When summer doesn’t feel like a season of ease

For many of us, summer can be a time that invites a slower, easier pace. Kids are out of school, and the grill is fired up as days lengthen, weather warms and vacations take shape.

But this year, it seems that there is so much going wrong. Earth’s climate is changing in scary ways, the political climate is tense, the economy is challenging and our communication with each other seems ever more contentious and polarized. What does it mean for a season of ease to be upon us when it feels like the world is crashing down?

Here we sit in the reality that two things can be true. This is a hard time to be human, and we can hold space for some of the simple joys that are often reserved for summer.

A 24-hour news cycle, social media that invites doom scrolling, and algorithms that thrive on tragedy can lead us to believe that we must always be aware and alert, that we must constantly ruminate on all the things that require our action.

However, the shifting of the seasons is a reminder of God’s constancy in our lives and an invitation to a rhythm that incorporates all of reality: “As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.” (Genesis 8:22 NLT)

This God-ordained rhythm is an admonition that constant work is neither desirable nor productive. From the commandment to remember the Sabbath in Exodus to Jesus’ actions throughout his ministry, the invitation has always been to rest from our work.

We lose our power and effectiveness when we don’t honor this rhythm with our minds, bodies and spirits. Whatever work you are called to in the world, the long game requires strategy. And an effective strategy must include rest.

So, this summer, you can still go slower. You have a decision to make about whether you buy into the myth of urgency that is doled out by a capitalist society. You can instead stand with Audre Lorde, who in “A Burst of Light” famously writes, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

What if a part of the way you fight for the world that you envision is to honor the parts of you that need a reprieve? What if a form of resistance is being fully present with people whom you love and who bring you joy? What if the way you sustain yourself for the journey is a day in nature, soaking in sun and being screen-free?

These practices are vital for all of us, but especially for those who experience marginalization in our society, including people of color, women and LGBTQ+ folks, who often face demands to perform, provide free labor and bear the burdens of the communities they inhabit.

To affirm that we are made in the image of God is to rest in the truth that our being is not defined by our work or what we produce. As Chanequa Walker-Barnes notes in her book “Sacred Self-Care,” “Many of us have been taught that productivity is a sign of blessedness.” A commitment to doing less is a way to combat this falsehood.

In addition to stillness and a slower pace, summer offers open opportunities for play — not just for kids, but for adults too, if we would only give ourselves permission. When we are feeling fearful, unsure and worried about the state of the world, it is a courageous act to be playful.

In “Doing Theological Double Dutch: A Womanist Pedagogy of Play,” Lakisha R. Lockhart-Rusch offers this call to action: “Play empowers people in the face of oppression, interrupts and allows for reflection, teaches skills needed for living, and provides space for a creative and imaginative outlet to express, explore, and try things out.”

In other words, play is not idle time. Play trains us for the world, even when that world doesn’t operate in ways that encourage our thriving. Play is not a diversion from the rhythm; it’s a part of it. Play is preparation. Play is a way of being present to self and others that restores and rejuvenates.

A final benefit of a slower pace is that, simply put, our nervous systems need a break. Living and interacting in a chaotic world can leave us feeling stressed, overwhelmed and disconnected. A 2025 survey on stress conducted by the American Psychological Association found that 62% of American adults feel stress due to societal division in the U.S., with more than 75% reporting worry about the future of the country.

Add to this the realities of working, caregiving and just living. Chronic stress over time wears down our bodies, impacts our emotional well-being and increases our risk for chronic illness. In other words, when we have an opportunity to reset or downshift, we should take it.

For those who are even moderately aware, it’s probably impossible to block out all the noise and enjoy perpetual bliss until Labor Day. You don’t have to do that to let summer be summer. But you do have choices about how much energy you give to things and how you prioritize your time.

Every battle is not yours to fight. Giving yourself the opportunity for stillness, rest and play can also provide you with the clarity you need to discern the work that is yours to do.

