FTE "On Call" Blog

Trace Haythorn

Former President, The Fund for Theological Education

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August 06, 2009

Ode to Summer

I am a child of autumn.  Born in September on a rainy Wednesday, there is something in my core that loves a cool, wet day.  Gray clouds invite me to reflect, fall colors fill me with a sense of home.  I’ve always had an irrational love for college football (despite deep misgivings about the expense and violence of the game).  And I have always loved school.  There’s just something about the smell of those old institutions that makes my heart race a bit, perhaps with a longing for the potential they embody.  And yet….

With every passing year, the summers seem shorter.  I have enjoyed lovely time this year with my family, especially with the bounty of our garden.  Few things feel as simple as plucking a ripe tomato from the vine and eating it while the sun’s warmth is still pulsing through it, or finding ways to use almost all of the zucchini, a plant that could be a weed in its wild growth if it didn’t yield such wonders.  I will miss the late sun, the evenings of walking or sitting with my children and talking about our days, the occasional walk to the village for ice cream or to the park to let our dog run free for a while.  It is a bit like an extended Sabbath, a time to discover one another and the earth and rest and hope and life once again.  It is good, and it goes by so fast.

On August 10, my kids will return to school.  My family will go to an open house with my daughter as she transitions to a new school this year.  We spoke with good friends last night about carpools.  I think the new lunch boxes have arrived, but I’ll need to double-check when I get home tonight.  College and seminary students are swinging by the office or calling to say goodbye until Christmas break.  Those leaving for the first time have that tentative look that is filled with both excitement and anxiety about this new stage in their journey.  The FTE offices sit on the Emory campus, and thus we pass by trucks and vans and cars filled to the brim with the stuff of college dorm rooms (though often so much so that an interior rear view mirror is useless, so proceed with caution around these vehicles).  This cycle comes every year, and it is brimming with so much hope, so much potential, so much longing for a better world.

At FTE, we will hold all of those who have received fellowships through this organization in our prayers in this new season, and we will pray that they hang on to the disciplines of summer: the commitment to vacation amidst the discernment of vocation; the love of home-grown food amidst the saturation of quick and easy plastic-packaged meals that will all too often become the default in a busy day; the intentional time with family and friends amidst the chaos of class schedules and papers and projects and deadlines and work and loves gained and lost and all the rest of it.  We will pray that the gifts of summer enrich the rituals of fall in ways that invite us more deeply and more faithfully into the kind of creatures God longs for us to be.  And even as I fall in love with the new season, I will do my best to let these gifts of summer live on in my daily life and practices, for I trust that they will make the cool breezes of autumn all the richer.