Booyah! For Midwestern summer miracles

Are we Midwesterners ever not surprised by summer’s miracles?

Monday, I rolled my yoga mat out onto a field covered with snow white clover blossoms. Just an eye blink ago, actual snow — mean, icy drifts of it, covered that same field.

I took a deep breath of gratitude for the miracle of clover.

On Sunday, we went to the St. Stanislaus Polka Mass and experienced Wisconsin’s own loaves and fishes miracle — Booyah!

Made in a cast iron cauldron suspended over a fire, Booyah is chicken soup for the whole community. The broth, rich with the bones of six chickens and a hunk of beef, tastes like a whole Thanksgiving meal ladled into a cup.

The annual life cycle of trees is another Wisconsin miracle we never take for granted. One day, we look up at the sky through a kaleidoscope of dead branches. A little twist of God’s grace, and the view becomes brilliant green against a bright blue sky.

And then there’s the water that loosens itself from the icy grip of winter and flows free. We, who have waited all year for the pleasure, haul out our swim suits, fishing boats, water skis, rafts and tubes. Our lakes and rivers are another Midwestern summer miracle.

For some of our greatest Midwestern summer miracles, we have to look up. Sunsets, like the one we saw on the night of the solstice, paint their brilliant color down the sky and over the water and all we have to do is open our eyes to know that all is good and right in this old world.