August is a hot month in Menorca, and that can affect us in many ways.  Oppressive heat can make us irritable, tired, and less patient.  Research has shown that extreme heat genuinely affects concentration, sleep, decision-making and even kindness.  Heat strips away our pretence.  We discover who we really are when we are uncomfortable - as do those around us! 

At the moment, it’s not just the physical heat that oppresses us.  What kind of heat are we living with?  There is a lot of political heat in the world; there is environmental heat amidst climate anxiety that adds inexorably to the physical heat we endure during the hotter seasons; all of this increases the emotional heat that we experience; there is even spiritual heat.  All this heat is connected to the feelings of anxiety that seem only to escalate. 

To moderate the effect of the physical heat we can go to the beach and immerse ourselves in the sea - well, those of us in Menorca can, although that might increase the psychological heat as well find that rather a lot of our fellow human beings have done likewise!  I know many who drag out their shopping expeditions in air conditioned stores.  There is always the possibility of retreat to an air conditioned room, although that seems to have sparked debates about how environmentally friendly (or not) that may be.  Some people simply go away to somewhere that is not so hot.  These are ways to deal with rising temperatures, but how do we cool down the other sources of heat in our lives?  How do we reduce anxiety and find hope?  Perhaps if we cool down our emotional and mental state, we might find that we are better equipped to deal with the physical heat, too.

It is not by accident that we use the expression ‘cooling off period’ to describe a time for deliberation so that decisions are not simply made in the heat of the moment.  The term originated in the early twentieth century, with its earliest recorded use in the 1910s.  It emerged in American labour relations to describe a legally mandated pause between a strike declaration and the actual strike, allowing unions and management time to reduce tensions and negotiate calmly.  Over time it became more broadly applied to legal, contractual and consumer contexts.  All of this is designed to allow a pause for reflection so that calmer - and cooler -  heads are involved in making decisions or conducting negotiations. 

In today’s world there is much pressure inviting us to react quickly, fuelled by the desire for instant gratification.  The era of e-mail has been with us for more than forty years, enabling instant communication.  How often do we hit ‘send’ for a message that might have been better reviewed and revised after a cooling off period?  Social media has exacerbated the trend to provoke or react without waiting to consider the consequences of what we write.  In fact the use of social media algorithms to manage what is delivered to us is very much designed to provoke us into responding or interacting regardless of the longer term consequences.  All of this increases social pressure, and if I can be forgiven for applying the laws of physics to social interaction, increased pressure leads to increased temperature (under the right conditions, of course).  So perhaps we might reduce the pressure or ourselves and our relationships with others if we made more use of the idea of a resting or cooling off period before we post things on social media or respond to the posts of others.  Then we might be less inclined to over-react. 

In Judaeo-Christian terms, scripture reminds us constantly that rest is more than a strategy for recovery; it can be a way of resisting the rhythms of a world that constantly tells us our worth is measured by what we produce.  This finds its expression in the emphasis on the importance of Sabbath time.  The Sabbath is intended to remind us that we belong to our Creator before we belong to our work, or other aspects of the material world.  Hope often comes not by escaping the heat but by finding shade - and in that regard we might find shade in prayer, community, worship, or kindness.  

Of course, there is a certain amount of irony here: in the Mediterranean we often wait all winter for sunshine, only to spend July and August searching for shade.  I am inclined to wonder whether that might be a metaphor for much of life.  We long for blessings, yet every blessing has its limits.  The Christian hope is not that life will always be comfortably cool, but that even in the fiercest heat God remains ‘a shade at your right hand,’ offering refreshment through spiritual presence and through the people who become shade for one another.

Perhaps God understands our frailty better than we do.  We shouldn’t expect ourselves to be at our best when body and mind are under stress.  Grace means accepting our limitations as well as our possibilities.  And perhaps that means managing our expectations of ourselves and others.  Faced with the pressure on ourselves to achieve grand accomplishments with regard to everything from modern slavery, homelessness, poverty, hunger, and even world peace, it is easy to become overwhelmed, guilty - and overheated.  But maybe there is hope and cooling to be found not just in Sabbath time and cooling off periods, but in the little things that we do.  We all have something to contribute to our world, so maybe we can find cooling in our lives by focusing on what we can do, rather than what seems insuperable - taking comfort in little things that might make more of a difference than we appreciate.  In which regard there’s a little anecdote, probably apocryphal, but nonetheless containing truth, that I first heard forty years ago, so it is probably older than that.  

A man came across a beach strewn with starfish that had been washed up by a storm - hundreds of them.  There was a boy walking along the beach, picking up starfish one at a time and returning them to the sea.

‘Why bother?’ said the man to the boy.  ‘There are so many of them.  How can you make a difference?’ 

‘Well,’ answered the boy, picking up a starfish and throwing it gently into the water, ‘it made a difference to that one.’