Warm and clear at last, after a June week of mostly rain. Beer after rehearsal in the late afternoon sun. What follows? Either delicious relaxation or the frustration of trying to make my mind--swimming, yes, on just one beer--focus on something either serious or seriously amusing.

Things grow with such energy in June. The suburban landscape is intensely green today, lush with the promise of a good summer. "Sent forth by God's blessing" we sang this morning in church, and the world into which we were sent teemed with blessings of blue sky, temperate air, enveloping summer. Lots of tree imagery in the lectionary today and in the sermon and hymns--the kingdom of God as tall cedars or spreading shrubbery. I could almost see the over-large volunteer trees in my back yard as evidence of a new world coming to life. There are times when I regard these six-foot-tall, six-foot-wide trees as evidence of the pernicious abundance of evil and chaos on this earth. But who needs the words or the visual images they invoke when God's rain and breath have called all of summer's lushness to life outside in lawns, gardens, and parks?