Summer students are excited to be done with finals and heading home. Other students are at home already and are beginning to prepare to move to Tallahassee for yet another exciting year of pursuits – academic and otherwise. But for those of us who live in Tallahassee year-round, this is not an “exciting” time, per se. Instead, this is the summer doldrums. The word doldrums comes to us from the maritime world. The doldrums are the waters that are near the equator, which have low barometric pressure because of the rotation of the earth. Because of this, the winds in the doldrums are often calm, even dead, and can leave wind-powered ships with no forward momentum for a period of time. Many of us look forward to this time of calm, of peace, of lessened traffic. But the doldrums are also known for creating squalls in the midst of these periods of relative calm. At times, our lives can be “doldrums”. We can have periods of calm, even periods of nothingness, that at times can seemingly instantaneously change in to squalls. It is in the periods of calm weather that our minds seem to turn so quickly towards anxiety, perhaps out of finding nothing else to do. That’s just like us as sinners, to look at the gift of calm waters and turn them into an opportunity for worry. During those times of worry, God urges us to return to the calm waters of our Baptism. In Matthew 11, Jesus encourages His disciples to take His rest upon themselves. So often, we don’t want that rest, but we want to keep going and going and going, but God shows us that we can and even should – take time to rest in Him. How can you take that rest this week?
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