2022 WILL BE A WONDERFUL YEAR

 

If you've ever doubted yourself, walk deep into any woods.  Notice how the pines still stand even though they are given no praise.  

Walk along any stream.  The water still flows, though no one stops to recognize it.  

Watch the stars late at night; they shine and never take a bow.

Hear the moon and the waves sing to eachother without acknowledgment.

See the buds go dormant in winter and revive in spring as naturally as rain falls to the earth.  The freshness a gift that expects no return.

Humans are just the same.  We are made out of the same elements as these everyday wonders.

Always remember your beauty and self-worth.  Always see the beauty and worth of others.  

Believe in the God who created us all, earth, air, fire and water; plant and animal; body and soul.

That's all we need to do and 2022 will be a wonderful year.  Our year.  A year full of miracles and blessings.  A year where we can live as faithfully as the sun rises and sets.  

With love, Nina Naomi  

 

LET'S SHARE . . . by Nina Naomi

 

Let's Share . . . 

by Nina Naomi

Not what you do for a living,

But what you have learned from the past.

Not the year I was born,

But my thrill in being alive.

Not if I'm Aries, you're Leo.

But what is the core of our sorrows.

If you've lied to yourself and regret it .

Or been lied to and now are on guard.

 

Can you can sit with grief (mine or yours)

And not try to hide it or fix it?

Can you dance with joy (yours or mine)

And not be self-conscious or shamed?

Tell me your day fills with beauty

As the simplest pleasures fill mine.

 

Let's not care where we live

Or what money we make.

Let's not tell who we know,

Where we travel,

Or any of that, let's just not. 

 

But if we can share despair when (and not if) it comes?

Stand in the center together

When all else falls away?

 

If we know that 

Alone with ourselves we are whole,

And could be the same with eachother,

Then will we know we are faithful,

And can each give our trust in return.

 

 

 

 

 

 

IS CHRISTMAS WORTH IT?

 

Now that it's over, was this Christmas worth it? The work, the travel delays, the risk of spreading or catching Covid, the worry, the rush, the mess, maybe even the loneliness. Last year we threw ourselves into the pre-vaccine-outdoors-firepit-Christmas. It was a challenge to be met and we met it. 

This year, well, like other years it depends upon our expectations, doesn't it?  If we expected every gift given or received to be just what was wanted, that probably didn't happen.  If we expected no disappointments over who was vaccinated or wasn't, only the most homogeneous families pass that test.  If, on the other hand, all were on best behavior; no disparities among family members emerged; no questions arose, even silent ones, about whose bad habits were evident again; no one drank too much; in other words, if there was not one thing to overlook or minimize or justify:  now that would be a perfect Christmas. 

Or would it?  We would still miss those who are absent, the empty chair or two.  Grief takes no holiday.  We would still remember when we were children ourselves and believed in Santa and fairies and magic; when whatever worries there were weren't our worries.  We would remember, if we're lucky, when there was always a live tree, gigantic and fresh, dripping with old-fashioned ornaments. We would feel time passing, as the children get older and the parents and grandparents come nearer to their final stages.  

Christmas carries so much freight.  Some of us (like me) throw ourselves in to it.  I have Christmas dishes, Christmas candles, Christmas throw pillows . . . . I begin clipping holly and pine boughs the weekend after Thanksgiving. I hang cards on a string. Some others of us, do less.  No tree. Maybe a poinsettia, or a table-top manger.   

But if we expected the angels to sing and the baby to be born we were not disappointed.  If we expected love to shine through every awkwardness or worse, that probably happened.  If we expected forgiveness to be circling like drifting clouds, it's never too late to put that in motion.  If something good happened that wasn't looked for, well that was nice.  If we noticed our blessings--enough to eat, shelter, someone or two showing us love, "Silent Night" by candlelight, a tree and a few presents, the security of faith in a God who is with us in joy and in sorrow--in that case who wouldn't say that Christmas was worth it? 

