all linked photographs © 2008 Vincent William Uher III
Image Copyright © 2008 Vincent William Uher III
Each year since my first stroke I have noticed how silent the first days of June are for me. Depending largely on the internet for communication, I note how silent my e-mail becomes as my able-bodied friends are away at the graduations of children from university or they take their young families away for a few weeks of holiday after the last day of the school year. Silence falls as the cicadas begin their buzzing chorus across the American South.
I did get an e-mail from a friend who is a woman religious in the American Southwest. She is originally from Louisiana, and she sent a quick message saying that she hoped everyone enjoyed their summer holidays and that we would not hear from her via e-mail for a while because "it is too hot to think and to be prudent in what one writes." I should likely heed such advice as it is unbearably hot on Galveston Island and it has not rained here in well over a fortnight.
My middle brother and my mother are leaving soon to take a holiday in Vermont and Maine. Very sensible. For my part I will imagine that I am on holiday by some lovely glacier in Canada having a picnic with Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha and the saints and martyrs of North America. That would be my part of heaven were it so.
When I lived in Sevilla years ago I remember how there was the summer's heat "el calor" but then about August it would become "la calor" as humidity went through the roof together with the heat off of the Sahara moving north.
On Galveston Island, "la calor" is a constant in the summer it seems. The great good of this season is that oleanders and other tropical flowers bloom like mad and the hundreds of varieties of birds happily feed and bring forth their young. The gold star esperanza is in full bloom reminding me of the beautiful Ipê and Aguaraney trees of South America. The Morning Glories are singing out from the bushes and shrubbery. Were I too come here on holiday I would find it the most beautiful and wonderful City on earth.
May the Lord of Creation deepen my gratitude for what is here around me even in the summer's annual broiling. Perhaps I will find a happy middle where I enjoy the flowers and birds and the waters but also daydream of cooler climes. Most of all after all that is past I am so grateful to God to be alive. Since God has decided to let me continue her for a while longer, I pray in this silence of June I may do something for His glory and the good of the Kingdom.
I pray the Lord's blessings for you all.
