Fallow Summer
on freedom and necessity
Here it is barely mid-August and they’re telling us summer is over. Halloween decor and costumes are on display in the Target, and on my way to this very website I was offered clickbait promising that Jennifer Aniston is going to keep us all in flip flops during the fall of 2025. How can they know that already?
I will and always do resist— not the flip-flops but the premature change of season. I say it isn’t fall until the equinox, which this year hits on September 22, which is still six Mondays away. No matter the weather you’ll see nary a pumpkin on my porch before then.
This resistance has found its way into some of my conversations this week, as I and my colleagues returned to school on Monday for teacher-in-service. In that reunion the question came, inevitable, sincere, and often: “How was your summer?” and I answered, and a time or two I noted that my summer isn’t was but is, ongoing despite the requirement of my presence at school basically every weekday from now until next June.
I guess I’m ornery like that.
How is your summer? I’m asking sincerely, and I’ll be delighted if you choose to answer in the comments below.
Summer is something we ask about. We look at it differently than we do the other seasons, don’t we? Bound or not in some way to school, many people’s lives are still shaped by the academic calendar. Folks tend to have summer plans and expectations. Schedules relax or are abandoned, life switches up for the time. Then fall marks a return of discipline and routine.
For teachers, summer means recuperation, rest, and planning for the upcoming year, and often includes goals having nothing to do with teaching. That was true for me. In addition to working on this coming year’s theology curriculum, I had all kinds of plans, and my greatest hopes were pinned on my writing. That book on Kierkegaard’s Sickness Unto Death? I’d make a big dent in the draft. I had three essays in the works that I’d hoped to put forward for publication. And I wanted to get to know a few more writers here on Substack.
I managed to do almost none of it.
Henry James wrote, “Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me, those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” I don’t disagree.
In truth, I think the word summer is beautiful all by itself. The initial sibilance gives way immediately to the euphony of u and m; the -er, to my ear, speaks of continuance. Taken together, the word evokes the sounds of crickets and cicadas hidden in tall grass, a salty bay of water curling on the sand, light in the sky at 9 PM, and time boundaries pushed so far to the corners that you forget what they’re like.
I know my little analysis of the word’s composition isn’t for everyone, but surely the word “summer” evokes something for you. What is it? I’ll take any answer that’s true— positive or negative. Don’t think about it too hard, because your first thought is probably your truest. Write it in the comments below and then return to enjoy what everyone else has to say.
That’s what I plan on doing.
But I’ve already told you that I don’t always do what I planned. And I had a lot planned this summer. So what have I done instead?
Well, I preached my first sermon (that was in June) on questions that Jesus asks. I taught a Bible study for my church on the attributes of God, drawing all the foundational passages from Exodus.
I worked on curriculum, in part by re-reading this insightful book (highly recommend) and parts of this wise and compelling one (also highly recommend). I chatted with this person about this movie, and I’m looking forward to talking with him here on Substack (coming soon!) about the role of identity in that film (go watch it!). Meanwhile, please check out his YouTube channel.
I also took care of some house projects that simply feel like too much to take on during the school year: rearranged some contents of kitchen cabinets, scrubbed down the pantry, repaired a wallpaper issue, and, with my husband, cleaned out the storage room.
With a dear friend’s help, I planted a perennial garden where I’ve always only had weeds. The garden is doing well as are the weeds. So I’ve spent more time weeding there (why isn’t the word unweeding?), usually listening to this podcast (which I also heartily recommend) to keep me company.
And I’ve been reading. Lots. Not just the nonfiction named above, but also some really splendid fiction: The Picture of Dorian Gray; Crossing to Safety; about half of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (which I had to abandon for several reasons, one of which is that his book reminded me I don’t actually care for Hemingway). And now I’m halfway through Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I’ll be writing about all of them. Eventually.
Well, maybe not the Hemingway.
But I didn’t write. Not really. I added two essay drafts to the 21 here on Substack that were already waiting for my return, but that’s about all.
It’s taken me a minute to figure out why.
I’ll admit that the weather here lately— for the past week, anyway— is certainly enough to make a person think about fall. As I noted earlier, this is August, every bit of high summer, and in North Carolina’s Piedmont that means humidity and heat, air conditioners running so hard that Duke Energy asks us to go easy. Refuge can be found in only two places: indoors and a swimming pool. And by this point in the year, the pool water might actually be too warm to be any relief.
But this past week, every day, the weather has been amazing: low humidity, temperatures in the 70’s. We’ve had the windows open day and night. We’ve enjoyed morning coffee outside on the deck, where I’ve also done some teaching research in the middle of an afternoon. Some days were cool enough that the cicadas were quiet and only the crickets kept me company.