Who wouldn't say that reaching out and reaching in during the darkest days of winter wasn't the best thing ever to do?  If all you want to know is that a baby is born who on Good Friday will die and on Easter rise again, and that each of us moves from this earth to Eternal Life, then this Christmas was, like all the others, an affirmation.  If all you expect is on this Christmas to give your all for yourself and for those you love, or even just know; to be one with God and creation; to accept your life as it is and make it the best of it that you can, then this Christmas was worth it.  

If you believe no longer in Santa Claus, but in Christ our Savior who is willing to spend every moment of every day by your side, then this Christmas was worth it.  

In peace, Nina Naomi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS WORLD

 

Merry Christmas friends, family, strangers, readers, world.

May God be with you tonight 

And throughout the year.

May your soul find salvation, 

Your body nourishment,

And your heart peace.

May each of us give and receive love with abandon,

Warming to the joys that never cease, 

That live in abundance wherever we take time to look. 

Let us follow all that is good in ourselves

And recognize all that is good in others.

In the name of the baby who will be born again 

In the manger by the time we wake on the morrow. 

AMEN

 

 

 

 

 

THE ART OF LOSING

Helen by a Chair, 1904, Maurice Marinot

ONE ART

by Elizabeth Bishop (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1956)

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day.  Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.  The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:  places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel.  None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch.  And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went.  The art of losing isn't hard to master. 

I lost two cities, lovely ones.  And vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.  I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. 

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.  

 

DUSK IN WINTER

 

I raise my head and spot her

In her winter coat, chestnut-colored, darker,

Rougher though I've never touched it, never gotten near

(We're merely yards apart).

No fawn to synchronize this time of year,

To mark each flutter, flick of ear.

They're meant to live in tandem, these white-tails.  

But there she is, independent,

Nosing deep for something almost gone.  I'm not here. 

Standing quiet now, now alert, then bends once more to the deed.

She's gone, so nimbly I barely see, sheltered by dusk, her own vigilance

Errless, dancing between bare trees.  

SETTING INTENTIONS

What better time to set intentions than during the expanding dark of winter as we head toward the longest night of the year.  January is when we make resolutions:  exercise more, eat healthier, go off-line, work harder, call mom . . . . Spring is for to-do lists:  clean out closets, get in shape for summer, spread new mulch . . . .  Summer is for could-do lists:  take a day off, leave work early, go outdoors, make a salad meal, swim in a lake, play a game . . . .

Intentions are different than resolutions and goals.  Intentions are about how we want to be, not what we need to do. Intentions are not a list of tasks to complete.  Intentions are linked to purpose, peace and joy:  This is who I am.  This is how I want to be.  This is how I can serve. 

Your intention might be to be loving, to be kind to yourself and others, to make good decisions.  To be mindful, or to be in tune with God. Intentions can't be ticked off or crossed out.  Being loving is not "finished," being kind to yourself and others is not "done." To create an intention we reach deep inside ourselves.  Intentions require prayers and petitions, hard thoughts and thankful hearts. With intentions we remind ourselves who is on our side, and that God is. 

Setting an intention is sincerely personal and intangible, like prayer, yet others can see the result in you and you can feel it in yourself.  When you intend to lead by example, for instance, or to not take things personally, others notice.  Your family, your co-workers notice.  At the time of decision, "I will not take this personally," you feel it too.  Your breathing slows, as if in mini-meditation. You relax. 

When we set an intention to look for the good in others, we align ourselves with our values. When someone sees the good in us, we respond, we feel nourished, we expand.  

The Confession of Sins from the Book of Common Prayer is tailor-made to help us set intentions.  I can ask myself, "How do I want to be?" and answer, "I want to be one who loves God with my whole heart and loves my neighbor as myself.  This is my intent."  For all my intentions I can ask God to help and guide me.  

We accomplish goals, but we live with intentions. Intentions are not about possessions, achievements or reputation.  They are a Way. Advent is a good time for these thoughts, for setting our intentions.  After all, we wait for the winter solstice, we wait for Christ's birth.  We have time. We wait. 

 

 

 

 

WINTER NOSTALGIA

 

One thing many of us have learned is that even though we live our lives forward, we still can't help thinking about the past.  Nostalgia is bittersweet, yet most of the time it's rewarding.  Nostalgia can make us feel that our lives have roots and continuity. It can make us feel good about ourselves. It provides texture to our lives. After all, the past is just the present a few days, months or years later.  Would we ever want to feel that today won't still be valuable tomorrow?  

