IN THE MOOD FOR BEGINNING FRESH?

It's almost Easter.  Today is Holy Saturday, for Christians a day of waiting while Jesus remains in the tomb.  The crucifixion of Good Friday is over.  At sundown the Easter vigil begins, the wait for the Resurrection.  A lot happened on this day over 2,000 years ago.  Just as a lot happened yesterday on the Friday called Good.

Tomorrow is a day for new beginnings. Easter always is.  Everyone has ordered lilies to adorn the sanctuary, many in memory of loved ones who have died, us included.  I have a ham in the fridge waiting to be baked,  Easter baskets shopped at Five Below filled with non-traditional things like sound-activated LED lights and a hands-free iPhone neck mount (for the teenagers) and chocolate. Yesterday we had readings about the Stations of the Cross and left the church in silence. We sang the hymns sung only once a year yet known by heart. "Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded," a bit gruesome, like hanging on a cross.  The church lost power because we were under tornado warnings, but it didn't matter.  Darkness was good.   

Last year and this year Passover fell on Good Friday. Last year we shared a Passover meal with Jewish friends.  It was a perfect transition--service at Friday noon, Passover meal in the evening, Holy Saturday then Easter Sunday.  This year again it's a special time around the world.  If you are one of these religions I hope for you all the blessings of your faith.  For me that means chastened, watchful, hopeful, attuned to grief yet waiting on tiptoe in anticipation of resplendence.  Spring must be a metaphor for all this!

In my mood for beginning fresh I've turned to Mary Oliver.  Many of us feel that poets know more about us than we do ourselves.  The only other poet Oliver reminds me of is Emily Dickinson.  Christian imagery everywhere, but not confessions of faith, not like we see in Dante or Milton or Hopkins or Donne or the other great Christian poets.  If you feel like reading about her, try "Why We Need Mary Oliver's Poems" by Debra Dean Murphy in The Christian Century, April 13, 2017 (www.christiancentury.org).  In the meantime, here's an Oliver poem that I think offers just the freshness we might be longing for this special time of year.  

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 

are moving across the landscapes, 

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

 the world offers itself to your imagination, 

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things. 

 

  

BEST BOOK FOR SPRING,PART II

"MISTAKING ILLUSION FOR REALITY IS SAID TO BE 

THE ROOT CAUSE  OF OUR SUFFERING"

"Integrity usually comes to people slowly and takes them unawares, as part of a natural process of maturing or through the need to be there for someone else who is counting on them.  But it can appear full-blown in times of crisis or loss."  

Dr. Rachel Naomi Ramen has learned these truisms through her years as a medical doctor counseling cancer patients.  Her book is their stories, her story and, miraculously, often our story as well.  My copy of Kitchen Table Wisdom is filled with marginalia.  After the first quotation above I wrote a simple "Wow."  A wonderful person we love has an illness that when untreated causes delusion.  This mistaking of an illusion for reality brings great hardship. Everyone suffers, together and separately.   

The second quotation also brought an event about loved ones to mind.  When his grandparents were hospitalized our son intervened and met with the doctors.  He wanted to step up.  He was young.  Then he turned to me where I was waiting down the hall.  "See, I'll be able to take care of you when you need it," he said.  He wanted me to see his maturity.  By being competent in this crisis he was instilling confidence in his readiness for the next one. Ramen says that sometimes it takes a crisis to initiate growth.  

She also writes about anger, not giving it the bad press it usually gets.  I remember my mother being angry just about every time we went to the doctor's. Angry and unreasonable.  If you're a care-taker, that may be your experience too.  My mother  had cancer.  She could have used a counselor like Dr. Ramen. "Anger is just a demand for change," Ramen says, "a passionate wish for things to be different."  It can be a way to assert personal worth in the face of a trauma.  Anger can flare if we are sad, fearful or in despair--difficult emotions we all share.  But the book addresses this as well.  Over time, Dr. Ramen says, she realized that some things that can never be fixed can still be healed.  We all need this promise, don't we?  

The book is full of promises.  "Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing."  And it is something we all can provide.  We can listen generously, to ourselves as well to others.  We can create listening sanctuaries.  We can be mindful of our own needs and the needs of others.  

