FOR WHAT CAN WE BE THANKFUL?

FOR WHAT CAN WE BE THANKFUL?

I am thankful that our Lutheran church took a group to the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro NC--just an hour down the road--on Saturday July 18.  We know that the museum arose to document the civil disobedience of four black NC A&T students who refused to vacate a Whites Only lunch counter.  These freshmen, maybe 18 or 19 years old--teenagers--declined to be bound by Jim Crow laws that pretended that black people were "less than."  They knew what the Constitution offered and held our state to its promise.  They could have despaired of the country ever righting itself, but they did not.  Nor did they accept what they knew to be wrong. Those of us my age know this history as it unfolded.  It was a pivotal moment in the history of Civil Rights.  Black churches offered support to the students and served as the backbone of the civil rights movement and the change to come.  Too many white churches initially remained silent fearing loss of membership and financial contributions.  I suppose we could consider this trip a small act of resistance, honoring the truthful history of a shameful past.   

Our Durham County Bar held educational meetings at the Museum over the years.  I can be thankful as well to live and worship in a city as diverse as Durham NC where human rights and civil rights overlap with all the religions represented here.  

I can be thankful that our church sponsors an inter-denominational Grief Group where people of all faiths or none can find a community in which to navigate their grief over losses.  Many years ago my father and I were regular members of its predecessor group and found solace there.  Some might be grieving for a family member in jail, or a death caused by depression.  Never was there judgment.  Now our church members can also attend a monthly Sunday School class addressing the grief that many feel about the direction of our country under this regime.  We discuss politics and religion--democracy, Christian Nationalism, leadership, sin, activism, the gamut.  Never is there judgment.  I am thankful for this class as I believe all who attend are.  It is a safe place to grieve and speak out, for anyone.  

I am also be thankful that our church is hosting "Good Trouble Lives On:  Organize to promote fair and safe elections" on this Saturday, August 1 between 1-4 EDT.  When so many say that politics doesn't belong in church, hosting this event makes me proud.  It is a coalition of Engaged Defenders of Democracy, League of Women Voters and unions, training people to do voter education, registration and mobilization.  It is exactly what the SAVE America act is designed to prevent--voter education and participation.  Good Trouble, as we know, is the phrase used to remember the sainted John Lewis (1940-2020), who in 1965 led more than 600 protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama to demonstrate the need for voting rights.  They--again, as we know--were met by violence.  

It is important to give thanks where we can.  From our monthly Sunday School class it is clear that ordinary Christians in ordinary towns like Durham--a combination blue collar/college town--are weighed down by this government.  Christian principles are seen by many as under siege.  Not so-called "Christian" Nationalism, but Simple principles, like "love your neighbor as yourself,"  or "Do Unto Others. . . ."  We can be thankful when our churches live by these principles.  

We can be thankful that this summer while rain falls and flowers bloom, while children play and elders guard their health, while we vacation or stay home, while many struggle to make ends meet and some do not, while others are escaping fire and flood zones, that we have our faith to guide us, one another to sustain us, and a sure answer to right vs wrong; for those of us who are Christian, in the Commandments, the Beatitudes, the Golden Rule and almost any verse in our Bible that we care to open to. For other faiths in their sacred scriptures or Holy Books.  Not only do these resources help us know what we should do, they give the strength and power to do it.  

Thanks be to my God and yours, 

Nina Naomi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OH SUMMER!

Pine Knoll Shores, NC

 Nothing brings back memories like summer.  We all have them, those recollections of childhood freedom when we burst out of our schools at semester's end.  Ahh. . . . Now I can go barefoot, hang with my friends, sleep late, eat frozen Zero bars without a care (does anyone else will remember these?). With my friends and my brother, I lived in a middle-class neighborhood of mostly one-sometimes-two-car families, two working parents and dogs that ran free.  

I'm hoping that our grandchildren's fondest memories will include time at the beach with us riding the waves, fishing off piers, DQing and playing board games.  After all, we all live in North Carolina just 3 hours down Hwy 70 to the Atlantic Ocean.  

But my childhood was in the Midwest suburbs of St. Louis.  Seaside bonfires and cotton sweaters were not us.  Trips to Bermuda or London or Paris was not us.  We might wild-swim in the Missouri Ozarks, float down a river in an inner-tube (phased out by the 70's), and spend long afternoons in our neighborhood public pool.  But when writers recall summers in The Hampton's or upper New York resorts like the one in "Dirty Dancing" (a classic I know by heart--and was in fact filmed in North Carolina near Chimney Rock), it's foreign to me.  Our parents, my brother's and mine, were professionals--teacher and librarian--so we weren't poor.  But we were, it seems, often broke.  My husband and I the same when he was a pastor in a country parish and I a stay-at-home mom/grad student.  

