“I implore you—be calmer.” — Goethe

I know the world is a hot mess at the moment, but I’m taking the rest of the day off to welcome summer. I’m not even going to compose a long-overdue new post (more of those soon). Instead, before I retire to the garden with a pleasurable book, I’ll do the lazy thing and share a few paragraphs from something I wrote years ago, after my first journey to Greece. I posted the following words on the Summer Solstice in 2001. A few months later, the world as we knew it would come to an end. But the lesson I learned in Greece still speaks to my heart, even in (or especially in) our fractious and fallen present condition.

After a few weeks of history, culture and religion on the mainland, I boarded a ferry for the Greek islands, only to be put off by the scene on the sun-drenched deck. Everyone was a tourist, slathered with sun block; the Greeks had vanished. We were like an occupying army, obliterating the local culture with our foreign speech, our alien ways, our crass desires. But there was something else that bothered me. We lacked seriousness. We were a ship of fools.

During the first half of my journey, I had contemplated the noble remnants of classical culture, walked in the footsteps of Socrates and Paul, hiked to Byzantine monasteries scattered along the summits of towering rock formations, breathed the incense of exotic rituals, conversed passionately about ideas late into the night. It had felt something like pilgrimage. But now the only quest was for the perfect tan, the languorous cafe, the idle beach. I feared a loss of purpose. Had I come all this way to fall into a resort mentality, and forget the Greece of myth and history, liturgy and philosophy?

In the end, my Puritan rigor succumbed to the regime of pleasure. I rediscovered summer mind. Time to be, not do. Sink down into the deep pool of the moment. Enjoy the sun-dazzled days and fairy tale nights without anxiety, as though they will last forever. I am not perfect at this. At times I am likely to rush from place to place, acquiring experiences greedily, not wanting to miss anything. But a brisk pace is fatal to deeper forms of attention.

On my first day hike on Naxos, the greenest isle in the Cyclades, I took a quick look inside one of the little Byzantine churches that frequent its charming hills and valleys. I saw only bare stones inside, not too interesting. I soon returned into the sunlight, where I heard a voice calling to me. It was a German hiker, looking for the entrance into the churchyard. I showed her the way in.

“Look at these wonderful old frescoes!” she said. “What frescoes?” I thought to myself as I peered into the shadows. Once I had given my sun-blinded eyes time to adjust, I began to see what I had missed in my hasty first glances—the faint images of saints. Some of the figures were clearly defined, while others had weathered into dreamlike blurs, like background figures in a Munch painting.

Early in that journey, I had read these words by Thomas Merton in the shaded balcony of a clifftop monastery:  “In prayer we discover what we already have. You start where you are and you deepen what you already have. And you realize that you are already there … All we need to do is experience what we already possess. The trouble is, we aren’t taking the time.”

Now welcome summer. Let the heavy fragrance of its green world release you from obligations. Let it be enough for now to wander aimlessly around the neighborhood, linger over relaxed conversations, or lie in the hammock and wait for falling stars. Idleness is the incense we offer the gods of summer.