Perhaps a slower pace will equip us with fuel for the fight, bestow us with marching orders and connect us with comrades on the journey. As we sit with the duality that this moment brings, its invitation is to choose what fills you.

Just Be

I have placed before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants.

Deuteronomy 30:19

Sometimes it takes everything in us to choose life hour by hour just to get through the day.

My first encounter with the wisdom of Rabbi Abraham Heschel was when I saw these words of his painted on a little ceramic plaque in the boutique of a Benedictine monastery where I was on a retreat:

“Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy.”

It felt like an opening to sacred ground, a balm for my feelings of never being enough.

But it also seemed like an impossibly far Promised Land.

I sighed with longing as I read those words and thought, I wish I could rest in that. I know it’s true for other people. I know their just being is a blessing. But I’m so lazy and unproductive! Are we really invited into that kind of rest? Doesn’t God want more from me?

At the time of that retreat, I was struggling with the fact that, even several years after finishing my doctorate, I had no scholarly publications while friends were publishing books left and right. My nonacademic friends were doing all kinds of other good work.

I felt like a fruitless lump in comparison.

I bought the little plaque to take home, feeling it might be an invitation from God.

That spring I had the semester off from teaching and hoped to get some writing done but was making little progress. One afternoon I got caught up in one of my usual self-shaming tirades about how unproductive I was.

At some point I paused and looked at the plaque with Heschel’s words.

“Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy.”

I wondered — But, how can this be any sort of blessing?! All my friends are out there doing great work while I sit here rotting away in a depressed funk! There is nothing remotely good or holy about this.

My younger self might’ve floundered in that swamp for hours.

This time I tried to take a step back and reframe.

Well . . . what have I done today? I guess I got out of bed. I took my medication. Maybe I can give myself credit for that? Could be worse, right? It’s been worse before. But I’ve been taking my meds. I’m staying out of the hospital. Does that count for something?

And I’m doing this. I’ve been fighting like this . . . all these years. All the times I haven’t liked living at all, I’ve kept showing up.

So . . . what if I give myself credit for choosing “just to live” today, on this bare level? That’s a real fight for some of us — to show up and keep choosing “to be” at all! Could this count as part of a day’s work? Maybe God would see this and say, “Good enough, dear! This is what being faithful looks like today. You’re doing it.”

Describing life with schizophrenia, Esmé Weijun Wang points out that “chronic illness stitches itself into life in a different way than acute illness does. With chronic illness,” she explains, “life persists astride illness. . . . The absolution from doing more . . . during surgeries and hospitalization is absent during chronic illness.” And thus, the constant guilt.

It’s exhausting to have a “serious mental illness” like bipolar disorder. I mean, seriously.

But one positive aspect of having an actual diagnosis is the awareness that illness is involved, though it might be less visible and more stigmatized than other illnesses. So, even if no one else gets it, even if people feel let down by those of us with challenging mental conditions, perhaps we can offer ourselves this “absolution from doing more.” It’s real work we’re doing to stay in the fight.

Showing up “just to be” is not nothing, especially in the middle of a war against forces of self-annihilation.

If you’re overwhelmed in the day-to-day, it can help to simply focus on where you are in the present moment. Research in mental health has shown that how we feel emotionally is concretely tied to how we are in our bodies, and moving our bodies or slowing down with deep breathing can have a calming effect on our state of mind.

Take time to ground yourself in your body and your breath. In their book on Asian American trauma and mental health, Where I Belong, Soo Jin Lee and Linda Yoon offer wonderfully practical grounding exercises at the end of every chapter.

I sometimes practice breath prayers to slow my breathing and quiet frenetic thoughts when I’m feeling overwhelmed. Here are a couple I’ve liked:

Breathe in: Lord, have mercy.

Breathe out: Christ, have mercy.

Breathe in: Kyrie,

Breathe out: eleison.

Breathe in: Christe,

Breathe out: eleison.

We can give ourselves credit for taking this one aching breath.

And the next.

And the next.

Breath by breath.

I think that counts as choosing life.

If it’s all you can do, just be.

“Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy.”

What would it be like to grow into the truth of these words?

Adapted from “Christ in the Abyss: Cultivating Deep Faith amid Depression and Despair” by Jean L. Neely, Ph.D., from NavPress in June 2026. Breath prayers from Jon Fosse’s “Septology,” trans. Damion Searls (Transit Books, 2019),

I didn’t grow up playing sports, so when I first started running in my early 20s, it was mainly because I wanted to try something athletic that required very little equipment and hand-eye coordination. As someone entering the wide world of running without a coach or team to advise me, I mostly relied on the internet as a guide.

I learned so much. Who knew that different kinds of running shoes were better for different kinds of feet? Or that if you’re running far enough, you should eat not only before and after but during your run?

One of the most valuable — and most counterintuitive — pieces of guidance I found was this: most of your runs should be slow.

Slow?

Isn’t the whole point of running to, I don’t know, run? Not jog, shuffle, fast-walk?

But this is in fact what the experts say: a majority of your runs should be significantly below your race pace. In fact, something called 80/20 training refers to a style of preparation — used by recreational and elite runners alike — in which 80% of running workouts are done at an easy level of intensity, with just 20% done at a hard pace. Why? Among other factors, “easy runs train the cardio and respiratory systems to work more efficiently, allowing you to run with less effort during higher-intensity runs.”

As Runners World puts it, “All the evidence points to the fact that slowing down your pace for much (if not all) of your training can actually make you run faster in the long-term.”

Several years into making my running habit a more serious one, I still struggle with this. How can I really prepare to go at a faster speed if I’m not actually going that speed most of the time? What if I just want to go faster now? Maybe slowing down is a strategy that works for other people — but does it work for me?

Now look back at the list of questions in the paragraph above and raise your hand if you’ve ever asked yourself similar questions regarding other areas of your life — your career, your ministry work, etc. It’s easy to nod our heads and say amen to all the wisdom around Sabbath and self-care, but in reality, do we live our lives as though rest is something that’s not for us?

To be sure, rest is not always an option. As my colleague Prince Rivers reminds us, “Some people are busy because their survival demands it.” This kind of busyness is tied up in “doing what is required to care for one’s family.”

But Rivers also highlights a word of warning from Thomas Merton, who wrote, “There is a pervasive form of modern violence to which the idealist … most easily succumbs: activism and over-work. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.”

This is not the kind of overwork that survival demands. Instead, Rivers notes, Merton “makes a specific reference to ‘the idealist.’ This is the person who is changing the world, championing a cause or fighting the good fight.”

Many of us can relate to this idealist. Do we think that we simply can’t slow down, because the work is too important, the cause too great? Do the places where we work and worship convey, explicitly or implicitly, that this kind of slowing is not ideal? If we slowed down, would we ever be able to speed back up? Would others overtake us?

As with all metaphors, this one has its limits, and I want to be clear that in running, slowing down can be a valuable tool for improving the overall pace. In the context of our rhythms of work, however, slowing down should not be viewed simply as a means to be more efficient once we do speed back up again. As seminary professor and psychologist Chanequa Walker-Barnes writes, when it comes to rest and self-care, “deeply and faithfully loving and caring for [ourselves] is enough,” apart from any added productivity that a time of recharging might bring.

What interests me about this particular running image, though, is that it has something to say to us specifically about slowing down — not stopping, not taking up another sport entirely, just slowing.

There are certainly times to stop, to kick off your shoes and take a shower and a long nap. Yet for those of us who don’t necessarily need to do that at the moment, what might it look like to still be moving, but at what runner types refer to as a conversational pace, “a pace you should be able to hold a full conversation at — not just one or two gasped words”? How might this help us build up the endurance we need as we move through our work and world? And how might we advocate for this kind of pace whenever we can?

As a clinical psychologist, I spend much of my professional time helping make sense of what happens when things go wrong. Anxiety, depression and other struggles can dominate conversations with my clients.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where the same can be true for many of us. Wars are raging around the globe. Here, in one of the world’s richest countries, millions live in poverty. Our government seems to be in a perpetual state of chaos. It is easy to reside in a kind of existential dread that permeates our hearts, minds and souls.

