Sunday Dinner: Celebrating Summer

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“It was only a sunny smile,

and little it cost in the giving,

but like morning light it scattered the night

and made the day worth living.”

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“People of our time are losing the power of celebration.

Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained.

Celebration is an active state,

an act of expressing reverence or appreciation.

To be entertained is a passive state-

-it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle….

Celebration is a confrontation,

giving attention

to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.

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Abraham Joshua Heschel

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“And so with the sunshine

and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees,

just as things grow in fast movies,

I had that familiar conviction

that life was beginning over again

with the summer.”

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“To live is to be marked.

To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story,

and that is the only celebration

we mortals really know.”

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Barbara Kingsolver

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“Take the time to celebrate stillness and silence

and see the joy that the world can bring,

simply.”

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Tony Curl

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“Shall we walk through the woods;
dance through the meadows;
and celebrate the miracle
of this garden world?”

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Leland Lewis

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“I almost wish we were butterflies

and liv’d but three summer days –

three such days with you

I could fill with more delight

than fifty common years

could ever contain.”

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John Keats

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“Summertime. It was a song.

It was a season.

I wondered if that season

would ever live inside of me.”

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Benjamin Alire Sáenz

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“What life expects of us is that we celebrate.”
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José Eduardo Agualusa

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2019 

from The Williamsburg Botanical Garden and the Colonial Parkway

About woodlandgnome

Lifelong teacher and gardener.

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