One of the great things about living in a northern state is that you come to have a great appreciation for good weather. We’ve had lovely weather these past couple of days, and my husband and I have gone down in the evenings to one of the local parks, where we toss a football around for awhile and then walk along the river. It feels like a real treat. And other people obviously feel the same way, because there are always plenty of others — mostly couples and families — out enjoying the summer weather with us, picnicking or fishing or playing with small children in the grass. With everything green and flourishing, one has the joyful feeling of being surrounded by abundant life.

I love all seasons (though I will confess that, up north where we live, I’m pretty tired of winter by the time it ends.) Maybe someday when I am old, I’ll want a Floridian condo wherein I will never again have to worry about heavy overcoats or frozen fingers. But even then, I suspect I would miss the seasons. Each one has its special magic, and I find too that, in each season, there is a particular time of day that I most cherish. In springtime, mornings are the most lovely. When they’re bright and sunny, the world seems bathed in freshness and hope, and on the wet rainy mornings, it feels that the whole world is being bathed and nourished and prepared for the good things to come. In summer, the evenings are my favorites, when the heat of the day has passed and cool breezes stir the leaves. At that time, the world feels alert and rich and full of life; there is something luscious and almost decadent about a summer evening.

It would be hard, though, to match the piercing beauty of a golden autumn afternoon. There is a tragic loveliness to those crisp fall days, as transitory as they are exquisite, reminding us how all of the joys and glories of this life must soon pass. Then finally, there is winter. In winter, I find the most memorable time is the dead of night with the snow falling heavily outside, and me inside, tucked warm in bed, or else cozy inside with hot soup or hot chocolate or buttered popcorn. There can be a certain exhilaration to outdoor activities in winter, but the loveliest thing about winter, I find, is the keen appreciation it gives us for comfort and security and warmth. There is no pleasanter time to cuddle up to the person you love than on a cold winter night!

The wonderful thing about the seasons is that, when the pleasures of one start to fade, the pleasures of the next begin as a kind of compensation. Up north where we live, as I’ve said, the winter does get a bit disproportionately long, and by the end of it I’m quite happy to trade the comforts of quilts and stews for the delight of warm sun and fresh strawberries. Still, it is certainly a great blessing to us that God made seasons, which, incredibly, allow each seasonal pleasure to seem fresh again when it makes its way back around. And of course, the liturgical calendar is just the same way. Impatient, fickle creatures that we are, we can’t fixate on the same thing indefinitely without losing our enthusiasm. So we have a liturgical calendar, which moves us round and round again, appreciating each fast and feast in turn and then moving on to the next one before we lose interest. And since the cycle continually repeats itself, we get the benefit of familiarity without the boredom of sameness.

But here’s the thing that worries me. In modern life, people have a lot less contact with, and interest in, the seasons. Not very many of us, these days, have jobs that require us to spend a lot of time out of doors. As an academic philosopher, you might think I would be the paradigm example of the sort of person who lives in dusty libraries and doesn’t know whether it’s December or May… but in fact, my job is a pretty good one for indulging my love of seasons. I have a very flexible daily schedule, and a good part of my “job” involves working things out in my head, which I often do best while taking my daily constitutionals. (Or sometimes I need to talk something through with my husband. This can also be nicely combined with a walk.) So, for a city-dweller with a basically sedentary lifestyle, I’m lucky enough to enjoy a respectable amount of exposure to nature and the elements. Other people I know get much less. I’ve had quite a few people explain to me, when I tell them that I wouldn’t like their climate, that, in effect, “it doesn’t matter for me, because I don’t spend any time outside.” Oh. Well, I guess if you never go outside, climate really doesn’t matter all that much, since we’ve gotten pretty good at manipulating indoor environments to make them comfortable. (Although, I find that most such people do prefer hot climates to cold. Hot climates only get oppressive when the heat must be endured over long periods of time. In very cold climates, it’s hard even for the sedentary office worker to avoid some unpleasant exposure, like for example in digging his car out of the snow after a blizzard.)

This, then, is my thought: might this not have something to do with our diminished appreciation of liturgy? For people who are driven towards perpetual sameness, and a world in which no one season is notably distinguishable from any other, it would be hard to get a proper appreciation of the liturgical calendar. The internal clock becomes increasingly inflexible, so that fasts and feasts start to seem like inconveniences more than refreshing changes of pace. People start to ask themselves: why can’t life just settle into a regular daily pattern? Why do we need all this irregularity?

It’s like your mother probably told you. You really need to play outside more often.