Summer: A Spiritual Biography of the Season

A season of both growth and of stillness, of hard work in the garden and of relaxing in the cool of the mountains, summer is a celebratory time. Every day matters, says summer. Look around you. Life is starting up again after a long winter and spring and we find ourselves in a world filled with creatures and plants and shimmers of heat on the city streets, with back garden barbecues and ice cream vans jingling through the neighbourhood. This collection of powerful, stirring pieces from a wealth of sources - ranging from poems composed in eighth-century China to letters from a pioneer woman in the American West, from the Declaration of Independence to Ray Bradbury’s musings on childhood summers - invites us all to fully experience the rich and bountiful spirituality of summer. Contributors include Anne Lamott, Ray Bradbury, Richard Selzer, Denise Levertov, Walt Whitman, Barbara Kingsolver, Carl Sandburg and Jamaica Kincaid. From Summer: A Spiritual Biography of the Season : Some of the most powerful memories of summer come out of our childhood, when we wake up on a June morning and suddenly remember that school is out and that summer stretches in front of us as endlessly as the infinities of space. Everything is different. The old routines are gone. The relentless school bus isn’t coming. The bells will be silent in silent hallways. And all the world is leafy green, and will be green, forever and ever. - Ray Bradbury.