Blog
May there be a superabundance of life
Monday 6th July 2026
Mike Mullins
Its July the height of summer in its fullness and another heatwave is on its way. My face, hands, legs and feet are bronzed with the sun. I’m tired with lack of sleep in these hot London nights.
As I loll in our garden, I notice a female blackbird fluttering at the top of a lime tree, as if she’s been disturbed by a predator. She flies off, then a few minutes later returns back into the tree.
In front of me a bumble bee lands like a Hawker jump jet in the cup of a yellow poppy . A white salvia sways in the breeze next to it. The lime trees along the alley shimmer, glistening, glossy and sticky in the July midday heat. Their upturned leaves in the wind are a contrasting lighter matt. Way, way above me the remains of a plane’s contrails lie broken across the blue sky. The lime tree leaves have a distinctive sound in the wind. Apparently, all trees’ leaves sound different in the wind. Their sound is known as susurration. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to be able to identify trees, like birdsong, just by their sound? I’m sure birds and mammals can do this. Oh, to sink down to that level of attention of listening, to be able to do that. We make holy by what we pay attention to.
Several leafcutter bees have now joined their springtime cousins, the solitary bees, in laying their eggs in our bee hotels. It’s beautiful to see the curved holes gnawed in our raspberry leaves by these bees and their green doors fitted onto the shelters of their young.
The bright orange of fox and cubs’ flowers growing in the gaps between our patio slabs. Campanula flowers crashing like a great purple Hokusai tsunami wave up against our fence. Spiders silk threads, glistening, shimmering white glass in the sun.
Watching a pair of blackbirds on a chimney stack opposite. One persistently chasing the other up to the top of the stack then back down to a TV aerial. Like a game of chase, or being irritated by one’s lover's unwanted amorous advances. Maybe its just too hot?
July is the month for nurturing young. All the frenetic energy of flowers and the dawn chorus dedicated to creating offspring is gently ebbing away. Birds have been feeding their chicks and fledglings learning to fly.
A recent heavy thunder shower has spurred on growth. Everything is growing, evolving, changing in the garden. Everything everywhere is now so full of the life force.
My prayer is … may there be a superabundance of all life!
As I grow older, I feel life is lived in a circle. I can see and feel my younger self, my origins, experiences, parents, siblings and wider family all the more clearly and wholly. All the main tributaries of the river of my life, of who I am, come into perspective. Everything that began with the innocence of life in a 1960s rural Wiltshire village has its fruition here and now in London 2026. Is my life, is all life cyclical like that?
As TS Eliot says in “Little Gidding”:
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
I wonder whether our growth is not moving on to something new but returning to the familiar with a transformed and greater perception. Our journey changes us, the traveller, so that our place of origin is encountered as if for the first time. The pilgrim who leaves home only to discover that the deepest destination is a transformed way of seeing home itself. We are called now, in these troubled times, to see our beautiful, long suffering, ancient turning planet home anew with awe and reverence.
Standing in the midst a ripening barley field in late afternoon in the Surrey Hills with Vicar Helen Burnet, both of us preparing for a meditative walk in the life of the earth. The grain bends under the weight of its own fullness. The earth is not striving now, it is offering. July invites us to do the same, to let our gifts ripen into generosity, knowing that true abundance is fulfilled not by possessing but by giving.
The long July evenings invite us to outdoor meditation and prayer, to vigils, blessing wells, solitary walks and just being. The abundance of creation became a doorway into contemplation. July the height of summer a time of preparation for Lughnasa, celebrated on 1 August. It’s about the ripening of grain, gratitude for abundance, preparing for harvest recognising that every gift of life comes through sacrifice.
Lugh was one of Ireland's great mythological figures, representing skill and craftsmanship, wisdom, kingship, creativity, light and excellence in every art. Lugh in old Irish means "light" or "brightness." He established Lughnasa to honour of his foster mother Tailtiu. Tailtiu cleared the ancient forests of Ireland to create fertile farmland for humanity. She worked herself to death and Lugh established annual games and feasts in her memory. Every harvest is because someone has given themselves. Harvest is a festival of gratitude, remembrance and generosity, not just simple celebration.
In July berries ripen, wildflowers reach their peak, bees are at maximum activity, butterflies abound, young birds become independent, grain begins turning from green to gold. This is the moment of the earth's greatest generosity. Yet the days have already started to shorten. Life is full but impermanence has quietly entered.