The Spirit in the Field: Mystical Glimpses in Ordinary Time

Summer Solstice, Rhythms of the Green Season, Mulberry Rob, and the Beginning of a Still Book

*a gift for you this midsummer — just for substack subscribers at The Local Wild — use code SUBSTACKSUMMER for 15% till the end of June. My midsummer Electuary recommendations are at the bottom.

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The field come Midsummer: wild strawberries tuck themselves in low under sheets of red clover, the verdant green like a blanket, tucking in all below. Swallows swoop and dive over tall, bending stalks of hay — the whole field moving like a heartbeat, bowing in time to the wind, like lovers meeting one another. Just past and beyond, the mulberries hang heavy—ripe, soft, waiting to be taken. There’s movement and pulse and discovery and wonder and pleasure here in this field, come nigh the Solstice and Midsummertide, a time where the Super and Natural and everyday entwine.

“Something other is here…” — I hope all feel it even if there’s no name on the tongue for it…yet.

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Summer arrives carrying centuries of story, sacred rhythm, and folklore. Here’s a brief look at what it holds.

• Summer Solstice (June 20–22)
  The longest day of the year, and the shortest night. When the sun stands still at its peak. Ancient cultures marked it with fires and feasting. Early Christians honored this fullness of light not as divine itself, but as a sign of the Light behind all things. A moment of joy, fullness, and holy brightness before the turning.

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• St. John’s Eve (June 23)
  A night of bonfires, herbs, and liminal wonder. Folk traditions layered with Christian meaning saw this night as thin—a crossing place. Herbs were gathered for healing, dew was said to cure illness, and fires were leapt for blessing and protection. It was a holy edge: half in shadow, half in flame.

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• St. John the Baptist (June 24)
  John is born as the sun begins to wane, just as Christ will come when the darkness deepens. “He must increase, I must decrease.” This feast marks the shift toward humility, toward preparing the way, toward the quieter work of faith. It’s a turning from brightness toward hiddenness—where God still moves. John is born as the days grow shorter, Christ is born and they days grow long again.

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• Midsummer (June 24 in Folk Tradition)
  Though the solstice is the astronomical middle, many marked June 24 as “true midsummer.” Strawberries ripen, bees hum, the fields sway like water. The world is fully green, fully alive. A time to bless the earth, to gather herbs, to notice the sacred threaded through every growing thing.

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• Ordinary Time (Begins mid-June, after Pentecost and Trinity Sunday)
  Ordinary doesn’t mean unimportant. It means counted, steady, rooted. This green season stretches long—not marked by high feasts, but by quiet faithfulness to Practicing the Way of Jesus. The sacred is found in the dailiness of life. Regular prayer, work, nature’s cycles, and the sanctity of repetition are the order of this Green Season. Small and hidden works, much like the way The Holy Spirit moves in the heart.

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Have you ever sensed a ghost of something we can’t name about ourselves?
Or perhaps a great mourning at the terror and sadness found here below?
But is there not also a giddiness, a frolic that rises up like laughter in our very blood?!

And youngness we fight to keep—not out of vanity, but because we feel it somewhere: the part of us that will never die. The part that strains toward hope and goodness, to live at peace, to grow and tend, to try to heal the pain we witness, to love—and to do it well.

There’s a shimmering veil beside us, daily—one we live alongside, contend with, sometimes despise, often long to peer beyond.

C.S. Lewis says:

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

The longing doesn’t mean something is wrong — it means something is right. We were made to desire beauty, union, belonging, eternity. And it wells up unbidden: watching the swallows, standing in a green field, hearing a line of music, feeling a premonition, listening to old stories, or laughing with those we love. All glimpses.

Humans have always beheld the seasons, nature’s rhythms celebrated them, prayed to something in them. Even with their smallest glimpse, the order and wonder of the changing natural world something to align oneself with. Pagan festivals and stories tried to name this ache with their own languages — through symbols of fire, sacrifice, fertility, sun, and rebirth. These stories weren’t completely empty; they were glimpses.

