THREE BLESSINGS FOR SPRING

Whatever our faith we need times to repent and rejoice.  Repent for what we have done or left undone. And rejoice for the forgiveness we receive from those we have harmed, our friends or our family. . . .  Forgiveness also from God.  Forgiveness that is open to all humanity without condition.  What could be more freeing than repenting and forgiving? We all find that receiving a sincere apology for a hurt brings an almost immediate calm.  When someone recognizes that they have wounded us, our soul can breath again.  Repentance, forgiveness, rejoicing.  Three blessings that allow us to thrive. This is most certainly true. 

Today is the 4th Sunday in Lent, a day when Christians traditionally take respite from the penitence of early Lent as encouragement to the coming action of taking up the Cross and carrying it through the Crucifixion of Good Friday until the Resurrection and rejoicing of Easter Sunday.  

So today in church was a rejoicing Sunday. This morning's guest choir was the Duke Amandla Chorus, an African music group that performs traditional music from African countries in their native languages.   Like many, my husband and I love the traditional music of Africa.  We have visited when our daughter taught in Lebowa, at that time a nonindependent homeland for the northern Sotho people.  

The first offertory anthem today was an invitation in the Swati language from the landlocked Kingdom of Eswatini (also known as Swaziland). Here are the words of "Ngena Nawe" in English. 

Here is the door

The door to life

It has been opened for you

It's wide open for you

Enter, you are welcome

For your freedom and upliftment

Do not hesitate

It is also open for you

Here are the gates

The door to life

It's wide open for you

Wake up; listen to his Glory

Do not forget

The door to happiness

Is wide open for you

Do not be afraid

The living waters

Have come abundantly and with strength

Come in, you are welcome

This is the source of life

Drink, drink

This is all for you

You are invited to eat; eat, be merry, be filled

What welcoming words.  "Here is the door, It has been opened for you, It's wide open for you."  This could be a meditative refrain.  So affirming no matter what our beliefs are.  A place to enter for "freedom and upliftment."  "The door to happiness is wide open" for us. For me I think of the door to eternal life as well as the day-to-day happiness that is available to us all.  I hear compassion for self and others.  You may hear something else.  I wish everyone could have heard the drumming, the call and response. And felt the rhythms.  So Lent can be as energetic and joyous as Spring.  It was today.   

 

 

HEALTHY ATTITUDES (LOVERS AND FRIENDS)

Friendship is born at the moment

when one person says to another, "What!

You too?  I thought that no one but myself. . . .

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Each friend represents a world in us,

a world not possibly born until they arrive, 

and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. 

Anais Nin (1903-1977)

I felt it shelter to speak to you.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) 

These quotations remind me of a marriage.  Perhaps given how long I have been married, that is inevitable.  I suspect we all have a best friend or two and if our spouse is one, so much the better.  But good no matter what.  When I am outside raking Mr. Wiggles is my best friend.  I protect him from the hawks circling and he bravely routs the deer.  

Dr. Mary Pipher (Post 3/9/19) calls the friends who navigate life with us our "Travel Companions."  She calls our spouses our "Co-Captains."  On the day that our son called to say the doctor thought it was melanoma, long-time friends showed up to help us through the night.  I say his name in my heart as I write this.  When the cancer returned almost two years later different friends came to sit with us.  Friends came every day until he died.  On that day a car with an out-of-state license plate was in the driveway when we returned from the hospital.  "These better be friends," I said.  Sure enough they were.  We were plied with food and prayers.  Friends provided shelter.  We survive. 

With best friends and spouses we can communicate complicated multilayered emotions with few words or none.  We're lucky when we have a friend with whom together we create a new entity--the friendship. They share our pain. "Women," Pipher says, "excel at troubles talk."  Isn't that the truth!  And they amplify our pleasure.  Pipher says we can define our wealth as the time we have available to nurture our friendships.  I would add our marriages as well.  The time we share as co-captains, equal in partnership. 

 

Some marriages falter after the death of a child, or any trauma.  Anais Nin expresses it like this:

Love never dies a natural death.

It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source.

It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals.

It dies of illness and wounds. 

It dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

Anais Nin

As she says, it takes blindness or betrayal to kill love.  Wounds that won't heal, or a withering from neglect.  A misplaced allegiance that tarnishes the relationship.  

But some marriages grow stronger.  The partners work to replenish love's source.  Their love becomes their glory.  Couples can choose to bear their traumas together, can choose a new vigilance and not grow weary. Some couples learn to have difficult conversations.  Some feel a rush of tenderness when they look at one another. 

Many of us have read Madeline L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time).  She says,

A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility,

to friendship, to companionship. 

It is certainly not that passion disappears,

But that it is conjoined with other ways of love. 

Madeline L'Engle (1918-2007)

This is what I've been thinking about this lovely North Carolina spring day. It's true that there are toxic 'friendships' and marriages that are better severed.  Friendships that serve ego needs and marriages of unkindness.  But there are many of the other kind too, aren't there?  Friendships we keep alive not out of habit but because we want to spend time together.  Marriages we know are healthy because when we are apart we miss each other.  All of these quotes by better thinkers than I am.  I bow to them.  Nina Naomi

 

 

 

19 QUOTES TO HELP US SURVIVE. I PROMISE.

"Action is the antidote to despair.  It may not help the world but it always helps us."

"We don't heal without hurting.  For a while, the cure for the pain is the pain."

"Stories allow us to make sense of our lives."

"Stories are always an interpretation of facts."

"This may be the most important thing--that we learn to grant ourselves mercy."

"Feeling grateful is not a moral injunction, but rather, a healthy habit. . . ."  

"But who exactly has my anger been punishing?"

"It's a question of balance and contrast."

"When the sunset blazes copper and gold, we don't want to be checking Facebook."

"[A]geism may be an even more serious challenge than aging."

"Why me?"  No, "Why not me?"

"Actually there are no small pleasures.  A cup of coffee...a song...or a walk...can be exquisite." 

Hospice teaches that there are five essential conversations:

1. "Please forgive me."
2.  "I forgive you."
3.  "I love you."  
4.  "Thank you."
5.  "Goodbye."

"One of the secrets of happiness is having a host of activities that we can enjoy when we are alone."

"We will find what we look for."  

"Happiness requires us to make the choice to pay attention to this and not that."


"We all keep appointments we did not make."

"Time management is not for the faint of heart." 

"It's not time to worry yet." 

These quotations are from Dr. Mary Pipher's book Women Rowing North: Navigating Life's Currents and Flourishing as We Age.  I chose these sentences because each one seems that it could be true for each of us at any stage of life.  Age and gender not required. Each statement creates ripples like a small stone tossed into the undulating pool of our own thoughts.  Each could be its own blog post, written by any of us, literally or in our minds, and perhaps will.  So, I'm recommending this book.  It's a slow read because the words reach from the writer's experiences into our experiences.  We can ponder, and decide how to apply what Dr. Pipher talks about to our needs and aspirations, our fears, our futures.  Thank you for writing, Dr. Pipher.  Today my gratitude is for you.  Nina Naomi