A Summer Evening

A Service for a Summer's Evening

Summer, n. the warmest season of the year: a spell of warm weather (see Indian, St Luke's, St Martin's summer): ...

    Chambers Dictionary

"Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language."    Henry James
Hymn 104 For the beauty of the earth


Each little flower that opens


Reading (Matthew 6.28—9, NRSV)

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

A short silence while we each contemplate the High Altar Flowers.

Reading
from Christina Rossetti,

Consider the Lilies of the Field
Flowers preach to us if we hear,
The rose saith in the dewy morn:
I am most fair
Yet all my loveliness is born
Upon a thorn.
The lilies say: Behold who we
Preach without words of purity
The violets whisper from the shade:
Men scent our fragrance on the air
Yet take no heed
Of humble lessons we would read.
The merest grass
Alongside the roadside where we pass
Tells of love who sends the dew
Who sends the rain and sunshine too.

For the Psalm, Hymn 100, All people that on earth do dwell

Each little bird that sings

Reading (Matthew 6.26, NRSV) Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Not one will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father.

Reading
from John Clare (1793-1864), Summer Images

The speckled thrush, by self-delight embued,
There sings unto himself for joy's amends,
And drinks the honey dew of solitude.
    There Happiness attends
With inbred Joy until the heart o'erflow,
    Of which the world's rude friends,
    Nought heeding, nothing know.

There the gay river, laughing as it goes,
Plashes with easy wave its flaggy sides,
And to the calm of heart, in calmness shows
    What pleasure there abides,
To trace its sedgy banks, from trouble free:
    Spots Solitude provides
    To muse, and happy be.

Hymn 370 God, whose farm is all creation

The ripe fruits in the garden

Reading (based on verses from Genesis 2)

The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, and there he placed the human being he had formed. And the Lord God placed the human being in the garden to tend it and to care for it.

A short silence as we reflect on ripe fruits.

Reading
from Rudyard Kipling, The Glory of the Garden

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing 'Oh, how beautiful' and sitting in the shade,
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner knives.

There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick,
But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it's only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden.

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and the God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden, it shall never pass away!

Hymn 486 Lord, by whose breath all souls and seeds are living

The tall trees in the greenwood

Reading (based on Psalm 1.3—4)

The righteous are like trees planted along a river bank : which yield their fruit in due season.
Their leaves shall never wither : and they shall prosper in all they do.

A short silence while we look at the churchyard trees through the chancel windows.

Reading: from John Clare, Summer is on the earth and in the sky

Summer is on the earth and in the sky
The days all sunny and the fields all green
The woods spread oer her hills a canophy
Of beautys harmony in every scene
Like to a map the fields and valleys lie
Winds dash in wildest motions the woods green
And every wave of leaves and every billow
Lies in the sun like Beauty on a pillow

The roaring of the woods is like a sea
All thunder and comotion to the shore
The old oaks toss their branches to be free
And urge the fury of the storm the more
Louder then thunder is the sobbing roar
Of leafy billows to their shore the sky
Round which the bloodshot clouds like fields of gore
In angry silence did at anchor lie
As if battles roar was not yet bye

Anon the wind has ceased the woods are still
The winds are sobbed to sleep and all is rest
The clouds like solid rocks too jagged for hills
Lie quietly ashore upon the west
The cottage ceases rocking—each tired guest
Sleeps sounder for the heavy storm's uproar
—How calm the sunset blazes in the west
As if the waking storm would burst no more
And this still even seems more calmer than before

Musical Interlude

The pleasant summer sun ( rain / wind / storm / cloud)

Reading from Jeremiah 8.19-22

Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land: "Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King not in her? The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the welfare of my poor people not been restored?

A short silence as we receive summer as a gift of hope, and an uncertain summer as our hopes somehow dashed.

Reading
from Richard Jefferies (1848-87), Nature Diaries (1878) & Chronicles of the Hedges (published 1948)


Summer cold in June. Shivering in the evenings in the parlour with lilac and flowers in the grate and apple bloom in the garden. Yet cold, and all the green things dripping.    (1878)

Out of the thirty days of June, fourteen were wet. There was heavy rain very early in the morning of another day, and distant thunder on another; nor does this include several days when there was only a sprinkling of rain. Moreover, there was much rain during the nights; and such days as were dry were often overcast and gloomy. The longest day came in with steady rain; the afternoon, though dry, was cloudy, and the evening closed with a wind that howled down the chimneys like a true winter blast. ... There were only about five days in June that could be called really fine; and when two of these happened in succession it was regarded as quite remarkable. Yet the flowers have been beautiful. Surely the buttercups were never so numerous. The meadows were one wide expanse of gold, almost dazzling when the sun did shine.    (Midsummer 1879)

Prayers concluding with the Lord's Prayer

Offertory Hymn 98 From all that dwell below the skies

Blessing (said together)

May God the Creator, who made us and all living things and all the marvels which surround us in the natural world, bless us, our homes and our families, now and for ever. Amen.

Envoi
John Clare, Summer Evening.

How pleasant, when the heat of day is bye,
And seething dew empurples round the hill
Of the horizon, sweeping with the eye
In easy circles, wander where we will!
While o'er the meadow's little fluttering rill
The twittering sunbeam weakens cool and dim,
And busy hum of flies is hush'd and still.

How sweet the walks by hedge-row bushes seem,
On this side wavy grass, on that the stream;
While dog-rose, woodbine, and the privet-spike,
On the young gales their rural sweetness teem,
With yellow flag-flowers rustling in the dyke;
Each mingling into each, a ceaseless charm
To every heart that nature's sweets can warm.