"I WAS A STRANGER, AND YOU DEPORTED ME"

​​ CHARLES BRIDGE, PRAGUE         On Sunday in our Intercessory Prayers we bowed our heads and remembered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; we asked the Lord to "keep us mindful of the horrors of war." We did not ask without reason.  While in our pews we may have recalled parents or grandparents who fought in WWII, more probably we were thinking of current horrors: the US war in Iran, the Israeli war in Gaza, and Putin's war in Ukraine.  Or maybe not; the nightly news has stopped showing us "horrors."  Instead, rising gas prices are featured. How many killed in Tehran or Kyiv or Gaza are not lead stories.       Before the Intercessory Prayers, we read from Psalm 145, "You watch over all those who love you, but all the wicked you shall destroy."  It is hard to come to church, read the Psalms or Gospel, sing the hymns or take communion without contemplating the situation in our beloved country.  It is simply not possible for a practicing Christian to "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," hands over eyes, ears, and mouth.  Nor do we think that our God wants our heads in the sand.  That would not be the way to follow Christ.  We can state this, I hope, from a position of humility.         Then on Sunday afternoon I read a post (in Substack) by Rev. Benjamin Cremer called Opposing Performative Christianity.  It seemed of a piece with our monthly Sunday School class where we have been discussing Christian Nationalism, among other topics. Historically, the idea may have originated in the theory of the Divine Right of Kings; if a King ruled by God's will, then resisting the monarch could be portrayed as resisting God. In Matthew 15:8-9 Jesus says, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules."  Since Christ's church carries centuries of moral authority, who, seeking power, would not want to align with it?  Even if only performatively, i.e. the easy way, without sacrifice for and obedience to the Word?       Rev. Cremer ends his post with, "May it begin with us."  This reminded me of Rev. Wendy Waugh's endings to her devotions, "Let us be as good as God to others."  In a recent devotion she asked, what is Good News to the poor? It may be a grocery opening in a food desert, she said, or getting a job or finding affordable housing.   Rev. Cremer preached it this way: "I was hungry" and you cut SNAP. "I was thirsty" and you cut funding to ensure clean water. "I was sick" and you cut Medicaid. "I was a stranger" and you deported me. And then the clincher:  "Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me."           Finally, let me cite a few lines written by Wendall Berry (b.1934) in 2004: You mustn't wish for another life.  You mustn't want to be somebody else.  What you must do is this:  "Rejoice evermore.  Pray without ceasing.  In everything, give thanks."  I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions Yes, those are the right instructions.  We know the right instructions.  We know the horrors of war cannot be ignored or minimized and that "wars of choice"-- well, yes--such wars may be chosen by those whose "hearts are far from" the Lord.  We know what we must do unto the least of these and that all religions must promote national policies that are moral.  And while we are doing what we must, we rejoice that we are able, we pray for guidance and we in everything give thanks.         We are not all the way capable of so much, but we are capable.  So, every week, let it begin with us.  AMEN   ​​

      On Sunday in our Intercessory Prayers we bowed our heads and remembered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; we asked the Lord to "keep us mindful of the horrors of war." We did not ask without reason.  While in our pews we may have recalled parents or grandparents who fought in WWII, more probably we were thinking of current horrors: the US war in Iran, the Israeli war in Gaza, and Putin's war in Ukraine.  Or maybe not; the nightly news has stopped showing us "horrors."  Instead, rising gas prices are featured. How many killed in Tehran or Kyiv or Gaza are not lead stories.

      Before the Intercessory Prayers, we read from Psalm 145, "You watch over all those who love you, but all the wicked you shall destroy."  It is hard to come to church, read the Psalms or Gospel, sing the hymns or take communion without contemplating the situation in our beloved country.  It is simply not possible for a practicing Christian to "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," hands over eyes, ears, and mouth.  Nor do we think that our God wants our heads in the sand.  That would not be the way to follow Christ.  We can state this, I hope, from a position of humility.  

      Then on Sunday afternoon I read a post (in Substack) by Rev. Benjamin Cremer called Opposing Performative Christianity.  It seemed of a piece with our monthly Sunday School class where we have been discussing Christian Nationalism, among other topics. Historically, the idea may have originated in the theory of the Divine Right of Kings; if a King ruled by God's will, then resisting the monarch could be portrayed as resisting God. In Matthew 15:8-9 Jesus says, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules."  Since Christ's church carries centuries of moral authority, who, seeking power, would not want to align with it?  Even if only performatively, i.e. the easy way, without sacrifice for and obedience to the Word?

      Rev. Cremer ends his post with, "May it begin with us."  This reminded me of Rev. Wendy Waugh's endings to her devotions, "Let us be as good as God to others."  In a recent devotion she asked, what is Good News to the poor? It may be a grocery opening in a food desert, she said, or getting a job or finding affordable housing.  

Rev. Cremer preached it this way:

"I was hungry" and you cut SNAP.

"I was thirsty" and you cut funding to ensure clean water.

"I was sick" and you cut Medicaid.

"I was a stranger" and you deported me.

And then the clincher:  "Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me."  

        Finally, let me cite a few lines written by Wendall Berry (b.1934) in 2004:

You mustn't wish for another life.  You mustn't want to be somebody else.  What you must do is this:  "Rejoice evermore.  Pray without ceasing.  In everything, give thanks."  I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions

Yes, those are the right instructions.  We know the right instructions.  We know the horrors of war cannot be ignored or minimized and that "wars of choice"-- well, yes--such wars may be chosen by those whose "hearts are far from" the Lord.  We know what we must do unto the least of these and that all religions must promote national policies that are moral.  And while we are doing what we must, we rejoice that we are able, we pray for guidance and we in everything give thanks.  

