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THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER
The Rev. Dr. Morris W. Hudgins
Northwest UU Congregation
August 21, 2011

 

Introduction
Summer has long been my favorite time of year because of baseball and warm days, and mowing the lawn, and the leisurely pace that comes with summer.   It is a time to swim and play golf, gather with family, and catch up on books you have wanted to read and complete projects left undone.  Summer is also a time to travel and visit our favorite places.  For some that is the lake or the beach and for others the mountains.  We can also visit those historic sites and state parks.  For all of these reasons I love the summer.
Even with all of these wonderful things summer does have a down side.  It is often referred to as the “Dog Days of Summer”—a popular baseball phrase.  I will talk about the “Dog Days” of baseball in a minute, but let’s look first at the origins of the phrase.  As Tony said, it did not originate with baseball.  When I mentioned to my golfing friend, Doc Joe Holiday, a retired school teacher, that I was going to preach on “The Dog Days of Summer”, he responded, “Are you serious?”  Yes, it was named after Sirius, the Dog Star.  The ancient peoples of the Mediterranean believed that the heat from the star, Sirius, added to the heat of the sun thereby creating the hottest days of summer.  It also caused the most uncomfortable and disease ridden days of the year.  Officially, the “Dog Days” are the twenty days before and after Sirius is in conjunction with the sun— most of July and part of August.
The phrase was perfect for those people who are baseball aficionados.  In the spring all fans, even the Chicago Cubs, believe that this is going to be their year.  Unfortunately, only one team can make that claim at the end of the season.  It is rarely the Chicago Cubs.  Again, they are next to last place.  The teams that have given up on being number one, begin getting rid of their over-priced players for the youth of the future.  The cycle continues.
This sermon, however, is not just about baseball.  No, it is about the Dog Days of our personal lives.  Your former minister, my friend and colleague, Don Southworth, and another baseball lover, asks the questions when he writes:

 

We know what the dog days are in fact and we know what they are in baseball—what might they be in life?  When do we realize that things in our lives are not turning out the way we hoped?  When are those times when we need to find a way to get through the heat, the humidity, the dreariness and maybe even boredom of life to get to the beginning of another season?

 

Here is his answer:

 

The relationship, partnership or marriage that began with high hopes, magic and love starts to sour and the person we fell in love with is not who we thought he or she was; or maybe they are but a committed long term relationship is not what we thought it was going to be.  The job we thought we would have and love until the day we retire becomes a struggle to go to every day.  The body that once was trim and fit and took such good care of us, looks different when we stare in the mirror, and begins to betray us with increasing aches and pains every day.  The teenager that once laughed and cooed in our arms, who made Valentine’s from shoeboxes that promised eternal love, starts to slam doors in our face and calls us names that we have not heard since—well since we called our parents the same names.  Or the people we have loved in our life, who we counted on for comfort, for friendship, for guidance begin to move away or die and the world begins to feeling lonelier and lonelier.
The list of events and seasons in our life when times are tough, when things are not going the way we dreamed, the way we hoped or expected is endless.
The hot, sticky days of summer are not the same as those bright days of spring when flowers bust with color and possibilities live in every garden we see, and most people we meet.  They are not the same as the cool days of fall when leaves show off in all their golden glory before they disappear and while our pace slows and we reminisce and fondly remember the days of old.  The hot, sticky summer days are not even as hopeful as the cold, dark days of winter when death surrounds us but beauty comes in a blanket of freshly-fallen snow or the blossoms of a Bradford Pear tree and we know rebirth and renewal is only one or two calendar pages away.

 

Yes, we all experience the Dog Days of Summer, sooner or later.
 
