This Summer = Brilliant. It was packed with life-changing and delightful events, celebration upon celebration; weddings, youth trips, BBQ’s, Friday twilight movies in our backyard, dinner parties, travel, and rejoicing. If you were to arrange each of these spectacular moments they would be as radiant as the rows of bouquets of wild flowers in Pikes Place Market downtown Seattle!
Summer was brilliant yet so tightly clustered with celebrations that as I entered into summer I felt a need to live into the coming weeks with care. I had heard my dad say some months prior, during a crazy-busy time in his life; “We must learn to not only live but to anticipate and celebrate.” His statement has lingered with me and I would like to ratchet it up one more notch. We must also savor life; this produced the triadic formula that I began to strive to live into this summer: to anticipate, to savor, and to celebrate.
How might we create time in our days to not only live in chronos time- simply living from one event to the next and instead live into kairos time- living into the moment, and lingering there. How might we anticipate, savor, and celebrate more in our lives.
Anticipate: Allowing excitement to bubble up from our core being of what is to come, as a child might who anticipates Christmas opening with care each door on their advent calendar to find a scrumptious (at least to little ones) piece of chocolate.
Savor: Lingering in the moment, allowing dishes to stand as table fellowship overflows round dining room tables under candlelight.
Celebrate: Allowing the moments in our days to soak in as we breathe a little deeper, so when you crawl into bed you might find yourself satisfied with the day as a smile forms on your lips: Today = Brilliant.
The best way I have learned to live into this formula for life: anticipate, savor, and celebrate is through the prayer of examine, a spiritual practice, which weaves you through the events of your day to celebrate each moment. May you find time as the fall begins to breathe her cool wind into your lives to live into this practice and see where and how God has been at work.