Like Chicago, New York, L.A., and many big cities, St. Louis in those days was a fine place for a stay-cation, which was promoted by our parents for my brother and me as just as good as anything we might have envisioned as a "real" trip.   So we would spend a day at the St. Louis Art Museum (we return there often on our road trips back to St. Louis); catch a few Cardinal games; seek out the gorilla at the St. Louis Zoo; swelter in the Forest Park Jewel Box Greenhouse; spend an afternoon at Shaw's Botanical Garden; visit the Jefferson (Jeff) Memorial, and more.  By high school my brother and I knew our city backwards and forwards.  We knew its history (site of the 1904 World's Fair) and the history of the environs:  Hannibal, Missouri where Mark Twain set Tom Sawyer , the caves where Tom and Becky were lost, and the Mississippi River where Huck and Jim adventured.  We were Missouri born and bred.  

Now, in North Carolina, summer comes a different way.  In retirement, the rhythms of the school year are long gone, even for my husband who taught at Duke University.  The seasons flow into one another.  All of a sudden our pool is warm enough for a swim.  I count the strokes, one, two, three...changing strokes, crawl, back float, scissors-kick.  Swimming is a Flow State.  No other thought but holding my breath, moving, watching for the wall, noticing my body--in the small 70's concrete pool right outside my door, lovely poolside shower in the open air. 

At my age we don't so much build memories.  We live each day, doing what our bodies allow us to do.  Mine is kind to me, allowing gardening, cooking, collaging, some walking, swimming and all those mental things we love:  reading, writing, keeping friends and family close.  Except for the limitations of age, it's almost (almost) like being a kid again.  We can head off to the beach for weeks at a time and share our house there with other family members as well.   

Actually, there's nothing much better than a good memory, is there?  Of course, we have bad events in our pasts.  Who doesn't?  But remembering the good builds confidence.  I was this child who is now this adult, and I have survived and flourished.   Summers were welcomed and formed us into people who have friends, make good times for others, and care for ourselves.  

As I keep my outdoor plants alive with water and loving care--red and white salvia and purple sage, geraniums and impatiens--cook summertime meals and watch nighttime series or movies (no longer with kids to tuck in), I am grateful for another season.  Do you ever feel you can't possibly deserve all your blessings?  This long, hot summer I am feeling like that.  

With love, Nina Naomi 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT I SEE FROM HERE, June 27, 2026

 

The chairs are sliding across the deck today, the tops of the live oak and holly fighting with each other just at railing-height and white caps not constant, but enough, all the way to the horizon.  Isolated thunderstorms my weather app says with gusts up to 13 mph and 82℉.  Warm, not hot at 82℉, not hot till 90℉ or above, not hot till sweltering really.  We are used to heat. When we lived in London many years ago, days the 80s brought headlines of "Heat Wave."  In North Carolina, days in the 80s are lovely, appreciated, time to eat outdoors, open the windows or at home, wade in the Eno River that weaves itself through Durham. 

Maybe because I grew up in St. Louis in a big old house with just two window units, no AC in my bedroom, and walked our small neighborhood to the public pool in the steamiest of weather, maybe that's why hot days seem natural to me: slick skin, warm bones, yesterday sweat in my eyes as I worked in the yard here with the sound of the waves just beyond.   

In summer the beaches in North Carolina can get so hot, the sand burns--bare feet, dog paws.  We have to walk near the water's edge on wet sand, tide going out or coming in ankle deep sloshing, maybe looking for olives as I walk, or augers or lady slippers, finding pools of shells--not the big ones, not conchs or horseshoe crabs.  A conch will appear all alone on a swath of wet sand.  But the little guys, they pool like water. You can sit in a pool of shells for a long time, just moving them this way and that with your fingers and spying the tiniest of dove shells or mudsnails for your collection.  

Not on a day like today with isolated thunderstorms when the lightening over the ocean can be scary-beautiful and comes so fast there's no time at all.  But other days.  I have a tall glass jar of augurs I took from my mother's back porch after she moved to a nursing home for her last weeks.  I picture her squatting in a pool of shells with a good eye for these tiny carnivores, thinner than a fingernail and swirled (like an auger of course!), with a small opening at one end for their foot to come out.  What a miracle, I'm thinking writing this.  

What a miracle that at my age I am at the beach (again), tending to the needs of this also now-old-house that we built in 1995 to be just 2 miles down the beach from my retired parents in their rented condo.  This topsy-turvy beach house on stilts with the kitchen and living area on the third floor and no elevator, that is now quite a trek for me with armloads of groceries or a cooler.  This basically perfect place and perfect time of my life--that is how a week at the beach can make you feel.  Thankful, yes? Restored. Happy.  