Lewis describes it thus:

"God sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again, and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men."¹

The midsummer dream is part of the story — the holy ache that we are not alone, and not yet home; part of a Kingdom coming, but not here yet. Ancients and even those today pray to AN UNKNOWN GOD.

In Acts 17, in the New Testatment — Paul² finds himself in Athens, the heart of philosophy, art, and pagan devotion. The city is filled with altars and shrines to every imaginable deity—each carved from stone, named, and ritualized. But one altar stands out.

It is inscribed: “To an unknown God.”

Paul pauses there—not in condemnation, but in recognition. Here is a people reaching toward something they cannot name. Their altar to the unknown is an admission of longing. Of holy ignorance. Of mystery.

Paul steps into that longing and says:

“What you worship as unknown,
this I now proclaim to you.”
(Acts 17:23)

He does not discard their ache. He honors it.
He sees their searching and connects it to the God who made the world and everything in it, who does not live in temples made by hands, and who is not far from any one of us.

He even quotes their own poets:

“In him we live and move and have our being.”
(Acts 17:28)

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We are in a thin place, with a Spirit breaking in and through, and an evil and enemy that steals these glimpses and distorts our longing, even at Midsummer. The wild joy of the season — the pulse of the field, the scent of orchard grass heavy with dew — not just a glimpse, but a summoning. The Spirit does not linger at the edges but walks here, close as our breath. Longing wakes us, yes — but so does Presence. Yet even now, in this high season, we must be watchful: the enemy still prowls, mimicking wonder, stealing joy, twisting desire.

For those who know the True Spirit and Pursuer of Man’s Soul — and for those who have yet to understand the depths and heights to which the Rescuer will go to reveal Himself — there are signs aplenty right outside. An enchanted love, taller than the pale blue of the summer sky and deeper than the darkness and despair of cold and lonely wastelands, is the path the Great Pursuer treks.

Better than our wildest reckoning, and it draws us down low to lay in fields of peace, pursuit, and mystery. Words that seemingly don’t fit together now do and salvation that was once unobtainable now is — and surely now there’s a home for wandering and captured souls. The human heart longs to be swept into the Glory of Creation earthside, for part of our nature is eternal, and like calls to like — we feel it in moments we can’t capture or describe. We feel it in the darkness of the wood, the wonder of the wind — from where does it come, and where is it going? So it is too with the Spirit in the Field of our heart.

And so this Midsummer, as in most of my writings, it comes to the hearkening — there is a battle waged here, for you. For you are not the only one with longing; there is another who deeply desires your trust.

There’s a God that can be named, a great Spirit that can be trusted.

Ordinary Time: The Green Season of the Spirit

I sit in the middle of it all. Hand on the ground, I feel my place in it all. For that is the color of the time we find ourselves in — Ordinary Time — a long season of the Church calendar. It is called “ordinary” not because it is unimportant, but from the word ordinal — meaning numbered or ordered.

“By the seventh century, most of the church year had been fairly well established. But the question remained, what should the church do between Pentecost and Advent? The obvious answer was live faithfully. Go to church and love your neighbor. God to work and perform your job with integrity. Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly. Get married, make babies, and raise them in the way of the Lord.”³

It spans two segments: one brief stretch after Epiphany (Baptism of Christ to Ash Wednesday), and a second, much longer portion from Pentecost to Advent.

Begins: The Monday after Pentecost (which falls 50 days after Easter Sunday, usually late May to mid-June)

Ends: The Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent (which begins 4 Sundays before Christmas, so usually late November)

Duration: Around 23 to 28 weeks, depending on Easter’s date

It’s a substantial stretch of time, and so it is with life — there’s the miraculous of Christmas, Eastertide, Pentecost — and then, by grace, the Spirit settles in with us for the day-to-day humming of Ordinary Time. The name is misleading. There is nothing “ordinary” about it. It is the season of hidden work, quiet mystery, preparation, and slow transformation — of the Spirit moving in subtle, unseen ways.