My Childhood
What do we do when we are in the midst of the Dog Days?  My first response is similar to many of the problems of life is to say:  “Get on with it.”  I grew up in St. Louis.  Believe me:  I know heat.  I would spend my summers on an organic truck farm in St. Louis County—a farm that is now apartments.   Where there were strawberries, and tomatoes and grapes and parsley, you will find air conditioning and decks and barbecue grills.  I want to say to people:  “you don’t know heat until you have been in the sun along the Mississippi River.”
The fact is I didn’t really experience the Dog Days as a child.  I had it easy—good schools, parents who cared for me, a modest but comfortable home, after I became a teenager.  Things weren’t always that way.  When I was in grade-school I lived with my six brothers and sisters in a two-bedroom house with one bathroom—no air conditioning.  My two brothers and I lived in the basement. 
I loved school and I loved the summer when I could play baseball and work and make money.  When I played baseball in St. Louis, I didn’t experience the Dog Days.  I was fortunate to have always played on winning teams.  When I was thirteen I was selected to play on an all-star team.  We traveled the county and played the best teams and always won.  We ended up winning the Missouri-Illinois State Championship.  The final game was played at Sportsman’s Park, the predecessor to Busch Stadium, the home of the St. Louis Cardinals.  I then retired from competitive baseball and chose a career in ministry.
The fact was that I never experienced the Dog Days of Summer as a youth.  Even with my modest home and little money, life was good.  I enjoyed working in the hot fields, making money, so I could have new clothes in the fall, notebooks, and pencils to begin school which I loved.
Every summer I return to that home I lived in as a child.  I spend time with my mother and now my sister who still live in that home.  The home has been well kept and the neighborhood is filled with manicured yards, and people who share their tomatoes, and blackberries with each other.  My mother will probably die in this house and in this neighborhood.
But all is not well.  My mother and my sister are in the midst of the Dog Days of Summer.  My mother first lost her husband of 45 years, then her oldest daughter to Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and then her oldest son, to illnesses caused by the Vietnam War.  One of her sons wanders around the state of Virginia, doing geneological research and rarely comes home.  Her youngest son, me, lives out of state, and comes home once a year to visit, but has a full life of his own.
The other facts are that the other sisters who live in St. Louis rarely come to visit my mom.  They also have their own lives.  So do the grandchildren.  Add to this the fact that one of my sisters, Karen, has struggled the last thirteen years with manic-depression, and Mom has shouldered most of the difficulty of take care of her.  Karen left the house to move into her own apartment, then into a half-way house, then was arrested for traffic violations, then wrote bad checks and ended up in a mental hospital, checked herself out, and went camping with another patient, and ended up in a drug-infested trailer park in Missouri.
All of these events have taken their toll on my Mom.  She is in the midst of the Dog Days of Summer.  She doesn’t want to enjoy life as it is now.  She is lonely and in pain.

 

What Can We Do?
I have not faced the Dog Days of Summer but I am witnessing it for the first time in my family.  It is not fun.  I turned to my colleague, Don Southworth, for answers.  Here was his advice:

 

1.    First, step up to the plate and keep swinging.  This is the message all of us ministers give to some of our parishioners.  We tell them “this too will pass.”  The coach on the team uses other language: “keep swinging and you will get out of this slump.”  Don reaches this conclusion about baseball:

 

It breaks your heart.  It is designed to break your heart.  Baseball.  Life.  It happens time and time again, day after day, summer after summer, year after year.  Sometimes we strike out.  Sometimes we get hit by a pitch.  Sometimes we hit a home run.  Sometimes the best we can do in baseball, and in life, is to simply show up and play the game.

 

I rebel against such fatalism.  I want more out of life.  Yes, maybe sometimes we will all be disappointed, but I still want good days, and victories, and championships.  I also want good relationships, a successful career, and a meaningful life.
I need to be reminded that for some it is difficult to see things getting much better.  My Mom’s aches and pains will not go away.  Karen will never work again. Life is not good at the moment.  The words, “Hang in there” just don’t seem to work.

 

2.    Don’s second piece of advice is too much like the traditional religious response to difficulties in life—have hope.  Don’s advice is couched in liberal religious language, but in reality it is not that much different from the traditional.  He says:

 

When life gets us down—whether we are the lowly Devil Rays or someone who is sick and tired of life—our best chance at coming out of the dog days is to remember that there is almost always another season, another chance to play better, to love better and live better.

