Summer to Fall: Eternity is in the Air

The last week here in Central Pennsylvania was quite hot and humid. Every day was hotter and humider than the last. As an oven on Broil.  

The Summer as a whole was cooler and rainy as evidenced by the lack of Peppers out in my garden (Peppers like sun and heat) and the proliferation of Greens (Greens like Kale like it cooler and rainy). Last week, it was as if the Summer was trying to schedule in all of the swelter like someone does with vacation days before they expire.

I get a horrible itch during hot/humid summers where my body turns into an awful conflagration of rash. The longer the summer goes, the worse it gets. This summer, until the last week, I was itch-free and then it came on bad. It is probably caused by a combo of hot and humid weather, lack of hydration, and showers stripping off my bodily oils with the help of soap and shampoo.    

I am much more of a Green person. My ideal weather on Dial-A-Day would be sunny, in the 60's, with a cool wind. I like California and Florida, but as places to visit. Pennsylvania is lush and verdant, with forests and meadows. A real Eden. We have the four seasons in more or less equal measure. The Fall and Spring hit the perfect balance. Winters can be cold and dreary and the last two years de facto Winter has been from the end of October until March. Global warming is not happening on the East Coast. Summer can be just downright ugly.

Winter is beautiful in its own right. Yet, it can be depressing when it drags. If you ever want to be down, view Winter Light, a film by Ingmar Bergman. Made in 1963, the Swedish Director of renown, essentially portrays life as meaningless, including suffering, so it doesn't matter. Very fashionable in the 1960's with the existential angst. Endless winter. One of the characters shoots himself and no one sheds a tear. It is odd that humanity uses suffering as an example of how God cannot exist, be powerful, and good (what is called Theodicy) but then is left with suffering being treated as irrelevant and inconsequential. Leaves fall, so do people. Get over it and get the rake.

The ache we feel is eternity...

Yesterday, the fire in late summer was put out and the fever broke. It rained heavily all day. I had to go out and bail out my underground garden. I extend the growing season of my Greens by embedding them two to three feet below the lawn in a giant hole, where the ground does not freeze, and I put a glass screen door on top to hold in the heat and let the sun through during the colder months. Yesterday, it looked like an aquarium. The water had almost filled the hole.

Today it is just crisp and clean. Summer appears to be in its last throes. The Sun is going her way. Soon the leaves will change as they say good-bye in one last burst of color, smoke will fill the air of such leaves burning, and Eagles football for real begins. Time to see if Chip Kelly is a genius or a madman.

God makes all things beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11).