Around here, this is the kind of weather that makes a person think about football season. Thanksgiving, even. It reminds me of our daughter Emma’s wedding day, not yet a year ago. Emma and Sam got married in October, and the days prior to the wedding were full of heat. But on her wedding morning the humidity broke, the air was clear, the sky that rich autumnal blue. Perfect weather, truly. It was the way autumn ought to be.
I confess that this week’s weather had me looking forward to football and a November chill, but then my practiced resistance reared its head: Time goes fast enough; there’s no need to rush through any of this.
I sat on the deck and watched the leaves filter the sunlight. I tried not to think about going back to school because that was still days away: in-service starting the 11th, and students arriving the 19th. And it will still be summer.
Kierkegaard said that human beings are unique in part because they are always becoming. We’ve talked about that here before: while other animals also become, they don’t develop beyond their adult state.
But human persons continue developing and changing, beyond adulthood, all their lives. And in this becoming we have agency: we can and do make choices that impact and shape what we become.
We have an innate sense of this capacity, but it’s bound by specific tensions. Kierkegaard describes them as polarities, and these reside within every person. Part of the task of becoming a fully realized self requires the person finding a kind of harmony between them.
One of these tensions is between necessity and freedom. As human persons, we are free to make choices. We can train or educate ourselves, try new skills, move to new places, reinvent our identities through myriad practices or adjustments.
But at the same time, we’re pinned down by necessity: things true of us that cannot be altered. We were born where and when we were born; our parents are our parents; our history is our history; our talents, faculties, and aptitudes are, quite simply, what they are. These necessities impose immutable limits on our freedom, and we can’t deny their existence. Without them, I suppose we’d be capable of anything, but their erasure would also necessarily erase us.
On Kierkegaard’s view, necessity plays a big part in determining who we are. But I think it works in smaller ways, too. I think it’s been at work in me this summer. Here’s how.
Since 2021, we’ve gained our four grandchildren, I earned a theology degree (living abroad for the better part of a year) and I started a new job for which I’m writing (along with a stellar colleague and friend) the curriculum.
My husband and I also joined a church plant, a very sweet community. But being there has meant leaving a church where we served and which we loved for nearly thirty years. Once in a while I again consider the losses: the people I don’t see, whose paths simply don’t cross with mine anymore. I might try to keep in touch, but the absence of routine interaction within that community makes it all that much more difficult.
And then there’s Emma’s wedding, nearly a year ago. We’ve converted her room to a guest room, but the art and photos on the walls remain the way she left them. Standing in her room, I’m caught by the realization that our nest is finally empty. My children’s childhoods, so dearly anticipated, so deeply loved, often feel like a myth.
In the fullness of our freedom, we can deny necessity for a time. We can plunge headlong into new and challenging work. We can find ways to serve in a new church and find new friends there. We can surround ourselves (true joy) with grandchildren and the utter delight they bring.
But this summer, of necessity, my writing stalled. I think my mental and emotional reservoirs were full of fatigue from so much change. I needed mindless busyness for my hands, others’ conversations about theology and philosophy. The satisfaction of a clean pantry. A perennial garden with weeds.
We’re made of dust after all. All praise to the Maker who is sympathetic to that.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
Psalm 103: 13-14After so many weeks of silence, I’m especially grateful to you for being here. And welcome to those of you who are new! Thank you.
Don’t forget this week’s word game. It isn’t a game, really, so there’s no need to be cowed by competition. Just respond because that’s fun of you.
You know it is.
And here’s your poem. It’s not really related at all to the newsletter this time. Or maybe it is. You tell me.
Summer And it grows, the vain summer, even for us with our bright green sins: behold the dry guest, the wind, as it stirs up quarrels among magnolia boughs and plays its serene tune on the prows of all the leaves— and then is gone, leaving the leaves still there, the tree still green, but breaking the heart of the air. Carlo Betocchi
Thank you for reading, my friends. Enjoy the rest of your summer! There’s lots of it left.
With joy,
Rebecca
Summer meant cicadas, lightning bugs, days exploring along creekbeds, playing with friends outside. Now, in my mid- fifties, Summer is endured. My days, no matter the earthly season are spent wondering where we are in the spiritual time-line. Curiosity only, my spirit knows the season, not the day or the hour but the season As I walk one of my many dogs in the coolness of the morning I look up and wonder what that trumpet call of God will actually sound like. Every season now is one of anticipation.
Thank you for the comments re: A Farewell to Arms. It took me back to my frustration with plowing through it (yes it felt like tough manual labor) in Honors English 10. Though perhaps poor performance on reading quizzes with questions such as “Which tire on the jeep got stuck in the mud in chapter x?” may have been one huge reason I developed a dislike for the book. So let’s blame my teacher, named Faulkner ironically. He did become one of my favorite teachers when I took AP English my senior year, thankfully.