“No we didn’t light it…”

I don’t know about where you live, but here along the Wasatch Front of the Rocky Mountains the dog days of summer have arrived. It is hot. I’ve never been a huge fan of the heat but as I grow older, it hits me harder.

Utah is a desert. I live in a kind of high desert. Because it is a desert, there isn’t much humidity. When it hits 100°, the observation, true though it be, “but it’s a dry heat” ceases to have much meaning. Everything is very dry, despite having an extended and decently wet spring season. A summer rainstorm would be lovely.

Now that we’re some weeks past the summer solstice, the days are getting noticeably shorter. There is what I can only describe as a turn that takes place about the third week of August, when it cools down a bit, the shadows grow longer, and daylight hours are evidently shorter.

As always, there is a lot I could comment on. Increasingly, I find it’s better not to do so. I am reading a book that is most helpful: Every Thought Captive: Calm the Mental Chaos That Keeps You Stuck, Drains Your Hope, and Holds You Back. I am only about halfway through it but so far it is a book that is helping me tremendously. I may write more about it in due course (I may not).

Another indication that we’re in the dog days is the drop-off of readership for my posts. I kind of rode the wave after Pope Francis’ death, the conclave it prompted, and election Pope Leo XIV. The intensity of my engagement surprised me.

These days, most of my thinking is going into preaching and into leading an adult formation discussion group I am leading. We are discussing Pope Saint John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of its promulgation. I began this series of sessions by taking an in-depth look at Magisterium with an eye toward situating papal encyclical letters in this milieu.

Getting back to the thought that there is a lot going in our chaotic world and my resistance to add to the cascade that promotes doom scrolling, this week I heard Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” As I listened, I thought, “Boy, talk about a song that could use an updated version for the twenty-first century!” Our traditio, as you might guess, is “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” The unique cover does it for me today because it shows how the song might updated. Enjoy!