What I'm feeling nostalgic about now are winters past.  I bet we all have fond winter memories from our childhood. During the months of November and December as each night grows longer, nostalgia is the perfect antidote to loneliness, boredom or anxiety.  I love to share memories with my brother, and with my cousin.  My husband and I have memories that go back to high school.  Daily we recollect together.  Sharing a memory is twice blessed.   Even the sense of wistfulness and loss that accompanies the past can be enriching.  Winter is a time for nostalgia.

My earliest winter memory is sleigh riding with my father.  My mother must have been pregnant since my brother was born in midwinter, so it was my father who took me out after work in the early darkness to sled down a shallow hill.  I was 4 years old.  What's your first snow memory?  Were you trained as I was trained to love snow?

Later, we neighborhood kids rode our belly-busters down steep icy streets lit by porch-lights and the occasional street light.  We'd come in with frozen hair, mitts clotted with snow, and dump our gear on kitchen heat vents to dry before the next round of sledding.  Friends would hang out together in sock-feet stretched out on the floor while someone's mother made hot chocolate.   

On my husband's and my second date we took our sleds to a nearby golf course and by moonlight sailed down hill after hill until we were soaking  wet and out of breath.  I still remember the shadows the trees cast, holding hands in our thick mittens, and what a fun time we had.  We got carry-out hamburgers and ate them in the car with the engine running. I was 15 and he was 16.  The next morning, roads were impassable.  St. Louis has hard winters. Years later, after marriage, we lived in Cleveland and went bobsledding.  Winters there are even harder.

When our daughter was only three I pulled her up and down the Midwest country road in front of our parsonage in what felt like near-blizzard conditions.  We both just needed to get out.  She wore a red snowsuit and sang "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in her baby voice the whole time.  

When they were grade schoolers, the children would pelt their father with snowballs as soon as he got home.   They'd wait and plot for hours and he always responded with great surprise, "Oh no, you got me!"  Our son's cocker spaniel would  ride on the sled with him down the hill in front of our house and stay out 'till her fur was clumped with ice balls. She was a trooper.  

Now my granddaughter and I take our rudderless sleds and saucers over to the neighbor's hill as soon as the flurries start.  Here in the North Carolina Piedmont we're overjoyed with whatever sticks. She narrates videos of our mishaps.  

Such a good time for memories and reflections, for taking what is good and trying to make it better.  We need to be more generous in winter, to neighbors, friends and strangers.  Even the birds need our help. 

Of course a memory can be depressing.  But for the most part nostalgia brings to mind cherished experiences that remind us we are valued and have had meaningful lives.  Let's let the memories flow this winter.  And feed the memory bank with new things every day.  Something to look forward to.                      Nina Naomi

 

 

 

IN WINTER

 

In Winter

Before sunrise when the stars are bright,

Before the night has fled,

A darker shade of winter dawn.

Window open sky clear,

Gothic fears fade as day breaks,

Frosty heart warming.

 

Winter is medieval,

Gargoyles leaning low.

No summer linen in shadow shades.

No red beyond the berries

Rich and hanging.  

They bring their own romance.

I see them now as others wake.

A new day has begun.   

 

TURNING POINTS

All of us face turning points.  Some we welcome, some not so much. Some are part of trauma recovery.  I ran across jottings I made at one such time, notes on the choices I was learning about.  Ah, journaling helps so much, not just when we do it but even later when we look back, to know ourselves better, what we need and how to cope.     

I like the open-endedness of these suggestions given how varied our turning points are.  Maybe you've been making these choices for as long as you remember. Or perhaps like me you need reminders:

Choose to think, to deliberate, to look for the best way

Choose to shun impulse or rashness

Choose to keep trying, not to give up

Choose to seek help from therapists, doctors, friends

Choose to pray, to ask for God's help

Choose to be truthful

Choose to take action, not let a wrong stand

Choose to set conditions, limits, boundaries--not as a threat but as self protection, even if only we know them

Choose to give love and closeness and accept it in return if and when the time is right

Choose to keep perspective

We all have befores and afters in our life.  Before I left school, before my first real job, before my mom died, before I was sick . . . .  After I met you, after our marriage, after the baby came, after I lost my job . . . .  

