Sept. 6 – “The Last Sweet Bite” of Summer

On Wednesday evening, Summer in the Spirit held our last event for the 2026 season, “The Last Sweet Bite” of Summer, a poetry and dinner potluck, and wow, it was a powerful evening of offerings of both delicious food and moving pieces of spoken word and poetry.  The spoken-word pieces offered by the featured guest, Trinidadian-Canadian storyteller and poet, Naomi Abiola, were jaw-dropping in their sincerity and tear-inducing in their power, especially Naomi’s first piece, “I Am Blessed.”

Sometimes good things come to an end, and sometimes they don’t necessarily have to, so this Sunday, as we gather (weather permitting) for an outside service on the labyrinth, we’re going to celebrate “The Last Sweet Bite” of Summer Continued. Naomi can’t be with us, but we’ll hear a couple of the other poems that we heard on Wednesday (one about watermelon and one about Rumi) and, to honour the passing this week of American poet Wendell Berry, one of his most beautiful poems, “The Peace of Wild Things.”

And what scripture tells us of the last sweet bite of summer? Well, you have to go to the Song of Solomon for that…

To prepare for Sunday, read Song of Solomon 2:10-13 and ponder the following:

1.      Has there been a bite of something or a meal from this summer that you will remember?

2.      The Song of Solomon is a different entity altogether in the Hebrew scriptures, a love poem in the midst of a lot of history and violence. Why do you think it’s there?

Image: Taryn Ellio, pexels.com