Given that today is the feast of Pentecost and, at least here in the Valley of the Sun, it arrives with the brightest of suns and the most shimmering of hot blue skies, this classic poem from e.e. cummings strikes the right note:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Now the prayer table linen gets changed from the white and gold of Eastertide to the green of the Pentecost season. The green symbolizes the growth of the church following the Pentecost event described in Chapter 2 of Acts of the Apostles. It will remain green until the season of Advent begins on the last Sunday of November.

Pentecost used to seem like a long season to me, but the days fly by so fast nowadays that, as hot as it is today, the holiday season will be here before you know it.