Summertime, and the livin' is easy....

The posts have been pretty gloomy of late, so let's lighten things up a bit shall we. I have been accused more than once in my life of carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders, and it's a fair cop. But I don't want to think about any of that this morning. After all, it's Friday, and who wants to think about gloom and doom and what a former student once called "the declination of American society." Last night, I was sitting out in the back yard working on my novel, editing. Red pen stuff. At some point I became aware of what was going on around me. What was happening was very little. We live outside of a small village, about half-way up a hill on a dead end road. Our yard is completely surrounded by trees, so that - even though there are other people living near - in the summer you cannot see any other houses. It was an utterly flawless summer evening. Not a cloud in the sky. Temperature at about 75º with a nice breeze blowing. The only sounds outside were the wind rustling the trees and an occasional car over on the main road. Michelle was playing the piano inside, and the music wafted out to me faintly. And as I sat there drinking all of this in, I realized how unbelievably content I was. I thought that I had never known such peace and happiness in all of my life. And sitting there, I whispered a prayer of thanks for all that the Lord, in His infinite goodness, had blessed me with. I have a lovely little home, I have a good paying job, I have two cars that run well, I have a beautiful wife who loves me every bit as dearly as I love her, I have relatively good health, and I have time for moments of reflection like this. In this life, what more can we ask for? In "Little Cares," Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:

The little cares that fretted me,
I lost them yesterday
Among the fields above the sea,
Among the winds at play;
Among the lowing of the herds,
The rustling of the trees,
Among the singing of the birds,
The humming of the bees.

The foolish fears of what may happen--
I cast them all away
Among the clover-scented grass,
Among the new-mown hay;
Among the husking of the corn
Where drowsy poppies nod,
Where ill thoughts die and good are born,
Out in the fields with God.

I lost mine out in the back yard with God. And if I could carry the feeling I had yesterday evening with me all of the time, then I would never be bothered by "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" again. It's a good thing to bear in mind as we wind down into the weekend.