This book dovetails so well with the loving kindness I'm learning about in mindfulness and meditation training. At this stage my life has been both better and worse than I expected.  This may be true for each of us.  Wonders we never expected have helped us bear hardships we could not have foreseen.  For me some of the wonders have come from prayer.  

"WHEN WE PRAY, WE DON'T CHANGE THE WORLD,

WE CHANGE OURSELVES."

"WHEN WE PRAY, 

WE STOP TRYING TO CONTROL LIFE

AND REMEMBER THAT WE BELONG TO LIFE."

Aren't these thoughts helpful?  Dr. Ramen says that with prayer we can relinquish our attachments, our attachment to fear, for example, and even our attachment to hope. The most beautiful prayer I ever heard was, "Dear God, please protect the one I love."  A prayer like that goes a long way toward healing anything doesn't it?  With love, Nina Naomi 

 

    

BEST BOOK FOR SPRING --"Anything good you've ever been given is yours forever."

Dr. Rachel Naomi Ramen ends her book with this sentence.  I wrote about her book My Grandfather's Blessings in the Post "Best Book for the Holidays about Blessings (12/8/18).  Now I have read her earlier book, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal.  It is a perfect Spring read because Spring is a time to open our hearts and embrace life, to perennially renew ourselves with the trees and the grass and the flowers, to heal with the warm sun and a soft breeze. 

This book has so much to offer.  Some gems are just snippets.  In her Preface she says that writers are people born to write, while authors are people who do something else and then write about it.  Where do diarists fall, or those of us who journal or blog I wonder? Probably some in one category and some in the other.  Or a bit of cross-over.  But an interesting distinction.  Dr. Ramen says, "Because I am not a writer, when I sat down to write, all I had were my memories."  Isn't that encouraging?  

We all have memories that are stories to be savored and celebrated, especially if we pause in our minds to interpret them, to remember them fully.  And then perhaps tell them or write them down.  Even a painful memory may include something to celebrate:  our bravery, our perseverance, our survival, the way we behaved under pressure, those who helped us, those who love us through thick and thin, how we have grown to help others. . . .

Some issues stay with us our whole life.  Living with chronic illness is one.  Losing someone at a young age is another.  Our children's suffering.  An insecure childhood.  Our own limitations.  Each time we pass through these issues we understand more.  "Most of us live lives that are far richer and more meaningful than we appreciate," Ramen says. 

Because she is a physician, much of the book is about healing.  Not being cured . . . being healed.  And about grieving and loss.  Protecting ourselves from loss by avoiding grief is not the route to healing, she thinks. Avoiding grief distances ourselves from life.  Professionally it leads to burnout.  Grieving, she believes, is a way of self-care even in a work setting.  I've found this in my law practice.  As a lawyer I've met people catastrophically injured by preventable medical errors.  I remember the baby born after prolonged oxygen deprivation; the nurse failed to notice the alarming signs on the fetal heart monitor strip.  The doctor said she wished the nurse had called her earlier.  I cannot forget being racked with sobs over that baby's future.  "We burn out not because we don't care but because we don't grieve," Dr. Ramen says. Grieving is healing.

She also explains that for our wholeness, approval is just as destructive as criticism.  I did not understand that before.  But it rings true.  

"To seek approval is to have no resting place. . .

Like all judgment, approval encourages a constant striving. 

This is as true of the approval we give ourselves as it is of the approval we offer others.

Approval can't be trusted.

It can be withdrawn at any time. . . .

Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it." 

Ramen also explains that our wholeness can be whittled down by family, cultural beliefs (boys don't cry; neither do professionals; girls don't speak their minds), or spiritual beliefs. It made me question whether I have to judge myself against a yardstick of Christian acceptability that always finds me short.  I expect God never intended that.  Such a blessing to outlive our self-judgments, to let go of a standard of excellence.  All love is unconditional Ramen states.  Anything else is just approval.  What a message for us parents, spouses, lovers, friends. . . . 

According to Talmudic teaching, we do not see things as they are, but as we are.  The author calls this a trap.  "Life usually offers us far more than our biases and preferences will allow," she says.  Isn't that wise?  This book is full of wisdom.  Inner peace as a spiritual quality rather than a mental quality.  This fits with the way I practice mindfulness and meditation.  It fits with our weekly liturgy that includes the prayer for the "peace that passes all understanding." 

