(Click here to play “Summertime” in a new window.)

On the sunny Monday morning of June 21st, I was on my way for coffee (as I often tend to be), when I heard the familiar introduction to Gershwin’s “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess – swaying strings, lazy tempo, lofty notes sung with delicacy of dragonfly wings. It brought a smile to my face and sigh to my soul.

Summer. The time when the sun seems bigger, and when taking a stroll around town is like walking in a giant swimming pool. Slow, warm, bright, free, full moments that drip with the syrup of noticed things, and joyfully hum with the best of the bees. It’s the season we’re excited about visiting, and the one we’re sad to see go home. The built-in 25% of our year that has the power to calm, excite, reorganize, motivate, and cleanse. The one that contains enough pizzazz to influence and sustain us through the other three seasons. The season where “cold” and “chill” and “ice” are refreshing, soothing words, and typically when the sun itself is smiling and wearing sunglasses. The time to feel done, accomplished, and not feel awkward about taking a break.

Since November, we’ve gotten to know a few of you more deeply as you’ve shared your artistry with the BreatheArts community. Through the features, exhibits and other fascinating submissions, God’s beauty and creativity is being revealed through those present with us in worship, those who have pecked through the thin, protective egg shell and humbly waved a willing wing. Art is much of the time out of the box, or shell, or normal view, and when it comes to worship can be used like no other vehicle to help define, transform, renew and inspire Christ’s church. The fleeting moments around us that artists capture so vividly can show the rest of us the wonder of the One who made us. Take this poem for example by William Cullen Bryant called “Summer Wind”:

…Oh, come and breathe upon the fainting earth coolness and life.
Is it that in his caves he hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge,
The pine is bending his proud top, and now among the nearer groves,
Chestnut and oak are tossing their green boughs about. He comes!
Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in waves!
The deep distressful silence of the scene
Breaks up with mingling of unnumbered sounds and universal motion.
He is come, shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs,
And bearing on their fragrance; and he brings music of birds,
And rustling of young boughs, and sound of swaying branches,
And the voice of distant waterfalls.
All the green herbs are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers,
By the road-side and the borders of the brook, nod gaily to each other;
Glossy leaves are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew were on them yet,
And silver waters break into small waves and sparkle as he comes.

Wind. A force unseen, whose effects are many and whose presence is intensely felt, even to the extent of being likened to the Holy Spirit. Wind that would pass us by without our mere acknowledgement can be described so colorfully by such as Bryant, who himself is partly responsible for the beginnings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Many of you will see new things and visit new places over the next two months. I implore you to wave your wing this summer, to say “yes” to moments that call to your eyes and ears to capture and share. God is THE artist, after all, and the landscape is there for the taking – we’re just here to retell, recreate, and remind. Won’t you?

In Christ,



Director of Worship and Music

Tags: Chris Fortin