The longest day of the year dawns at 5:13 a.m. tomorrow. The lengthening of days has been a quiet encouragement for us and peaks tomorrow. The next couple of months we will relish the evening’s light and enjoy summer’s warmth with family and friends.

If you aren’t feeling some sort of information, emotional and relational overload these days then you may be the healthiest person on the planet. All sorts of media bombard us. Naming one “social media” is beyond ironic - it should be called “anti-social” or “socio-pathic”.

We tell little kids that “Well, he started it” is not a useful justification for unhelpful behaviour. Yet it continues as a justification for any number of aggressive and harmful actions from the playground to the world stage. Hostility breeds hostility and escalates unless there is some intervention.

The trees were saplings in the fall of 1978 and now 45 years later they provide a rich canopy of beauty. Early in their lives when our kids were little, we had to protect them from being pulled over or broken – now the branches can support large climbers, swings and other apparatus. But a forester has been pruning them to increase their health, longevity, and strength.