And second, reducing your dairy consumption is a tangible way you can make a dent in climate change and live more fully into your role as guardian and protector of God's good creation.

+ Say a special prayer for peace in our homes, and in particular, for people experiencing domestic violence. Challenging times plus hot weather makes tempers flare...

+ Download this less-than-five-bucks SALT printable, print it up, and put it somewhere you’ll see it every morning.

And finally, here’s a blessing as you go about savoring God's summer:

Apprehend God in all things,
for God is in all things.

Every single creature is full of God,
and is a book about God.

Every creature is a word of God.

If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature, 
even a caterpillar, I would never have to prepare a sermon.  

So full of God is every creature.

+ Meister Eckhart

Happy Summer!

Peace,
The SALT Team

p.s.  For even more ideas on how to slow down and savor the season, check out our lovely little printable resource, "Find Your Slow Summer.” And for some toe-tapping music and a boatload of activity ideas, check out “Sing! Play! Summer!” and the “‘Great and Small’ Guide to the Most Okayest Summer Ever.” And finally, here’s SALT’s “Guide to Self-Care for Families Together at Home.”