The Cyrenaian Hedonic church

Something feels different on this final Sunday before Summer Solstice, before the Season of Communion begins.

I have been calling 2025 a tire fire, and in many ways that fire carried well into this year. There have been months where it felt impossible to do anything but react to the next emergency, absorb the next blow, endure the next disappointment.

But something has shifted. The blaze had its say, the smoke has begun to clear, and the fire itself seems to have burned to ember.

And standing here, at the edge of a new season, I find myself less interested in what was lost than in the simple fact that I can finally see what remains.

I am reminded of something I wrote many years ago:

I built an awning once, in a time and place no longer accessible to me. I don’t know if it (or the building it was attached to) is still there. I don’t know if anyone remembers it. It doesn’t matter. I remember. I remember the heat of the sun and the irony in the fact that I was building shade. I remember the cuts on my hands from the aluminum sheeting. I remember puzzling out how to make it waterproof, and I question to this day whether or not I succeeded.

Awnings are strange things if you stop to really think about them. They serve no structural purpose, and many fine buildings are aesthetically pleasing without them. Yet they act as a kind of way station, a place to pause while between an inside and an outside.

You are standing before a new door deciding if you should open it, or you are stepping out under unknown skies after an extended stay indoors: stop a moment; take a deep breath; stay out of the rain.

The final Sunday in this Season of Reckoning feels much the same.

Last week we were still accounting. Next week we will feast, as the Season of Communion approaches. There will be laughter and stories shared across tables. We will tell one another where we have been and discover where others have traveled. The work of Reckoning will give way to the work of participation.

But not today. Today belongs to the threshold. Today belongs to the awning.

Today we allow ourselves to pause for a moment between what was and what comes next. We feel the shade. We listen to the rain. We notice the door behind us and the road ahead of us.

There is nowhere else we need to be today. Nothing left to prove. No further accounting required. The work is done.

Today, let us simply pause beneath our awnings and breathe.

AMEN