The planet tilts reliably, bringing us a new season again. Summer is my favorite, and I’m compelled to mark its arrival Thursday with a few sage words.

The quote is adapted from a description of spring in Cahokia Jazz, a novel by Francis Spufford. In the crime noir set in an alternative 1920s, one character is describing to another why they celebrate a spiritual ritual welcoming back spring.

“I know that spring is caused by the regular tilting of the Earth’s axis as it orbits our star. I really do. But I also know that spring is caused by God’s grace, in the form of the sun’s rays, touching this dark earth with new life: a sacred birth, a sacred return, which deserves all the singing, all the dancing, all the ceremony we can give to it. The world turns, but it is not a clockwork mechanism, detective. It is a circular dance, from birth to death to resurrection through arches of flowers, and arches of bread, and arches of skulls. We dance the turning world, and it dances us.”

I only wished I had enough little metal letters for my church sign to recreate the entire quote, it’s so lovely. (The whole book is lovely, but it’s a thinker for you beach readers who prefer to engage your brain rather than flee from reality.)

It’s been a year since I’ve updated ye ol’ church sign, so I thought it appropriate to mark the summer solstice with a little neighborhood grace.

You can see our new boulevard in this angle. Last fall, the village undertook a massive project to install sewers, curbs and gutters on the street. It was a huge mess for months, I tell ya. We lost a tree and gained a lot of frontage. Pray for that sod to take, will you?

Here’s a shot of the tree we lost as it was coming down.

That tree was half dead (only half dead!), and I was sorry to see it go. The remnants of an ancient light fixture someone with the church had installed was tucked into the craw of the branches. All gone.

Here’s that perspective now, with the new curb and new sod.

Like the seasons, change is inevitable. That tree lived a good, long life, I believe. It was once an arch of flowers and became an arch of skulls.

Thus in each flower and simple bell,
      That in our path untrodden lie,
      Are sweet remembrancers who tell
      How fast the winged moments fly.
Time will steal on with ceaseless pace,
      Yet lose we not the fleeting hours,
      Who still their fairy footsteps trace,
      As light they dance among the flowers.
~ Charlotte Turner Smith (1749–1806),
The Horologe of the Fields