 

Yes, I believe in what Don and liberal religion says:  “Be hopeful.  There is another season ahead.”  But sometimes this is more easily said than done.  As the old joke goes, “It is difficult to get out of the swamp when you are up to your behind in alligators.”  Well, I cleaned it up a bit.  But the truth is we can’t always see our way clear when we are in the midst of the Dog Days.  Hope is good, but sometimes hard to find. 

 

3.       But there are other possibilities.  Don suggests doing what managers sometimes do when a player is in a slump—take a day off now and then.  Managers have the luxury of changing the line-up card, or sending a player back to the minors for awhile.  What can we do?  Just what my Mom won’t do:  “take a week and enjoy life.”  No matter what I would say, Mom doesn’t get out.  I once invited Mom to go on vacation with my Marti and me.  She agreed but then when the time came she preferred to stay home.
Some people prefer to stay where they are, in the midst of the Dog Days and complain about their lot in life.  This is part of Mom’s problem.  She complains a lot these days.  This is probably why the children and grandchildren are not coming around very much.   

 

4.      Mom is also having difficulty taking Don’s fourth piece of advice—trust your teammates.  Mom is not getting out to be with others. There is a tendency when things are not going well, when you are down, to stay at home and wallow in your troubles.  Southworth writes:  “When times get tough we need to reach out to each other, to ask each other for help and not go to the end of the bench and sit alone.”  This is easy to say but sometimes hard to do.  It sometimes requires someone take the important steps.

 

Conclusions
This is my best advice for those who are in the midst of the Dog Days of Summer.  Yes, you can have hope, yes you can show up and play, and sometimes you can take a day off, do something different, change your pattern, but in the end we must all return to the life that we have made for ourselves.  My best advice is to turn to your friends, reach out to others, and then maybe your life will not seem so bad when you return.
Sometimes we need help to find our way, to dream new dreams, and find our way back home.  Langston Hughes says it this way:

 

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

 

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

 

This summer I was invited to teach a class at the Summer Institute on “UUs Wrestling With God.”  The idea came from a Jewish man who believes Unitarian Universalists can be helpful in the Arab-Israeli dialogues. In order to do so, we need to be comfortable using God language.  So Dan and I taught the class in July.  I was inspired to dust off my doctoral dissertation, written in the 80’s, and rewrite it for publication.  The class was well attended with rave reviews.  I plan to offer the class this year at Northwest.
Yes, sometimes we need help to make life less barren and more hopeful.  Is this not the purpose of a religious institution?  Are we not here to help each other during the Dog Days?  I want to ask each of you this morning:  How are you helping others in this congregation who are facing long, hot summer days like the woman who called this week asking for help finding a job.  How is this church doing to reach out to those who are in need?  I believe we can help each other. 
In closing, George Odell reminds us why we come together as a religious community.  He writes:

 

  We need one another when we are in despair, in temptation, and need to be recalled to our best selves again.  We need one another when we would accomplish some great purpose, and cannot do it alone. . .We need one another in the hour of defeat, when with encouragement we might endure, and stand again.  We need one another when we come to die, and would have gentle hands prepare us for the journey.  All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us.  Amen.

