Danger Season: Let's Stop Calling it Summer

Hi friends. Nearly four years ago in an early version of this newsletter, I briefly reflected on the heat of a summer day in June. Now as I sit on the deck in the late evening watching my family swim to keep cool, working on a sermon for this Sunday that offers a look at the disparity in media coverage between the recent heat wave in Europe and that of India in May, that reflection is timely once again. I offer it to you here, this time adding a brief reflection on the metaphor of summer in a Scripture passage.

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(Update from a reflection posted June 14, 2022)

As we get close to the summer solstice and the first day of summer on June 21, I am thinking of an article I read this morning on Grist.org. The Union of Concerned Scientists wants people to begin to call summer the “danger season” because of the increasing risks of deadly heat waves, droughts, forest fires, and hurricanes. They are referring mainly to the Midwest of the US, where climate change has increased these risks exponentially. They want to see the reference to “danger season” become the norm to help shake people out of complacency regarding climate change, and help folx get better prepared for what is to come.

Of course, it has been the danger season in other parts of the world for a long time now. The heat wave that struck India and Pakistan came much earlier than normal this year, in March and April [2022], and was hotter than normal. Temperatures reached 49°C in Pakistan, and more than 47°C in parts of India. At least 90 people were killed as a result.

[2026 note: I did not update that paragraph, although could easily have included the Indian heat wave from May 2026 in which 3400 died per day in the five days of the heat wave, or the most recent heat wave in Europe. As mentioned above, I will be preaching on those events on Sunday.]

What does it mean, now, when summer can no longer be simply associated with fun and BBQs? What does it mean when the sun, as both reality and metaphor, is no longer simply a source of warmth and light, but is a source of heat and death? Heat and death that is human-caused?

We must lament this change. We must lament that summer now means the danger season for so many people around the world, including in our own communities. We must lament our role in this and work for change.

And it is time, as people of faith, to stop relying on our own strength and ask God what we should do. It is time to create new metaphors for this reality - danger season is a good beginning - and also seek wisdom and challenge from our traditions and scripture. Where is God now, in the danger season? Where is God as we seek to adjust to the new climate reality and as we work for change? Perhaps more importantly, where are we as people of faith? What are we doing about the climate crisis, specifically and concretely, individually and in our communities? How are we living out our discipleship? How are we living in relationship with God and our neighbours, both human and nature neighbours?

As we move into the danger season in North America, and as we witness to how the danger season has been striking other parts of the world, let us take time to lament, to reflect, to imagine, to pray, and most importantly to act.

This passage comes at the end of the story of Noah’s Ark. After the flooding has subsided and God has witnessed to Noah’s faithfulness, God shows forgiveness to God’s people and promises:

‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.’ (Genesis 8:21, NRSV)

Then God makes the promise that the seasons of creation will continue, that “summer and winter” will last forever. And God places a rainbow in the sky as a promise of the covenant between the people and God from now on.

But today we no longer have the “summer and winter” that the author of Genesis knew in ancient Palestine, nor that our ancestors in the faith knew for generations before us. Summer has lost its familiar lustre of sunshine and happy warmth, vacation and rest. Summer is now the danger season, here in North America and especially in the global South. While I still find God’s words of promise to Noah meaningful and reassuring, I am mindful that privileged humans, especially in the global North, have abused the Earth to such an extent that we cannot so easily claim the promise of God’s protection and provision that the sun represents in the Scriptures. How can we, when we have wreaked such havoc that the summer sun now means sickness and death to so many, both human and other than human?

The climate crisis is here and we can’t stop it. What we can do, however, is everything we can to seek to prevent more deaths, and to mitigate heating going even higher than is currently baked in to the climate system.

And in that, the succour and promise of God remains true: “As long as the earth endures,” God says, life will go on. The seasons, however brutal they are now and are destined to worsen, will still continue. Even as the climate crisis worsens, God’s covenant promise to us remains true. No matter what folly we continue, God has promised to be with us. This is both comfort, for we are not and will never be alone. And it is challenge, too: God is with us, and is waiting for us to listen to God’s call on our lives to a radical discipleship of climate action. Today in the danger season, it’s time to listen and take climate action. May it be so.