It is summer's final gift, a last tribute to a season of grilling and late-night reading and lazy mornings drinking coffee on your patio. Pure heavenly indulgence before you get swept up in the tide of the semester.

The week before was busy--perhaps too busy--as you flitted from one errand to the next while diving into the first week of school and the inevitable joys and chaos that come with it.  You are grateful for this last long weekend, then, to slow down, to turn inward, and to find your grounding once again.  In the slowly unfolding hours of these three days, you take the time to be deliberate about your actions and those of the days to come, weeding out unnecessary busyness, silencing mindless chatter.

For you are always at your strongest, your happiest, when you can embrace your solid daily routine that is built on your thirst for tranquillity and stability, of blissful quiet and gentle awareness.  And you found it again this weekend, in the birds singing on your patio as they feast on the seeds you put to for them; in the long afternoons spent reading; in the evenings in the kitchen playing with a new recipe.  You found it the rich moments of your everyday life, that inner joy that you will continue to nourish and take with you into the coming weeks.  You found it in the momentary pause from your regular labor, in your deliberate choice to not do much of anything this last long weekend of summer.