Danielle Hitchen says in Sacred Seasons:

“The official color of Ordinary Time is green — the color of growth, freshness, and new life. Liturgically, green is the color of the Holy Spirit. Whereas red is the color of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, green is the color of the life of the Holy Spirit. It’s a reminder that the Spirit is the source of all life, and the means by which the life of Christ flows into us.”⁴

So often we look for God in the dramatic — the holiday, the miracle, the mountain. But most of life is field, not fire. And yet, it is still sacred. The same Spirit who came in wind and flame at Pentecost stays to whisper in the field, in dishes washed, in service to our neighbor, in seeds grown, in children raised, in ordinary obedience. There’s magic there too. The season is long and slow, teaching us to walk — and walk on — with a Great Spirit in us, and small steps in humility and obedience. In that we walk too a mystical dance — the field, the home, the hearth: all sacred ground. Ordinary Time is not without wonder — it simply teaches us to see it slower, as the Lover pulls us closer and deeper.

Stillrooms and the Gospel in the Green

As we walk this life — we come into the domestic sacred: the home — and The Still Room. A small room historically used to make herbal medicines, organize the household and do the work of home. (You can catch up here) Here is where we can capture the glimpses given to us — the super and natural Ordinary. And here’s where we will begin our Still Book — in our Still Rooms.

Still Rooms were once places of quiet work: herbal distillations, remedies, perfumes, tisanes. But they were more than functional — they were a rhythm. A liturgy of the land and body. A place where the calendar met the inner workings of the home — the cupboards, the hearths — and healing was story and history and remembering, not sterile and stoic.

The Still Book we will begin creating stands in this tradition: part herbal guide, part devotional and journal, part seasonal gospel. It will be our ‘Ordinary Time’ project together! and soon we will begin! What is a Still Book, it’s the Book kept in the Still Room to capture:

• A seasonal herbal journal, tracking what grows when and what heals what

• A devotional companion, tying Scripture, prayers, and holy days to daily domestic and agrarian rhythms

• A recipe collection, not just for food but for teas, tinctures, electuaries, candles, salves, syrups, and sacred meals

• A record of signs — swallows returning, strawberries appearing, the full moons, first frosts

• A household liturgy — blessings for bread-baking, table-setting, planting, and resting

• A storybook of memory, where family traditions, dreams, and remembrances are gently kept

• A gardener’s and gatherer’s guide, aligned with both the natural and Church calendars

• A keeper of enchantment, where wonder is not ornamental but instructive — a thread to follow home

Your work — is a reclaiming of sacred domesticity. A recovery of spiritual attention. A kind of midwifery of the Gospel and our in-between reality here in this field of life — bringing forth and remembering joy and pain, promise and doubts, tending both body and spirit.

I pray you feel how rare a creature you are in this world, and that when partnered with the Holy Spirit, you are a co-heir to a coming Kingdom. Your home — the Still Room — becomes a dais of the ordinary, not apart from the Spirit, but alive with it.

May we all say — Something other is here…” and follow the God that who named Himself.

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Mulberry Rob (Traditional Cordial Syrup)

“Rob” comes from the Latin “robub,” meaning juice or essence. A mulberry rob was a thick syrup made to preserve the fruit and its health benefits — often used for sore throats, fevers, and general cooling in the summer heat. (Or drizzle over icecream and pancakes!)

