HALLELUJAH HALLELUJAH

 

Earlier I posted "October is a Beautiful Month to Vote."  Well, now we have.  And we won!  There have been celebrations at home and abroad.  By "we," I mean Nature, the climate, science. farmers and healthcare won.  Democracy won.  Schools won.  Students won.  Decency won. The People won.  

A Nov 3 blue wave Democratic sweep.  The Trump MAGA regime has been repudiated across the country at every level.   With most of America I have been savoring this win.  It is a good time.  It cannot be minimized.  Every state except Florida, the home of Trump's Mar-A-Lago, participated.  The people rose and told the regime, "No Kings here.  No Fascism here.  No demagogues here.  We are a Republic and we can keep it."  Hallelujah!

If you are a Christian, as I am, you could say that the tenets of the Bible won:  all across the nation, we loved our neighbor as ourself and voted out those affiliated with the Party that has demonized our neighbors, arrested our neighbors, and even killed them.  During early voting, we saw photos of the monuments to Renee Good and Alex Petti, US citizens in Minneapolis killed by ICE, being covered with "I Voted" stickers as people left the polls.  

People are taking a break now from their work manning the polls, writing postcards, campaigning, demonstrating, donating and even simply stressing.  We have achieved the first goal.  My husband's and my response has been to go to the beach.  How better to celebrate and relax than where sea meets sky?    So the morning after our late night watching the election returns, we took off.  Our place here in coastal Carolina, where I am writing this, is a mere 3 1/2 hours from our home in the North Carolina Piedmont.  

I also posted recently about new knowledge of a sadness from long ago.  Surely the meeting of sea and sky would help with that too. A twofer, so to speak. Something about the ocean meets the moment.  

So I have been these last few days walking by the sea and watching it from the deck to be reminded of eternality, the creation and God's enduring promises.  I wake to the sunrise and mark supper time by the sunset.  I go to bed after counting the stars.  I prowl in the night to seek the moon. There is Dark Sky here by the Atlantic Ocean; only one street Light as far as I can see.   

But I am not who matters.  We all are.  The country is.  The world is.  I hope we all feel that our work is not finished, but success propels us.  We have shown our mettle.  We have learned not to bow before bullies and that strength is in our numbers.  We have been led by faith and love.  When has the word "neighbor" meant so much?  For Christians, it's almost as if "love thy neighbor" was meant for this moment and we understood it and responded. 

I watched the sun set last night.  It dropped behind the clouds then striated, then dipped below into the November sea, leaving only red and blue in its wake.  Where I am, the sun only drops into the ocean about twelve weeks out of the year.  I am lucky to be here.  Tonight is cloudy and the horizon melts.  All is gray.  wherever you are, you will see something else.  But it will be beautiful.  God makes it that way.  

In peace.... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'"ALL SHALL BE WELL, AND ALL SHALL BE WELL..."

Saint Julian's Church, Norwich

One Fall we were in Norwich, England where Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) lived as a medieval anchoress and mystic in seclusion in St. Julian's church.  We visited her cell and I learned more about her.  She was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer, whom I studied as an English major during my undergraduate years, and later taught. We all enjoyed the debauchery of Chaucer's Wife of Bath--a well-paced fictional account of a kind of harlot.  The comical antithesis of the contemplative Julian.  Medieval polarities such as we have had throughout recorded time.  

These two Medieval women might be precursors of what in psychoanalytic literature (and in Shakespearean tragedies such as Othello and Hamlet; or in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter) is called the Madonna/whore dichotomy.  It's easy to research this.  As young girls, we knew that we needed to be "good" girls.  The other kind were not respected.  Does anyone remember the term "fallen" woman?  Thankfully, maybe you have to be my age to remember that.  But my mother would have been well aware of it.  Some men need both in one woman; an unhappy (catastrophic) state for a union. 

                                                    . . . 