 
reflection by Tony Barbagallo
The dog days.
Many of you know that I am a bit of a trivia buff – others might say a font of useless information – and so I cannot pass up this opportunity to tell you that the origins of the term dog days is unrelated to being dog tired, or a sleeping dog in the noon day sun. It finds its origins in the fact that month of August (named for Caesar Augustus) finds Sirius, the Dog Star, high in the celestial sky. The ancients attributed the late summer heat to the close proximity of this fiery red star, and also considered it a harbinger of good fortune. The latter is probably related to the coming harvest season, but that is even beyond my musings here today.
I have a lingering feeling about the common meaning of Dog Days from my youth. For me it is associated with that time in late summer when the simple joy of not having to go to school had waned, and boredom began to creep into our daily freedom. I distinctly remember sitting with my best friend, Kevin and tossing back and forth, “whatta’ you wanna’ do?”” I dunno” whatta’ you wanna’ do?” I recall saying, “this is pathetic, we have to go back to school in four or five weeks and we can’t figure out anything exciting to do with our time off.” That boredom, lack of direction and general malaise in the heat are what I associate with the phrase “the dog days of summer”. When the movie “Dog Day Afternoon” came out, I thought, sure it figures, you get bored and hot enough, maybe robbing a bank doesn’t seem like such a bad idea to liven things up.
But the Dog Days of summer also brought something special: family vacation. My mother worked for a large pharmaceutical company and almost everyone who worked there had to take two of their two or three weeks of vacation during “shutdown”, when major plant cleaning, maintenance and expansions took place. So the Barbagallo family put our boat on its trailer, hitched it to the car and headed north to the Adirondack Mountains and Lake George.  A crystal clear gem in the mountains, Lake George was an idyllic setting for a teenage boy, whose parents trusted him and could afford to let him run off with the family boat with his friends for hours at a time. And who got to bring his best friend Kevin with him. Invariably we would meet other teens where we were staying and the pursuits of pubescent boys and girls on vacation would ensue.  Maybe those weren’t the Dog Days, but the salad days? We would spend our days in the sun and water and our evenings were spent chasing and being caught, snuggling under blankets and whispering secrets, and…
Now you may not believe this, but what I most vividly recall about those nights when we were snuggling on beach chairs on the decks of the Stony Ledge Resort at Lake George was the stars. We would lie on those beach chairs in the brisk Adirondack evening, stargazing and counting the shooting stars. They would streak and zip across the sky with alacrity. I never before and have never since sat and watched shooting stars come and go with such frequency.  Years later I told some work colleagues that if only you could get out of the city and see the night sky without all the light pollution, you would see lots of shooting stars and told my story. A colleague who happened to be an accomplished amateur astronomer said, “Your vacations were always in early August, right?” I nodded in wonder as to how he knew. The answer came. “You were seeing the Leonid meteor shower. Shooting stars don’t happen like that all the time. The Leonid is in early August (think Leo in Astrology). The Pleiades are even better. They’re in November.”
So it wasn’t just being in the crystal clear mountain air of the Adirondacks that afforded me the spectacular show, but the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time.
But what I didn’t tell my colleagues at that time and that I am going to share with you today, is that those nights were my first brush with The Holy. Recently I took part in an exercise to share with someone else my experience of “The Holy”. The exercise started with sharing a story about that experience. I pondered only a moment and thought back to those nights on the deck at Lake George.
It was the stars; the stars and the vastness of the universe. Lying on the deck and staring at the celestial sphere overhead, I felt as though I might fall. Fall into the vast universe and float away amongst those stars. And then I had the transcendent realization that I am floating away, that I have fallen into the universe, that I am a part of this grand celestial dance of stars and planets and comets and nebulae and meteors. I may be riding the back of this planet we call earth that is tied to the tail of Sol at the center of a string of planets as we whiz through the Universe, but I am floating through the celestial sea that created me. I am at one with the universe.
Where? Where in that vast ocean above me had been the star that exploded to make the dust that accumulated into this stellar system I call home and begat the elements that make up my being and course through my veins? It is the same stardust that we all share as we eat and breathe and drink; as we are born and as we die. I am a manifestation of the universe as much as the sun and the moon and the rest of the stars. As far away as they may seem, I can touch them all. I hold them in my hand. They are my hand.
And we are all of that same stardust. However we want to divide ourselves up: nations, races, species, animate and inanimate, animal, vegetable, mineral. We are all the same. The connection is immutable. We have borrowed these bits of the universe to take shape in this way and at this time. We will pass and our borrowed pieces will return to the universe to redistribute as chance will have. We have no say over that.  The footprints we leave cannot be in sand or marble or air or water, but in the connection between all the things in the universe. And that includes you and me.
That was and is for me a comforting feeling. I am as eternal as the universe. Not in the sense that I as a sentient being will always be here, nor in the way that my Roman Catholic upbringing had tried to convey and that I was struggling with. No. I am eternal in that who I am is part of whatever and whoever preceded me in this universe and I will go on to be part of all that comes after. I won’t be separate from this universe and looking in, but will always be a part of the universe looking back at itself in the mirror, through a telescope, through a microscope and at the stars on a dark summer night; on a deck; on a lake; in the mountains; during the Dog Days of August.
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