And of course it doesn't have to be the beach.  We all have a place.  Yours may be a high-rise condo somewhere. Or like friends whom it is hard not to envy--an apartment in Paris.  Or like neighbors in Durham, a well-cared-for garden for tea.  Or neighbors on the other side, a cabin and vegetable garden. My St. Louis cousin and her husband have down-sized to an apartment near their son that is giving them great peace-of-mind and is a new urban adventure. The Simple Things, that UK magazine I treasure every month, has a feature on favorite places.  Some months a reading nook, some a peaceful bathroom filled with plants, some a window with a view or a charming backyard gazebo. Readers contribute and tell why this spot relaxes or grounds them, or transposes a bad day to a good. 

I've wandered far from the chairs sliding across the deck and the wind has let up some now.  Thank you for staying with me.  Are you thinking now about your favorite place, or where you would like to create one?  Tell me in a comment if you wish.  These are lovely things to share.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

YOUR ONE LIFE MAY NOT BE WILD

 

June 2026

I'm giving too much to this world 

Well, not the world perhaps, but the news

Well, not the news perhaps

But the tiny man who dominates the news

That tiny man:  tiny heart, tiny brain, tiny thoughts  

So I swam today, back and forth, right stroke, left stroke, breathe

Turn, push off, kick, hold my breath, float

Look at the sky, clouds, leaves, blue white green overhead

North Carolina tall straight trunks, bending boughs

 Lizards hanging about looking for water

We've had a drought, many weeks without rain

Squirrels bedraggled, thin, weak perhaps, not playful

I don't miss them, they topple my plants

The deer are skinny too, as if it were winter, keeping deep in the forest

I don't think they are nesting under the cedars, their usual spot

The meadow brown, clipped and not inviting, nowhere to shelter  

We don't see their morning or evening pattern, too hot, too dry

Or the geese, haven't heard a honk 

But the pool, the pool was nice, cool even at 85 degrees with the heat over 100

Something for which I am always grateful, happy, having a pool

Wet hair now, a glass of white wine, fresh clothes, shorts and top

Is it true, the older we get, the more precious Life is?  

Each lizard, each wren (we're keeping the bird baths full)

The blue hydrangea I'm nursing through the drought

Encouraging them with water and word

(Yes, I talk to my plants, the trees, the boulders grand enough  to serve a buffet )

The salvia and sage, hellebore, marigold, begonia, lantana I water from our well

We had an Anniversary recently

A few friends and family

 We've been married a long time  

I can tell you for sure and you can believe me 

Your one Life may not be wild, but precious it is

                                                            Nina Naomi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD (John 18:36)

 

Trinity Episcopal, Santa Barbara

"If you will trust in God to guide you, and hope in God through all your ways, God will give you strength what 'ere betide you, and bear you through the evil days." (l7th century hymn)

I didn't awake this Sunday morning thinking of God. I began it on my phone reading what we needn't call news anymore because there is nothing new about it:  the Epstein Files, the Strait of Hormuz that I couldn't have located before we bombed Iran, the southern states that are gerrymandering Black voters out of representation now that the Supreme Court majority has reversed the Civil Rights Act, the billionaire grifters ruining/running the country, the liquidation of the United States . . . .  See, not news.  

Then we went to church, the church we are visiting while we are here in Santa Barbara, California.  And the words from a hymn written over 300 years ago about evil days brought everything into focus.  God will "bear you through the evil days."  My morning read was about nothing but evil days.  

We sang the rest of the hymn.  "So do your own part faithfully, and trust God's Word" we continued. I'm not sure what was going on in the 1650s, but today that must mean live out our faith in strength, working for what is just and right for all of us.  I felt like the hymn was speaking to me:  trust in God, hope in God, and do your own part faithfully.  

This seems simple, doesn't it?  Trust, don't lose hope, and follow the commandments.  

I read Engaged Defenders 4 Democracy, ED4D, on Substack.  A Durham based state-wide advocacy group for democracy.  I can't claim to be an active participant in the daily demonstrations across our state.  But I can sign my name, phone, spread the word and donate.  Maybe I/we can help keep hope alive, the mantra popularized by the late Rev. Jesse Jackson in his electrifying speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention that I listened to again today. The man who, sounding a lot like Jesus, said that his Rainbow Coalition was of "the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised." The man who gave us the rainbow as the symbol of inclusivity. 