My husband included Saint Julian in a book he published with Oxford University Press on spiritual memoir called Our Hearts are Restless.  Her Revelations of Divine Love is the earliest surviving book in the English language written by a woman.  It's most famous line is:

 "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." 

 I have been thinking about that line as I process a trauma just revealed to me that took place almost six decades ago; so long past that only one of the persons involved is still alive.  It could be a Shakespearean tragedy; it could be the Madonna/whore pathology writ large.  The other participants/victims may or may not be in heaven, a mystery far beyond my ability to determine.  I, a mere churchgoer with no theological training.  Just someone who has been helped, saved, comforted and defended by the Lord throughout her life.  A person of faith. 

The story I have been told could be a crime rather than a story.  Perpetrators are dead and statutes of limitations long gone.  All that remains is harm and sorrow. So my question to myself is why would I think of Julian at all, with all so not well?  The quote might legitimately be the last thing to come to my mind.  But come it did. 

A statement arising from visions she had when she was dying, yet survived  A statement that does not minimize pain, but comes from Christ's assurance that during our suffering the Lord will find us.  Heartsick, the Lord will find us.  Regretful, the Lord will find us.  Shamed, the Lord will find us.  Then, and then only, as we rest in the love of Christ, shall all manner of things be well.  A journey not easy but sure. 

I want to trust this promise not just for the future, but for today, this moment sitting here at my computer.  I want to trust this promise as I navigate a past I cannot fathom, yet know to be true.

I need that assurance now and I suspect that many of us do for many different reasons, not all dire.  It is not unusual to need the love of God in Christ Jesus in our lives. 

Some things never "get well" in common parlance.  When a parent loses a child or a young child a parent, when addiction or mental illness steals someone's personality, when a spouse dies, all is not well. If we had to say all was well in our lives today, could we say it?  Sometimes we are touched by something that can't be reversed, as the past cannot be.  Not as far into the future as the heart can see. So where is the comfort?  

I think the words of Julian of Norwich provide some.  First, we can imagine that travail in the Middle Ages must have been at least as great as today. Evil as rampant, sinners abounding then as now and throughout my life.  Whether the perpetrators in the trauma in which I now [must] share repented I know not.  They lived long lives beyond it. Our fates are in the hands of God.  The coin that says, "In God We Trust" is tangible.

So, to the words of the Saint.  Men and women pilgrimaged to her window and she told them: 

If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe,

I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. 

. . .

 But this was shown: that in falling and rising again 

we are always kept in that same precious love.

If this is true, we can be comforted.  Again, 

  He said not,  

 'Thou shalt not be tempested, 

thou shalt not be travailed,

 thou shalt not be diseased'; 

but he said, 'Thou shalt not be overcome.'" 

If this applies to us, we also can be comforted.  

This declaration that “all manner of things shall be well” does not eliminate misfortune, sickness or death. Not tragedy or immorality, not wrongs against the body and against the soul. Not sin.  Rather, I believe it is pointing to God's gift that we each have experienced in our way: the ability to find peace, and even joy, in the eye of the storm and it it's aftermath— to come to trust that there is something that transcends chaos and impermanence; that transcends the breaking of bedrock taboos; that transcends distortions of love into hate.  And to know that something is God.  Amen

"Here Dwelt Mother Julian
Anchoress of Norwich"

 

 

 

GOOD THINGS MATTER

  

Granddaughter

I'm going to brag about my granddaughter who just made Phi Beta Kappa.  She is a member of the Alpha chapter of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, NC where she is a senior completing a dual degree, a BA in Media Journalism and a BS in Psychology.  Conceived in 1776 at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA under the motto "The love of wisdom is the guide of life," PBK is the nation's oldest and highest academic honor.  My own election was many years ago at the Alpha chapter of the University of Missouri, the first public university west of the Mississippi River. I have always found confidence in achieving recognition so young.  

