Abiding in Love: Summer's Fruit
by Jasmine Bellamy
Stillpoint Executive Director
Over the course of the last year I’ve been writing through the seasons guided by Love. As we crossed the threshold into summer, I found myself reflecting on another sacred turn around the sun and the ways Love has been shaping my life through the seasons.
If you live in a climate like mine, you notice that each season carries its own wisdom.
Fall invites us into letting go.
Winter reminds us that what appears dormant may still be growing beneath the surface. As I’ve written before, winter is not the absence of life, but the concealment of formation.
Spring is a season of emergence, when what has been quietly forming breaks through the soil and becomes visible.
And summer is a season of fruitfulness, when seeds planted and tended begin to ripen.
There is a difference between striving and ripening.
Many of us spend our lives trying to become more loving, more patient, more courageous, more compassionate.
Yet the wisdom of the contemplative path suggests something different.
Fruit, though it can be tended and stewarded, cannot be forced.
Fruit emerges from abiding.
Jesus says:
“Abide in my love.”
Not:
Achieve love.
Manufacture love.
Perform love.
Abide.
Remain.
Stay.
And over time, as we cultivate the conditions for its flourishing, something begins to grow.
What we practice consistently begins to bear fruit.
As summer arrives, I find myself less interested in measuring outcomes and more curious about fruit.
Fruit grows quietly.
It is often difficult to see while it is happening.
Only in hindsight do we recognize that something within us has softened, deepened, or become more spacious.
As I reflect on this season, Love’s fruit has looked less like accomplishment and more like transformation.
Greater patience.
Less reactivity.
Deeper trust.
The capacity to remain present in tension rather than rush toward resolution.
Fruit in this season feels like joy emerging amidst uncertainty.
It feels like ease.
It feels like a growing awareness that my role is not to control outcomes, but to faithfully offer invitations and trust the Spirit with the rest.
I’ve also found myself noticing signs of healing in unexpected places. Conversations marked by greater honesty. Moments of accountability where defensiveness might once have prevailed. New possibilities for repair where division once seemed inevitable.
These may seem like small things.
Yet this is often how Love works.
Quietly.
Patiently.
Transforming us from the inside out.
Reflection Questions:
What fruit is love producing in you?
What fruits of love are becoming visible?
Patience?
Joy?
Kindness?
Faithfulness?
Peace?
Courage?
Belonging?
At Stillpoint, our mission is spiritual formation- to nurture pathways to wholeness by encouraging contemplative living, faithful practice, and spiritual activism.
Formation is not simply learning something new.
It is allowing Love to shape us over time.
The evidence of spiritual formation is not perfection. It is fruit.
What is ripening in you?
Looking Ahead: Transformation
If abiding is the invitation of summer, transformation is its fruit.
What I continue to discover is that Love transforms everything it touches, not through force, but through faithful presence.
People.
Relationships.
Communities.
Organizations.
Even our understanding of ourselves.
As we move into our next quarter together, we will explore the theme of Transformation and the practices that help us participate more fully in Love’s ongoing work within us and among us.
Join us for our next series of virtual Contemplative Gatherings! Learn More HERE.
Supporting the Work of Love
As we continue cultivating contemplative spaces rooted in love, belonging, healing, and spiritual formation, we are deeply grateful for your companionship along the journey.
Your support helps make possible:
contemplative gatherings and retreats,
formation for spiritual directors and leaders,
accessible spiritual companionship,
and the ongoing work of cultivating communities grounded in wholeness, courage, and love.
This year, your generosity will especially support the expansion of culturally grounded contemplative formation, leadership development, and spaces where people can encounter rest, healing, truthfulness, and beloved community.
If Stillpoint’s work has nourished or encouraged you this year, we invite you to partner with us through a year-end gift.
Together, we are helping create spaces where people may awaken more fully to Love and become more loving in the world.
A Blessing
May we resist the temptation to measure ourselves only by what we achieve.
May we learn to notice what is ripening.
May we trust that Love is at work within us, even when growth remains hidden from view.
And may we continue abiding long enough to bear the fruit that only Love can bring forth.
Blessings,
Jasmine Bellamy
Executive Director
Stillpoint: The Center for Christian Spirituality
More from Jasmine…
A Contemplative Retreat on Love-Centered Leadership
What does it mean to lead from love in a world shaped by urgency, performance, and disconnection?
This contemplative retreat invites leaders into a deeper way of being and relating. Rooted in the wisdom of Howard Thurman, Thomas Keating, contemplative spirituality, and the emerging framework of The LOVING Leader, we will explore leadership as a practice of presence, truthfulness, discernment, and human flourishing.
Through silence, reflection, contemplative practice, and communal dialogue, participants will consider how love-centered leadership can transform the ways we lead ourselves, our relationships, and our communities.The Heart and Soul Loving Leadership
September 22–24, 2026
Trinity Retreat Center, West Cornwall, Connecticut
Jasmine Bellamy is the Executive Director of Stillpoint: The Center for Christian Spirituality and the founder of Love 101 Ministries and The LOVING Leader. A spiritual director and contemplative preacher, she is a doctoral candidate at Fuller Seminary, where her research centers on how love forms the inner life of leadership. She is a graduate of Stillpoint’s BIPOC Spiritual Journey Program and received her Certificate in Spiritual Direction through Liberated Together. Through her work, Jasmine integrates contemplative practice, spiritual formation, and leadership development to support individuals and communities in living and leading from love as a daily practice.