Welcome to summer and the month of July, the hottest month of the year in the northern hemisphere. According to the Gregorian calendar, July is the seventh month and in our family it is also the month of the only summer birthday, our oldest daughter's-Tegan. This meant Tegan had birthday swim parties and it also meant a tradition which began on our first birthday and continued until her twenty-first birthday. Each year I planted mammoth sunflowers on our deck from tiny seeds. On her first birthday a sunflower seed was accidentally planted and it bloomed, bright and big right on her birthday, and so began the tradition.

By Tegan's twenty-first birthday I had pots lining our deck where the summer beats down for most of the afternoon. Over twenty of those giant sunflowers bloomed, and most of them bloomed the week of her birthday, bringing smiles, yellow finches, bees and beauty.

My daughter is now married and lives far away in Texas. I miss her and I miss all the sunflowers. Sometimes I miss her being a little girl and I miss being a young mother. I feel nostalgic for those summer days when we planted sunflowers, caught fireflies, went swimming at Grandpa and Grandma's, and ate popcicles.

I just finished a wonderful retreat last weekend on Contemplative Prayer and I am working on a new journal on the same topic. I am reminded that the contemplative life is being present to the present moment. Memories are wonderful, but I have a tendency to look back and remember it perfectly. With prayer we can begin to have an awareness of our life right now, and all the beauty that is before us in this moment. We have only the moments, strings of pearls where we glimpse the mystery, the glory, and God's radiance before us. More often we are working really hard to manufacture good times, either through a lot of busyness and 'props', or we editing the past memories.The real gift is to be present to your present life.

Enjoy these summer days, whatever they may bring. Even in the midst of financial struggles, health concerns, relationships problems, and work stress, stay in your life, and look for the presence of God.

Even if you don't have the time or inclination to plant sunflowers or 'gaze' upon them, I pray that a glimpse of God's beauty in  your life is revealed to you and gives you a reason to hope today.

Enjoy our summer blog and our new projects, outreach and people.

Be blessed with beauty,

Debra and the volunteers at the Mute Swan Ministry