While it is important to reckon with the reality of the suffering that exists in the world, it is also important for us not to become overwhelmed by it. Joy is an essential antidote in a suffering world.

Proverbs 17:22 (ESV) tells us, “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” For believers, joy is not just a perk of the Christian life; it’s a spiritual resource that helps us carry out our work in the world.

A dictionary might define “joy” as a state of happiness in response to external circumstances. But our kind of joy is one that rests in the knowledge of what God has done and will continue to do. Our kind of joy is not dependent on what is happening in the world; it is a commitment to see good and recognize the presence of good in the world and in ourselves, regardless of our circumstances. Joy is the product of our ever-present knowledge of God’s movement and work in our lives.

I want to be clear that I’m not suggesting that joy means we ignore all the bad. While some of us may have a tendency to use our faith to try to pretend our trials away (a process we mental health professionals call spiritual bypassing), the joy I’m suggesting does not negate the presence of evil or suffering in the world.

In fact, tapping into joy in our lives is what helps us fight injustice and work toward good for all. Joy keeps us going when we want to give up and keeps us fueled for the journey ahead by reminding us that suffering is an experience and not a destination.

As many cultures that have experienced historical violence and trauma can attest, joy is often the thing that helps us survive the unspeakable. As the proverb says, joy is a medicine and a healing balm, and when we lose it, our vitality dries up and disappears. It is no accident that we find moments of laughter at memorial celebrations, no accident that we spent the first few months of the pandemic lockdowns making jokes on the internet. Joy reminds us that we are alive when things feel perilous.

Because we live in a world that can exhaust and overwhelm us, we must be intentional about organizing our lives in a way that allows us access to the gift of joy. Ross Gay writes in “The Book of Delights” about his decision to find delights intentionally on a daily basis. He says of the process: “I felt my life to be more full of delight. Not without sorrow or fear or pain or loss. But more full of delight.” We must remember that joy and sorrow can, and will, coexist.

To be intentional about accessing joy is to make a practice of holding sacred time for the things that help us feel most content, at peace and close to God. For some, it may be physical exercise or spending time with our most beloved friends or family. For others, it might be time in nature, crafting or cooking. For others, it might be listening to music, committing to a devotional or other spiritual practice, or playing a game.

In her book “Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto,” Tricia Hersey proclaims that resting is an explicit resistance to a capitalist society that demands we treat our bodies as dispensable and our souls as inconsequential. While joy and rest are not the same, joy can most certainly be found in rest. And rest can help us be more open to the joy in our lives.

There is no single right way. The point here is that to have joy as a resource, we must decide to make it a part of our lives. We must actively seek out joy rather than waiting for it to come to us.

When I am helping clients navigate depression or recover from burnout, I often ask them to identify the drains and wells in their lives. Drains are things that deplete and exhaust us. Wells are things that energize and excite us. Wells refill our proverbial cups, while drains cause them to empty.

Both are necessary parts of our lives. But when we are able to identify the wells, we can be intentional about having access to them all around our lives so that we never have to get empty. This is the power of joy! Our ability to access it regularly and often allows us to operate from a place of overflow rather than depletion. Simply put, joy sustains us for the journey.

For each of us, this is an individualized process. Ask yourself: What lights me up? What makes me feel most alive?

What would it be like to organize our lives around our joys, just as biblical cities were built around wells? What if those wells in our lives — those things that sustain and revitalize us — become nonnegotiables, so that all the mundane tasks of our lives have to fall into place in relation to them?

To organize ourselves around joy in this way is to participate in a reparative process, declining to sacrifice ourselves and our spirits to an unjust world, instead claiming a holy retention of our goodness and our “godness.” To recognize the reality of our goodness is to acknowledge that we are deserving of light, joyful, playful moments. Those moments can then become the home base from which we navigate the world.