The Communion Anthem was one we sing often at my home church in North Carolina:  "Let us Break Bread Together on our Knees."  The Blessing was adapted from the Rev. William Sloane Coffin (1924-2006), who prior to his ordination was a CIA officer (I didn't know), which lends a new credibility to his prayer "the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth." 

When I began the morning with the "news," I did not expect or want the journalists to lament the breaking of the Ten Commandments by the regime; or to note its sinful disregard of "Love your neighbor as yourself."  What we want from the free press now under siege, are the facts unadulterated by threats from a political party. We want a separation of church and state.  That separation allows the church to speak truth to power, from the pulpit and from the pew. 

Yes, from the pulpit and from the pew, the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth.  Too small for anything but love.  Attending worship is always a gift.  It is where we hear "You have the words of Eternal Life." Nowhere else.  

Where we are this month, the ocean and mountains remind of the eternality of things.  But so does the Gospel.  Jesus says, "My kingdom is not of this world." (John 18:36). No, but in this world we must keep the commandments, trust, hope and do our own part faithfully. Praise be to God.  AMEN

 

 

 

 

MAY GRAY IN SANTA BARBARA

Fog Lifted, Clear Night

 Not on little cat feet, no, but everyday

The fog floats over the wavy lines of Santa Ynez 

Seen out the window disappeared.

The city too, no valley, no mountain, no horizon;

All obscured by mist.

We could be anywhere.

We could be in the arctic, blinded by snow

Or in a sandstorm.

We could be asleep dreaming, no place no time,

Only close, close the bougainvillea visible,

The water in the fountain heard.

The doves nibbling seed, the woodpeckers the suet.

Can there be an ocean near? The cliffs? The thousand stairs? 

Maybe later, maybe then the city lights shine 

In the valley below this house on a hill

Where we live now this short time happy in the fog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CALIFORNIA THOUGHTS

 While we've been out in California (new reader, North Carolina is our home), I feel like we've visited some of the most beautiful places on earth.  I could be exaggerating, you might say, if you've been in Switzerland, or Fiji, or the Bavarian Alps or the Norwegian fjords.  Where else?  Upstate New York maybe, the Great Lakes, Costa Rica, the American West.  But to me the California coast is a wonder.  One of the best parts is that it is accessible; Hwy 1 (State Route 1) travels up and down the Pacific coast, a kind of harrowing drive actually, according to my husband who did most of the driving. 

At 656 miles, it is second longest State Route in the U.S.  The Big Sur section, from San Luis Obispo to Carmel, is designated a national scenic by-way and we drove the whole thing the other day. It was breathtaking, over and over again. 

Cliff Top homes, Carmel

Point Lobos, Carmel

Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur

Whenever I travel I think about people who were born and raised there.  People for whom this view, this culture, this climate, is what they are used to.  I remember on our honeymoon we had saved every penny to budget-travel Western Europe.  We were in a Zimmer Frei, a room in someone's house available to let. Pre-internet, you would hop off the train and look for a Zimmer Frei sign in a window.  

 

I had barely ever left the Midwest and here we were in Interlaken, in the Swiss Alps with a spray of cold mountain air freshening the streets and outside tables.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to be born here, I thought.  To have my brother and parents and friends here and we knew how to ski and raise goats and we picked Alpine meadow flowers in spring.

 

What if Big Sur weren't someplace you traveled across country to see, but a place you came for picnics on weekends and school holidays?  Do you ever have imaginings like that?  Maybe everyone does, thinks of other lives in other places.  And some are able to make that happen, relocate somewhere exotic or special to them.  

 

My husband and I are too satisfied, too deep into our North Carolina lives to move. That's always been true of some of us, hasn't it?  We like to travel but we love to be home.  Our reality is actually as good or better than any fantasy.  I don't think this is sour grapes (you know, Aesop's fable where the hungry fox decides that the grapes he cannot reach must be sour and not worth eating).  It's healthy to be satisfied.  Smart to admire something but not want it.  Energizing to appreciate some thing, some place, and move on.

 

So, sour grapes notwithstanding, here are a few of the places I am loving and from which, in just 16 more days, we will move on. I hope you enjoy the photos, that they bring up some of your own travel memories.

 

The View from Nepenthe, Big Sur

Back Garden Orange Trees

A long walk down . . . Santa Barbara

Giraffe with an ocean view. Santa Barbara Zoo

 

With all these photos, I feel like this has been a self-indulgent post. I.e., giving me more pleasure than it may give you.  But we do all need breaks from the regime that is too much with us, the crazy-tweeter too much with us, and his exploitive billionaire cohorts too much everywhere.  So, thank you for taking this break with me.    Nina Naomi