Summer has finally arrived! It's been a long, difficult year and I'm so very grateful for this season of rest.  I began enjoying vacation this morning by picking up a new novel - Jayber Crow by Wendall Berry.  It has that lovely slow pace of Southern storytelling with lingering passages detailing nature and human nature.  This one will be in my mind all day, I can tell.

    The surface of the quieted river, as I thought in those old days at Squires Landing, as I think now, is like a window looking into another world that is like this one except that it is quiet.  Its quietness makes it seem perfect. The ripples are like the slats of a blind or a shutter through which we see imperfectly what is perfect.  Though that other world can be seen only momentarily, it looks everlasting.  As the ripples become more agitated, the window darkens and the other world is hidden.  As I did not know then but know now, the surface of the river is like a living soul, which is easy to disturb, is often disturbed, but, growing calm, shows what it was, is, and will be.

I'll be paying more attention to the beauty around me.