I love summer evenings, and especially the longest hours of daylight we experience at the end of May and the beginning of June. As a kind of “Ode to Summer” which has just begun, let me tell you about some of the things that I like to do on such evenings!
Putting Around
The extra daylight hours allow me to putt around in the garage or workshop. Even though I moved nearly a year ago—I have not-so-fond memories of packing in earnest last year at this time—I’m still far from settled. I’ve been blessed to accomplish much. However, I still have a long list of things I’d like to do, which is OK, since it mirrors our life in Jesus!! In other words, if we are honest (humble), we must admit we all have lists of changes we would like to make in ourselves and our choices so that we can be a better image of Jesus and “know, love, and serve” him better! For example, a couple of weeks ago, I finally put together the components of a small workshop that have been sitting in disarray in the St. Saviour boiler room for nearly a year: a workbench, a couple of tool carts, several five-gallon buckets of tools and boxes of garage stuff. I moved some things around in the boiler room, found a spot for the workbench, and leveled it. I put a couple of sections of pegboard up on the walls for tools. I took two wooden doors that were being stored, put a couple of sawhorses under them, and draped thick plastic on top to protect the wood. Now I have plenty of flat space for projects. Outside, there are two things I like to do in the extended evening light or early summer.
Work in the Garden
One is to work in the garden. Some may remember that Meg and Matt Davidson—the couple who are spearheading the Crescent Parish Community Garden at St. Saviour to support Bond Hill Food Pantry—put in a garden for me behind the rectory before I even arrived last July! That garden did well, but the tomatoes suffered from the abundance of deer who like tomatoes too, and who don’t seem to know that while they might be welcome in Deer Park, they’re not in my corner of Sycamore Township! Weeks ago, I borrowed from Matt and Meg a bit of the leftover plastic deer fence protecting the community garden. Now that my garden is protected from deer (Panda, one of the rectory cats, keeps the rabbits out) I’m turning over more grass for a bigger garden. In addition, I’ve carved out two sections of landscape behind the rectory with help from Dave Bucker.
Have a Good Swing
The other thing I love to do after sunset in the dusks of late May and early June is to make use of the swing that I brought with me from my last parish.
All My life
I have loved to swing on a swing set for as long as I can remember. The work of pumping and swinging high is good exercise. It’s thrilling as the wind rushes by and it’s dangerously exhilarating at each apex. Also, there is something about a swing’s rhythm that is comforting, going back into the past and forward into the future…not just physically, but especially in my thoughts too, which is what I mostly do when swinging. I think of times past and events of the day or week. I carefully consider things present…and I dream about the future. Many a problem is closer to being solved and homilies born while I swing!
Finding a Swing Big Enough
During my first priest assignments, I would find a swing set near the church. For example, at Sidney, Holy Angels, one summer night a week I would grab some ice cream at Chilly Jilly’s across from the church and walk down to the park south of town where there was an eight-foot swing. For my sixteen-year assignment in Petersburg Parishes, I lived at Immaculate Conception, Botkins. Wonderfully a ten-foot swing was even closer, at Botkins school, just a two-minute walk away. Residents around Botkins School knew when they heard a squeaking swing after 9:00 P.M. that Fr. Pat was likely taking a turn.
Assembling a Swing
At Incarnation, my last assignment, there wasn’t a swing nearby big enough for an adult, or someone pretending to be so! So, I decided to build one…a big one. I bought a pair of two-inch pipe end frames/knuckles and 100 feet of pipe. A semi had to truck it in! I couldn’t assemble the swing on my own because of its weight. To the rescue Jesus and my guardian angel came! After the 10:30 Mass, Incarnation Boy Scout Troop 530 arrived from a campout back to church for the Noon Mass. While stowing their gear in the Church basement before Mass, I asked the leaders if they could heave the partially assembled swing up with the pully I rigged to a nearby tree and insert the other two legs. They had the twenty-foot-tall swing set assembled before I could get out of the sacristy after Mass. When I moved in late June last year, the swing set followed me down in the U-Haul, thanks to help from Incarnation’s maintenance crew, who re-assembled it to the east of St. Saviour’s office.
Pray for the Frazzled
As summer begins, may we give thanks for a bit more leisure, one of the many gifts of God and promises of heaven…and may we pray for the frazzled and overworked.