When you write a book, you are asking someone to make an investment in their time and money. A column can come and go as the weeks pass, but a book needs to be timeless.

Even if you have nothing in your wallet, nothing can keep you from having a great summer. You can listen to crickets sing you to sleep, trace the Big Dipper, breathe in the stars, run through a sprinkler, host a cartwheel contest in the front yard.

Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds.

The idea of being stuck in a plane with dozens of people chatting over each other on their phones might feel like Dante's 10th circle of hell.

We want someone else to act. But miracles aren't what other people do. They're what each of us does. They're what happens when ordinary people take extraordinary action. To be a miracle doesn't mean you have to tackle problems across the globe. It means making a difference in your own living room, cubicle, neighborhood, community.

God isn't present in the past or future. The great 'I Am' is in the present moment. When I claim that presence, I can get through anything today.

Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.