      We are not all the way capable of so much, but we are capable.  So, every week, let it begin with us.  AMEN

 

"AND I WILL RAISE YOU UP. . ."

 

OXFORD, ENGLAND

 I wonder what it's like to be a spirit,

To lift my arms and be a sprite,  floating without visibility.

To be incorporeal.

What it is like to move from mortal life to life immortal.

Do we do this in darkness or in light?

I picture it in light, in a brightness 

Where my intangible self moves in tandem with all of creation, 

Where I do not sit, or lie down, but float, maybe curl and uncurl, waft--

All without pain or feeling anything but weightlessness.  

A sweet remembrance of unearthliness where the world began.

I think my body will be transparent.  

It will be beyond imagining.  

It will not be earthbound.  

It will be lighter than air.  

I don't picture water in this new incorporation.  

Nothing heavy.  No clay or sand or boulders.  

Just hawk-like freedom, hawk-like soaring.  

God holding me up:

"And I will raise you up on eagles' wings,  

Bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun.  

And hold you in the palm of my hand."

This is a promise, isn't it?  

This is a hope and a promise.  

This is a dream and a hope and a promise.  

This is otherworldly by definition.  

We learn its form only from the clouds, only from the breeze, 

Only from the whistle made by the wings of doves as they leave their perch.  

We do not learn it in our minds, but in our hearts,  

In the spirit that has been there since birth.

This is a promise there for everyone, not just me.

For the miner, the teacher, the doctor, the stay-at-home, 

The patient on oxygen, 

The patient whose heart is slowing with little, less,  no time left.

The person whose soul flies from their body to safety,

On an exhale with no intake to follow the out-breath, chest settles, 

Released to the firmament.

No one can give this gift but the Lord.  

But everyone can receive it.  

Christian, Muslim, Jew, atheist, 

Infant, the comatose, the aged, the cancer-riddled,

The baptized, the unbaptized, the unGodforsaken. 

Our spirits will mingle, will rest on one another like dolphins carry their calves, living or not,

With tenderness we will carry one another.

I can breathe this, I can now when I have in-breath and exhale, breathe this in.

I can love this, picture this, believe this, live this, accept this, 

Write it faster than my mind can think.  

This promise, this gift, this spiritual acceptance of God's love, 

This oneness with creation, this blessing, this life as my breath reaches deep within me. 

This ending.

This beginning. 

 

 

 

 

 

WELCOME, AUGUST!

 

A Summer Place

 I'm starting this post waiting for family to arrive for supper.  While working on the weekend's food all day, I've had time to think.  Cooking and thinking go well together, don't you agree?  Just a small group, grandson and partner, brother and sister-in-law and us.  It's a two day drive for my brother from Florida, 2 hours for my grandson from Boone NC.  I feel lucky this hot summer weekend to have family willing take the time for a visit.  Another grandson and his father arrive tomorrow on their way to the beach.  I feel confident about the weekend's plans.  Maybe you're the planner in your family too.

Has August taken you by surprise?  I feel like that often.  How can it be Friday?  Or Monday?  Or June, or July?  One summer we had nothing but sorrow atop sorrow followed by new life; I've written about it before, the summer of 2005 ("January 28 Forever," posted Jan 31, 2026; "The Sundial," posted July 23, 2019).  I hope your summer has been without personal tragedy; but it mayn't have been.  One summer I made discoveries that startled me and landed the ball in my court.  Any day it's your turn or mine, or so it seems. 

Still, midsummer is always welcome.  Recent rainy nights have given this part of North Carolina a lush, tropical feel.  Trees bend over the roadways; purple wisteria and magenta crepe myrtle along with orange trumpet vines leave blossom litter everywhere.  The humidity keeps our skins soft and moist.   For me, it's a languorous time.  Weekend naps, an early evening swim, easier schedules all around.  I know I sound privileged and I am--I'm not working even one job and my neighbor brings us veggies from their garden.  We have enough to eat and gratefully receive our Social Security each month (for which we thank President Franklin Roosevelt who signed it into law in 1935 during what history calls the Great Depression).  

The worry about our democracy is always somewhere on my mind, though.  I begin the day catching the news in the New York Times and The Guardian online.  It's usually not good.  I find positive news too, however, reported in The Dworkin Report, The Contrarians, Heather Delaney Reese, Joyce Vance, and others on Substack.  There I learn about small and large resistance victories.  They are mounting up as we approach the midterms in just 3 months.  So you and I must not lose hope.  Martin Luther King Jr wrote, "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."  

There's a good bit of summer left.  Even after the kids return to school, the weather will be summery.  Pools will remain open and parks welcome visitors.  In Durham, Duke Gardens is beautiful year-round.  Seasonal produce in our local Farmer's Market remains abundant, plus honey and soaps and bouquets of zinnias and food trucks.  It's not to be missed.  I bet you have one too.  Are you a vendor?   

I'm ending this post with the weekend over and family on their way.  But summer hasn't left.  It's everywhere.  My pot plants are blooming.  There's enough grass in the woods and meadows that the deer have left us alone.  Enough berries for the birds and squirrels.  Enough grubs for the birds.  Enough pollen for the butterflies.  Enough insects for the frogs and the cicadas are deafening (not exaggerating) every evening.  What a wonderful time.  

I hope you're feeling it too.    In peace, Nina Naomi 

 

 

 

 

 

  

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