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🌿 Historical Recipe (adapted from 17th-century herbal texts):

Ingredients:

• 2 cups fresh ripe mulberries (blackberries if no mulberries can be found)

• 1 cup raw honey or sugar (honey for medicinal use, sugar for preserving)

• A splash of lemon juice (optional)

• A pinch of cinnamon or clove (optional, traditional additions for warmth and balance)

  • Optional add herbs: 1 tsp dried lemon balm (calming + citrusy), ½ tsp dried elderflower (cooling + floral), A few torn fresh mint leaves (uplifting + bright)

Instructions:

1. Gently mash the mulberries in a bowl.

2. Simmer over low heat for 15–20 minutes until the juices release.

3. Strain through a cloth or fine sieve.

4. Return the juice to the pan, and add the honey or sugar.

5. Simmer gently until it thickens slightly into a syrup (another 10–15 min).

6. Add lemon juice or spice/herbs if using. Stir to blend.

7. Pour into glass bottles or jars. Store in the fridge.

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Traditional Use:

Take by the spoonful for sore throats or as a cooling tonic.

Mix with water or wine for a refreshing summer drink.

Sometimes served warm in a little brandy or vinegar as a restorative.

Drizzle over toast, icecream, waffles.

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A Prayer for Ordinary Time

May I know the seasons as they should be and the Maker of them.

In the green and lush, may I grow — my hearts, my homes, and my communities — in wisdom, faithfulness, steadfastness.

May growth and obedience and awe, the mundane and mystical, course through my body, and my heart too.

May I succumb to this love the Lord and King is calling me to. May I trust and lie in these Ordinary fields of green, knowing He gives all I need — and more.

Happy Midsummertide!— may you experience a deep, mysterious, super and natural tale — only the best of kinds (the true ones).

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Resources to add to the Library:

• Sacred Seasons by Danielle Hitchen
  A family-centered journey through the Church year with Scripture, prayer, and gentle liturgical formation.

• The Circle of Seasons by Kimberlee Conway Ireton
  A poetic and personal guide to practicing the liturgical year at home, rooted in seasonal reflection.

• Winters in the World by Eleanor Parker
  A historical and literary walk through the Anglo-Saxon calendar, where natural and spiritual time interlace.

• Domestic Monastery by Ronald Rolheiser
  A short, powerful meditation on how domestic life can mirror monastic life — with its own rhythms of stillness, sacrifice, and presence.

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Summer Playlist and Electuary

You didn’t think I would leave you without a seasonal playlist did you?!

MIRTH FOR MIDSUMMER

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MIDSUMMER Herbal Electuaries from THE LOCAL WILD

Shop Calm and Secure

Ingredients: Honey, Skullcap, Chamomile, Lemon Balm, Holy Basil, Passionflower, Lavender

Why it fits Midsummer:
Midsummer is full of light, but often overstimulating — long days, heightened energy, emotional intensity. This blend supports rest and grounding, ideal for evening reflection and stillness.

Shop Battle Scars

Ingredients: Honey, Hibiscus, Rose, Schisandra, Lemon Balm, Calendula, Sea Salt

Why it fits Midsummer:
After early summer’s intensity — planting, tending, giving — we often feel depleted. This is a restorative and emotionally grounding electuary, supporting the heart, replenishing hydration, and fatigue.

Shop Awake & Ready

Ingredients: Honey, Roasted Dandelion Root, Chicory Root, Burdock Root, Cordyceps, Ashwagandha, Cinnamon

Why it fits Midsummer:
This blend mirrors the sun’s strength — it’s for mornings when you need to rise with purpose. Perfect for those long liturgical days in the field, kitchen, or vacations.

1. C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity (Book II, Chapter 3, “The Shocking Alternative”): Mere Christianity, Book II, Chapter 3 — Lewis calls pagan resurrection myths “good dreams sent by God,” echoes of the Gospel embedded in human imagination long before Christ came.

2. Paul—originally known as Saul of Tarsus—was a Jewish Pharisee who persecuted followers of Jesus, and after an encounter with the Risen Chfist, turned follower of Jesus.

3. Hitchen, Danielle. Sacred Seasons: A Family Guide to Center Your Year Around Jesus. pg176

4. Hitchen, Danielle. Sacred Seasons: A Family Guide to Center Your Year Around Jesus.