How to Step into Something New and Life-Giving This September
“It’s a way to climb off the proverbial treadmill, which doesn’t get us closer to any of the things we long for.”
Photo by Janelle Pol
The beginning of summer has always been one of my favorite times of year, with the season’s long, lazy days stretched out before me, full of coming adventures.
Growing up in New York City, I would count down to the last day of school, looking forward to sleeping in, going to the beach, and catching lightning bugs. A couple of decades later, I still feel the excitement and wonder of these long summer days.
For some of us, maybe summer is a respite from the never-ending rat race of work, achievement, and evaluation.
In these longer days and nights, it feels like there are more opportunities for memory-making, actual living, and not just getting by. It’s a way to step out of time for a couple of months and experience eternity.
As this brief season of wonder begins to wane in August, it can feel like a Sunday night — the fleeting moments of joy before Monday comes with all its responsibilities and demands. It’s the death of magic and the rebirth of work-day toil.
THE END OF SUMMER
The end of summer in some ways is like a mid-life crisis. Two-thirds of the year have passed — what do we have to show for it?
For my fellow neurotics, we are measuring our lives by the checks on our internal to-do lists. Maybe some of those checkboxes contain a fulfilling job/career, a significant other, children, a certain income, a home. When September comes, are some of those boxes on their way to being checked off? Or do you feel further from those goals?
For a long time, as the autumn would progress, I would feel the hamster wheel speeding up underneath my already jelly-like legs. Another holiday season without a significant other to enjoy it with. Another swift march to a new year stuck in the same old job. Another November and December spent feeling shut out of the festivities because I’m broke.
DISCOVERING A SEASON FOR DREAMERS
And then I discovered Advent. Or maybe it was Advent that found me.
Advent is a season for dreamers and idealists. It’s a place where we can lay down all our misplaced expectations and dreams of the year, all our unmet goals and desires, all our fears of inadequacy, and hold out our hands for real hope, peace, joy, and love. It’s a whole season devoted to longing and waiting, of bursting open the constraints of time and shedding the tyranny of our to-dos.
But Advent is an end-of-the-year commemoration. What does it have to do with September? After all, there’s still time in September to get our acts together. How can this pre-Christmas ritual dispel the end-of-summer blues and slow down our pursuit of completed checklists?
The beautiful rituals and rhythms of waiting expectantly that saturate Advent can also be pulled backward into September.
PRESERVING WHAT SUMMER OFFERS
During Advent, some observers light candles each week, meditating on one of these virtues: hope, peace, joy, and love.
Maybe for each remaining month of the year, you can choose to consciously concentrate on one of those virtues. Or you can choose other good things to meditate on, like friendship, serving others, gratitude, or giving, to name a few. You can light a candle each night and look for ways to strengthen these virtues or good things in your life.
It doesn’t mean abandoning our ambitions or desires; rather, it is a way to loosen their grip on our hearts and minds and preserve the sense of eternity that summer offers. It’s a way to climb off the proverbial treadmill, which doesn’t get us closer to any of the things we long for. After all, that pursuit just makes us too tired to find the glory and grace in each day, regardless of what season we find ourselves in.
Let’s step into something new and life-giving this September.
What are some ways you can turn this season of busyness into a season of serenity? Are there things on your “to-do list” that you can take off?
Juliet Vedral is a writer, toddler-and-baby-wrangler, and amateur shoe collector. She is the co-founder and editor of The Wheelhouse Review. Her writing about faith and pop culture has also appeared in Sojourners. A native New Yorker, Juliet currently resides in Alexandria, VA, which is still a weird thing for her to say.