Cultivating Delight

Caitlan Rangel gives practical ideas for cultivating delight this summer.

The end of May and beginning of June can be a season of closing. The school year finishes and students graduate. We approach summer and its distinctiveness—weather, food, schedule, and pace all shift for three months. As we come to the end of a season, we have the opportunity to be intentional for how we will step into summer. Whatever your emotional environment in this transition from May to June, I’d like to suggest a stance for summer: cultivating delight.  

When we cultivate delight, we take time to notice, foster joy, and restore our capacity for wonder. We don’t cultivate delight for the sake of pleasure itself. Rather, we cultivate delight as a practice of gratitude, which leads us to praise the Giver of all good things—our heavenly Father.  

Here are four ideas for how to cultivate delight this summer (or any time!): 

Watch Things Grow  

Summer is a season where we can observe things grow. Perhaps we take summer’s cue and expand upon this theme in our lives.  

We can watch growth in nature—in our gardens, in the length of days, in parks or whatever wilderness we can find around us.   

We see our children grow—moving from one grade to the next, school to the next, state of life to the next. We observe our children and have the opportunity to affirm where they are good. Even in challenging seasons, where do our children demonstrate goodness—generosity, loyalty, love, joy, faithfulness, sacrifice, creativity?  

Finally, we can ask the Holy Spirit to show us how particular relationships, our marriage, or our faith life has grown.  

As we watch and reflect on how things grow, we can see God at work in small ways. Just as a tiny bud of new life pushes forth from the branch of a tree, our God is always working to bring life. 

Get Your Hands Dirty  

My children think it’s absolutely delightful to get their hands dirty. Soil, bread dough, chalk dust, play-doh. Take your pick! And I have to agree with them: it can be relaxing, cathartic—delightful—to get my hands dirty.  

We live in a time when lots of folks move from one clean box to another. From our home, into our car, into the office. The beautiful thing about this is that God can sanctify any work we do—we can offer all our work to God. At the same time, it’s beneficial to keep in mind that God made us to engage with his world in a hands-on way. We need only look to God’s example of sending his Son to be with us.  

It can be a delight to explore the natural world, make the occasional (or regular) mess in the kitchen, and be creative. What can you get your hands into this week? 

Rest, Work, Pray, or Play with Loved Ones  

As human beings, we need community. God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is a community of love and created us out of this love. We, then, were created by love and for love. Now, just because we were made to love, it doesn’t mean it’s easy to love.   

We have to practice love. We learn to love. And our primary school for love is first the family and then other communities.  

The bonds of love in our families grow when we rest, work, pray, and play together. How often do we do these in our families? Are we good at one or two and not so much with the others? Further, when we do rest, work, pray, or play together, how present are we? Does one parent or child tend to be on their phone? Is there a way the whole (or most of the) family can be engaged in resting, working, praying, or playing as a unit?  

It’s never perfect and almost always messy. And it’s a gift to strive toward building up communities of love on earth as we walk together toward heaven. 

Praise God—He Creates out of Love for Us  

Have you ever peeled apart orange segments and thought—it’s so cool that God made oranges with hundreds of pulp pockets (apparently called juice vesicles) in every orange? Or looked at a blackberry and mused at all those balls of juice (called drupelets) held together to form one small sweet and tart fruit? Or wondered about how chickens can lay white, brown, and blue eggs?  

It can be wonderful to muse at how God creates. I find it to be wonderful because God’s creation needn’t be as lovely as it is. We cultivate delight when we take time to notice the intricacies and beauties of the natural world and praise God for them.  

In addition to saying a prayer of praise, we may choose to do something with God’s creation that in turn creates beauty in our homes. For example, if we buy or harvest lovely berries, we can take a few moments to arrange them in a bowl instead of just chucking them on plates. We can cook something different with seasonal or yummy-looking produce for the fun and nourishment of it. For example, my kids and I recently made a sweet potato pie out of purple sweet potatoes because we thought eating a purple pie would be fun. 

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When we cultivate delight, we take time to notice, foster joy, and restore our capacity for wonder. #CatholicMom

As we close one season and enter another, let’s ask for the Holy Spirit’s help in cultivating delight in our lives. Together, we can open our minds and hearts to the wisdom of the psalmist who sings,

Find your delight in the Lord who will give you your heart’s desire. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will act and make your righteousness shine like the dawn, your justice like noonday. Be still before the Lord; wait for him. (Psalm 37:4-6) 

Copyright 2023 Caitlan Rangel
Images: copyright 2023 Caitlan Rangel, all rights reserved