Why write this other than straight out pride? Because Good Things Matter.  We all know it.  Everyday we read or live the disasters of the current regime--if I name a few they will be surpassed tomorrow.  But we are, thankfully, in the midst of the Midterm elections.  With millions of others, I voted early.  Voting is one of the good things that matter. 

Did you see that the students of A&T, an HBCU (Historically Black College or University), marched for an hour to vote after the Board of Elections removed their campus polling place?  The students who staged the 1960's historic sit-in at the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, NC were from A&T.  The school has a proud history.  My mother got her teaching degree from an HBCU in St. Louis, Missouri:  Harris Teachers College.  

So, yes, I am proud of my granddaughter.  She works hard.  I am proud of the students who voted en masse in Guilford County, NC, the other day, letting the world know that they will be disenfranchised.  I am proud of my mother, all those years ago, a first generation college student, who after her Bachelors from Harris, received her Masters from St. Louis University, and eventually her Ph.D. from there.  A teacher of American History, politically she was an Independent.  

We must take pride in achievements, of strangers and of those we love.  The lows come on their own.  The highs we must savor.  My grandson at University in St. Andrews, Scotland said in a phone call today that he was hopeful.  He reminded us that our country survived the Jim Crow voting degradations.  His generation is full of energy.  For that matter, so are people my age.  We lead the protests, we monitor the polls, we donate to causes. 

So when something good comes along, hold on to it.  I don't want to apologize for being so happy for my granddaughter's academic achievement.  If not me, who?  Being with young people is invigorating.  I remember the band concerts of my children and grandchildren, brown, black, white and Asian kids all bringing their instruments to attention and playing their best for their band director and their families.  Kids who showed promise and, if you followed them, you saw achieve their dreams.  

None of this can be stopped by the Trump regime.  There, I said his name.  The elephant in every room.  The human spirit cannot be destroyed by one deluded man.  Our 250 years of democracy can be attacked but not despoiled by one man and one party.  We survived Bull Conner hosing down black kids in the streets of 

Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement.  Different party, same playbook:  disenfranchise and stay in power.   

Whatever the midterm results, we have Trump for two more years.  In the history of our Republic, that is little.  Tyrants have been defeated worldwide and forever.  Do not minimize or ignore the good things that happen in your household, your community, your church.  Let them fill you with joy and sustain you for the fight against tyranny yet to come.  If your child brings home a drawing, praise it.  Hang it on the refrigerator.  If your child, or niece or nephew wins a swim meet, makes a free-throw, learns to walk or talk no matter how old, REJOICE.   

GOOD THINGS MATTER 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OCTOBER IS A BEAUTIFUL MONTH TO VOTE

 

Lantana in October Bloom  

Fall is beautiful where I live.  It was chilly the other day but today warm enough to swim.  Oh my, how I love that luxury.  Never as a child as I hiked to the neighborhood pool, did I think I would have my own.  The first 15 minutes were getting the leaves out of the pool.  But then, back and forth, back and forth, counting my strokes, counting the laps, feeling free and large. Good for my sub-par back.  The leaves made me think of wild swimming.  It could have been a pond.  The lantana are vibrant this time of year.  Butterflies abound, fluttering this way and that.  Goldenrod line the roadside, enough to pick bouquets, short-lived as they are. 

Goldenrod Gathered by my Mailbox

I know that winter is next, but today it didn't feel like it.  We reached 82 degrees.  The rest of the week will be rain.  

I read about personal blogs, personal essays. People who write without a niche or a monetary goal.  Writers not influencers.  I never recognized that that is what I have been doing since 2017.  No paid subscribers, no "buy me a coffee" (I drink tea).  None is superior, just preferences I suppose, or necessities. 

