If you’ve been in New England this last week or two – or indeed, most of the United States or Europe – you’ve been hot. Like, toweling off from a cool shower you are already working up a sweat hot. Just walking down the street you look like you’ve run a marathon hot. Want to sit in the air conditioning and eat popsicles all day hot.

On a familiar walk this weekend, sun blazing, it suddenly (and finally) dawned on me that I was walking by a creek!  Dozens and dozens of times I’d strolled or jogged or pedaled along this path, admiring the water, but never once had I gone in. Yesterday it finally clicked, and I plunged my feet into the cool, clean, soothing water and sat still as a turtle on a rock. Within five minutes, my walk changed from chore to delight, from depleting to renewing.

Dear Honeybees, what other creeks are we walking right past, suffering while relief is in plain sight? Wherever we are today, whatever needs soothed, I hope we are quiet enough to hear the bubbling of the help that’s all around us.