I am only touching the surface of the life-affirming nature of this book.  This post needs a Part II.  Buy or borrow the book if you wish.  Or just ponder what is written here.  Like My Grandfather's Blessings this book is a slow read.  So much to absorb.  To enjoy this Spring.      Nina Naomi  

PHOTO WALKING AND FOREST BATHING . . .

Two great terms I keep running across.  Making a walk more mindful by looking more closely at things, taking photos of what's beautiful or interesting, what catches our heart, creating memories and mementos as we go.  Walking and creating.  Not walking for exercise exactly, no cardio workout.  No jogging at intersections.  More visionary, joyful movement connecting us with our environment.  I loved photo walking in New York City, creating my own mini version of Humans of New York (Brandon Stanton, 2013).  Only I photographed bins of produce on the sidewalk, I have no idea why. The colors I suppose, the ripeness and seasonal changes.  Photo walkers do say having a theme is fun.

One photo walker says the images she snaps are "like little gems for the soul." (Tracey Ellis, Calm Moment) 

I photo walked the other day in a place where I hadn't been for some time.  Duke Gardens is a 55-acre botanical garden.  I stuck to the Asiatic Arboretum, 18 acres of restful beauty.  There were stepping stones to navigate, stone lanterns and water basins, a tea house, arched bridges, and a wealth of plants common in Southeast Asia.  So enchantingly serene on an overcast day.  

The gardens are a short walk from Duke Hospital.  I took my walk after a clinic visit.  It's a wonderful place for patients and their families to take a break.  A place to recover from difficult news or give thanks for healing, of every sort. I was happy that my long (5 months now) recovery from surgery is at the stage where I wanted to walk.

Forest bathing is just as enjoyable, and can produce mementos as well. I always gather pine cones, heaps of them, to use as starter wood for a fire. They smell good, they crackle and pop, and they're renewable.  Forest bathing means immersing ourselves in the forest atmosphere.  The Japanese call it shinrin-yoku, forest bath.  This time we leave our phones and cameras at home (or at least turned off).  We luxuriate in the forest much as we would in a pond or ocean or even a fragrant tub filled with water.  Let it embrace us.  Touch the bark, smell the pine needles and cypress, admire the red bud trees, crunch the hickory nuts, walk barefoot on the moss.

In the forest the oxygen levels are different than in the city.  We inhale aromatic compounds from plants called phytoncides.  The sounds are different, the paths underfoot are different.  It takes attention to walk in the forest.  Rocks to hop, roots to navigate, branches to jump over, trails to locate or create.  We must do it mindfully.  I live in the country along with the deer, hawks, turkey vultures and owls.  And an infinite number of squirrels ruining my pot-plants as they hunt for the hickory nuts they buried.  The other day my husband saw a fat woodchuck right on our back patio.  This morning when I took Mr. Wiggles out birds were making noise from all locations, some near, some far, doing their own call and response.  So I can luckily do my forest bathing close to home.  But making it more intentional by seeking out a forest or garden is just as good, maybe better.  

Dr. Quing Li is the author of Forest Bathing:  How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness.  He talks about our sixth sense being our state of mind. In a forest bath we engage the other five senses with the natural world.  Seeing the play of sunlight, the myriad shades of green; smelling the fragrances, damp soil, pungent animal aromas, flowering trees; feeling the breeze and the path beneath our feet, touching everything we encounter, fungi, tree bark, moss and water, wading in pools or creeks; hearing the sounds of rustling, hooting, howling, splashing. . . .  Just a bit of forest or garden will do.  It doesn't have to be large; we aren't going anywhere.  It's not a walk or run or jog.  Just meandering as you please and opening all the senses.  With all this combining in our consciousness our sixth sense, our state of mind becomes one with nature.  We're calmer, more relaxed, happier.  Our blood pressures lower, our immune systems and mental health improve.  We can do this for ourselves in any weather.  Doesn't a spring shower and a good rain slicker sound like a good combination for shinrin-yoku?

Until the North Carolina heat takes over and the mosquitoes keep us inside I'm going to photo walk and forest bathe to my heart's content. Free and healthy! I hope you enjoy it too.