Some of the posts I most enjoy, here or elsewhere, are by writers whose vlogs/blogs/posts cause them a bit of stress, they say.  Paid subscribers, they feel, are owed so many posts a week or month.  What if there's nothing to say?  Or no time this month?  Or full-time work gets in the way?  Or illness?  Some of the most creative people seem to bite off more than they can chew.  I always respond with something like, "Remember, your readers have lives too.  We don't have time to read constantly.  Don't worry.  We're not waiting for a post.  We're happy when they come."  I mean that.

I hope that everyone who's reading this reaches retirement age.  It's such a blessing.  A blessing to have time to post thoughts and hope that they are helpful in some way.  A blessing to be self-sufficient in late life.  A blessing to have time to do what feels good, valuable.  To swim or pick Goldenrod or grow lantana.  

And most of all, remember that we are close to the midterm elections.  Vote.  Vote for those who care about workers, retirees, moms and dads, the environment, gas prices, grocery prices, good schools for all, civil rights.  Make this month beautiful.  

In peace, Nina Naomi 

 

 

FALL REMEMBRANCE AND BLESSINGS

Whatever the date, this is the first day of Fall at our house.  I'm in a wool sweater tonight, waiting to go to friends' house.  This morning I needed my Shetland blanket from Keswick, UK to snuggle under and drink my tea.  It rained all day . . . all day.  Fall for sure.  Cozy in Fall means a chill in the air, hickory nuts and acorns buried amongst the leaves, perennial shoots of cedar, holly and mahonia at random and mushrooms of all shades and sizes.  There's no ivy, ever, because it nourishes the deer.  Mums are protected by whatever spray I use.  Winter pansies will be set out soon. 

The weather also reminds me of past seasons. A change in the weather has a tendency to do that, doesn't it?  For example, when we lived in a cold parsonage in farmland Illinois, life was gentlest after baths, two babies balanced in my arms in an old platform rocker.  It sounds idyllic; writing can do that.  Pick and choose and make a romantic postcard of what may have been hard at the time--poverty in a windy old farmhouse next to a graveyard, and a stay-at-home mom.  The babies of those babies have called me Grandma for many years now.  And yet it's a time I cherish.

What I'm wondering is what we will cherish from our present moments.  You may be working hard and earning money for your family; or caring for parents who cared for you; loving someone who loves you back; or doing something else fulfilling.  And if we're remembering, by definition that time is over.  My days as new wife and mother are long gone. 

Sometime in the future you, like I, might miss perhaps the status or challenge or income from being employed.  We might miss even a rushed family dinner.  We will certainly miss our parents, and the one who loves us back may have died too.  Miss, cherish, remember, long for, be thankful for, appreciate--these feelings are all on a continuum, not quite synonyms.  So what are we doing now--something perhaps as common as bathing the babies at nightfall--that we could raise to the level of deep appreciation and thankfulness?  That we could see with our future eyes as a valuable, fulfilling or joyful moment to be cherished.   

I think that is worth pondering.  We all know that young parenthood passes quickly.  but so do other equally challenging roles.  Caring for my aging father was difficult and frustrating.  Had I been more patient I might have lessened both.  Working full time was exhausting; but the rewards in helping people with their legal problems were great.  Perhaps I could have better balanced my stress with the relief in closing a case successfully.  Hopefully right now I am loving with all my heart and soul those who love me too; holding nothing back; seeing the gift of love as fireworks in the sky.

Fall is a time to take stock.  Back-to-school, back-to-work, new beginnings.  Or getting ready for winter hibernation, the calm before renewal.  Remembrance and blessings.  Ahhh . . . .  Let's do that.  

 

 

 

WHAT'S IN YOUR MENTAL HEALTH TOOL KIT?

 

A walk by the shore

What's in your mental health/anxiety/stress/trauma/bad day-month-year toolkit? Maybe I shouldn't start with this question.  Why should it be assumed that any of us need such a thing?  My mental health is fine, I might say, or you might.  What kind of an assumption am I making? But then I think twice. 

