Summer Spirituality: Tips for Deepening Your Faith as the Season Winds Down

Depending on where you live, whether you have school-aged children (and if you do, the decisions that your school district or diocese makes on when the academic year begins), and your personal approach to the calendar, mid-August may feel like the thick of summer to you, or it may feel almost autumnal — in mood, if not in weather.

Where I am — a rural town in southern Pennsylvania — school doesn’t begin for a few more weeks, and we’re consistently hitting ninety-plus degree temperatures for the majority of the week, so the pool and popsicles still find a place in most of our days. Therefore, I’m still in the summer frame of mind, which means that I’m not only eating watermelon and wearing sandals regularly, but also that I’m letting aspects of my life such as my spirituality be influenced by the season.

The Seasons and Spirituality

Just like our church uses the Liturgical Calendar to walk us through the Mystery of Christ, with each liturgical season focusing on key aspects of Jesus’s life and of the human experience more broadly, I believe that the the four seasons that we experience in many parts of the world can also call us into different dimensions of understanding our selves and of deepening our faith. God created nature, the climate, and the changing weather patterns, too, after all.

For me, some key themes that come to mind when I consider summer are longer days, a slightly slower pace of life, and an extra dose of fun. Here are ways that I can see working these themes into one’s faith life:

Longer Days: Pray Outside

For much of the year, my family follows a similar late afternoon and evening routine. Whenever the parent who worked outside the home for the day (my husband and I divide this up) returns to the house after work, they cuddle, play with or read to the kids while the at-home parent finishes preparing dinner. We eat together, and then the parents clean up while the kids do a little more playing (here we really rely on our older two, ages five and four, to entertain the baby). Then we move straight into bath and bedtime for the kids.

In the summer, however, the evenings just feel longer, so a lot of times we’ll head outside after dinner, for a walk/scooter/bike ride around the block, some time playing in the yard and watering the garden, or a quick dip in our neighborhood pool.

And then, after the kids’ bedtime routine is complete, I’ll head outside again for some alone time with the setting sun. I absolutely love that summer gives us so much daylight that I can have time outside, by myself (though I also love the family time outside!), to enjoy the fresh air and some quiet time with God. For me, this most often looks like taking a walk while listening to prayerful music, or just resting in the silence or reading a religious book while I swing on our front porch.

Slower Pace of Life: Pray the Rosary

There are a few things that I think contribute to the slower pace of life that I find summer provides. One is simply the longer days. If there is more “time” in a day, and no extra obligations, then the day feels less rushed. Of course, a day is 24-hours in January just as it is in July, but more daylight makes the day feel longer. I also find that I (and my kids) need less sleep in the summer than we do in the winter, so that gives us extra waking hours; I know we aren’t the only family whose circadian rhythms are impacted by the seasons.

What’s more, we have fewer “deadlines” in the summer than we do in the fall, winter and spring. During the school year, everyone needs to be dressed and ready to go by 8:30 a.m., but in the summer, the only person who needs to be presentable at that hour is the parent who will be working outside the home for the day. While my preference is still that we’ve all gotten dressed, eaten breakfast, and tamed our mops of hair by a reasonable hour in the morning, regardless of the season, the same level of pressure isn’t quite there in the summer. We like to fill our summer days with trips to the library, park and pool, but if any of those things don’t happen, it’s fine, whereas during the school year, everyone needs to be on time to work and school.

With this slower pace of summer, with this extra time, it’s a great opportunity to experiment with longer forms of prayer. One of these is the Rosary. Praying the Rosary takes about twenty minutes, and it can be done just about anywhere. You could try praying the rosary on a lawn chair while your kids play in the yard after dinner, or over your lunch break at work, or with your family over a slower paced breakfast.

Extra Dose of Fun: Pray Creativity

Maybe it’s because the first memorable dozen or so summers of my life — childhood and teen years — were filled with vibes that I can only characterize as “summer fun” (you know, getting away with staying up late and eating too many ice-y treats and playing outside with the gaggle of neighborhood kids for all hours of the day and getting covered in sticky peach juice as you eat one after another off the pit), but I continue to think of summer as the “fun” season. This is not to say that I don’t adore the other seasons — in fact, I’d say that fall and spring are higher on my favorite list than summer — but rather that summer just makes me think of doing things in a creative, energetic and pleasurable way.

This vibe can translate to a person’s prayer life in so many ways. Try something new! Pray with dance, pray with music, or pray with art.

Friends, here is to soaking in these last few weeks of summer. I hope that your August holds lots of tomatoes off the vine, evening walks, and vibrancy within your prayer life.