The long days of summer are getting shorter, choir rehearsals have started, and things are getting busier and busier each day. Next thing you know, Ordinary Time will be over, and Advent will be upon us, and then (gasp) Christmas! and then Lent, and the Triduum, and will the sanity of summer ever come again?

Some people thrive on busy-ness; they feel more alive—until they collapse, of course. I’m not in their number. I remember one year (well, okay, it’s happened more than once) when I seriously had to consider which would take less time: going to the laundromat or buying underwear! I’ve had to learn to say, “No,” pleasantly but firmly, because trying to multi-task means doing nothing well or fully.

In Paul’s letter to Timothy, he asks that prayers be offered for everyone, “that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity.”

One song that captures that simplicity of spirit is Kathleen Thomerson’s “I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light.” Thomerson wrote the hymn in 1966 during a visit to the Church of the Redeemer in Houston Texas (hence the tune name HOUSTON). It’s a good one to have in your repertoire.

A stunning closing song reinforcing the readings would be “All Praise to You (Stewards of Earth), on the great Sibelius hymn tune FINLANDIA. Omer Westendorf’s text (WLP) speaks to God’s challenge to us to care for the earth and for each other, reminding us that:

We lease the earth but for a life’s duration,
Yet for this life, it is our cherished home.