My tool kit is full. Pen, paper, art journal, prayer journal, this blog, craft table, glue, washi tape; walking shoes, binoculars, swim suit, mesh bags (for seashells), bicycle; good food, a night out, chocolate; Bible verses, friends, spouse, books and more.

What if I/we accepted that there will never be a time when everything is right, finished and everyone is satisfied? Wouldn't that acceptance belong in our tool kit? My father lived to 94 and over the course of our life I did not consider him wise.  But wisdom did come with age, as they say.  My dad's wisdom was, nothing ever ends.  In other words, we die unfinished.  Bills unpaid, home improvements stalled, goals unreached and words left unsaid.  There's no such thing as closure.  Realizing this is a liberating concept.  What if THERE'S NEVER THE PERFECT MOMENT?  What if we just assumed that there is always too much to do, not everyone will like us, and we will always make mistakes? That there's no separate moment when we can finally live a full and meaningful life? What if that? What does that mean?  

Doesn't that mean that we can live a full and meaningful life all along? We can do what matters to us right now without the stumbling block of the right time or perfectionism?  We can sit at the craft table without guilt or second-guessing ourself, tale a walk or read a book the same way.  

The idea of unlimited potential is seductive.  But not true.  I have a son who died of cancer at age 33.  He had "unlimited potential," until he didn't.  Not everyone's limitations are so dire, of course; but many are.  Children, sick parents, job loss, health issues, divorce, financial catastrophes, aging, change our potential from unlimited to limited.  Life itself.  We are both fallible and mortal.  This should almost be in caps:  WE ARE BOTH FALLIBLE AND MORTAL.  

I must face that I cannot hold in my heart the infinite sea of information about the world's suffering.  Ukrainian children were kidnapped and live in the Soviet Union under Putin's control.  Palestinians in Gaza are being eradicated.  What in the world are we doing in Iran, and to non-citizens in the US?  None of us lives forever and age is not even the determining factor.  For myself, I need God in all of this.  Not as a solution, but as a bulwark for my mental and spiritual health.  You may have something else.  I have a friend who speaks of The Universe.   

Spending time outdoors should be part of anyone's resources.  The woods, water, the moon and stars, a walk through the neighborhood, a run or hike, working in the garden, a sunny day . . . all of these are dopamine for our mental health.  If losses are great, prayer:  "Lord, help me to survive this.  Help me to be better at the person I need to be now.  Stay by my side as I learn how to live alone, or with this new limitation." 

And for all things good, don't wait for the perfect moment.  Take the trip now, near or far.  Write the book now.  Text the friend now.  Take the class now.  Start the new venture now.  Make plans.  

There's a Chinese Proverb:

"The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.  The second best time is now."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AT HOME IN NORTH CAROLINA THIS SEPTEMBER, I CAN ONLY . . .

 

I can only write what I see.

Today bountiful waking to trees out my windows early daylight,

Husband's arm about my side.

Rise for Kenya tea, strong and black. 

Hallway lined with windows, courtyard telling season's story:

 

Lashings of rain? Late season blooms or yellowing leaves?

Dew on the meadow or warmth on the deck? 

 

 

Every day too much scrolling, 

Too much news; too many ideas not mine, no matter how creative.

So, in early September swimming ends the day. 

 

First sit by the pool . . . 

But oh, the mint needs a drink, oregano too, and basil;

The pot plants, impatiens and begonia, salvia red and white, 

Creeping Jenny thirsty too.  I'm coming, I say.

Spreading rosemary, lavender flowers, fine with the heat; 

The yucca, lantana red and orange all happy.  

Day lilies, ivy happy too.

My garden is wild, not tended but intended (as nature said one day). 

 

My life has been long, why is that on my mind? 

Because, I see fullness, bounty, beauty.

Mint in my lemonade, oregano in my pasta, 

Rosemary on my potatoes, basil in my greens. 

Root the begonia, gather wood for Fall.

Savor, always savor as only age can do.

If you have age you know that too.