The same event can be happy or sad.  "Before I met you I traveled the world."   "After the baby came I felt overwhelmed and alone."  Or unremittingly sad:  "After I found my marriage was not what I thought . . . ."  Or traumatic:  "That night when . . . ."  Do you have one of these?  More?

I think the hardest times are accepting the loss, often sudden, of a before we valued:  loss by death or grievous illness, or loss by violence or betrayal.  But even during ongoing or traumatic losses these choices can help. I might wish I weren't sure of this, but I am.  We might wish we didn't need this knowledge but such is not the way of life.  Every cloud does not have a silver lining. The most we can say is that every cloud passes.  And yes, another one appears, but it passes too.  For that, this Thanksgiving, let us be thankful.  And for all our many blessings large and small.    In peace, Nina Naomi

 

 

 

 

 

THE POEM OF YOUR LIFE

 

The best poets write sonnets.  Think Shakespeare, John Donne and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. "How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways."  Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, three quatrains and a couplet. Remember this from English class?  It's a demanding form.  Each line has 10 syllables, unaccent/accent x5.   The rhyme scheme is set.  The couplet is the conclusion.

I wonder if there's some unconscious link between the form and the trajectory of our lives:  youth, middle age, old age and death (the couplet). The form is so beloved.

A poem can be a metaphor for life but if so, I bet most of us do not live a three 4-line stanza kind-of-poem all neatly tied up in a couplet.  Nor an iambic pentameter regular-beat-kind-of-poem with an alphabet rhyme scheme. No life/strife, days/ways, see/be predictable kind of poem. 

My life is more of a free verse type poem with a few off-rhymes.  Poem/roam perhaps.  Or internal rhymes.  Verse that could be prose looked at a bit differently.  The beauty of a sonnet just isn't there.  "Let me count the ways" fits more the hither and yon of my thoughts.  An inadequate offer by a struggling poet you might say, where every line is in medias res.  

If our life were a sonnet, we would know where it's going.  There would be a plan.  We would each know which quatrain we're in, some of us, like me, nearing the couplet.  A beautiful, orderly life.  But most of us don't have that.  Maybe none of us does.

And yet the poems of our lives have some grace, do they not?  Care has been taken.  There are themes that can be followed.  A few words jar, but not all.  The internal rhymes in fact are quite good.  The beat, though irregular, is still pleasing.  

If someone recited your poem (or mine) we might not turn away.  After all, prose poems can be satisfactory too.  Not "a little world made cunningly," but worthy surely.  Given us from God.

Maybe dividing one's life into quatrains isn't fail-safe.  Maybe meandering is a better way, and more accurate.   Joys overlap tragedies, healing interrupts grief, love creates a bulwark against despair.  Bodies contract while minds expand.  Sensations grow richer. Shallowness disappears.  The unknown becomes known. Order is illusive.  Often the more important the event, the less we anticipate it.  Such is how God has created us and our lives. 

If my poem lay crumpled I would smooth it out and read it.  I'm sure I would.  Then read it again.  I wouldn't be grateful for every sadness or trauma, but at least a few lines in the poem would be about forgiveness, given and sought

After all is said and done, if I found my poem I would keep it.  Maybe you would keep yours too. 

 

THE NEWNESS THAT COMES WITH THE RAIN

 

I want to sleep through the night,

Wake without pain,

Look at the sky and see heaven. 

I want to love myself better,

Love my life better, love my God best,

Reach for the stars and not miss.

I need to walk in the woods,

Pray without ceasing,

Carry the load,

Swim with the tide.

Who will teach me?

Where is the newness that comes with the rain? 

             Nina Naomi 

GOD WITH US

 

Ideas to Lighten Our Load

Some weeks we carry something too heavy: our emotions.  Fear, worry, doubt, sadness. Emotions can be our mountains.  Let's ask our God to climb our mountains with us.

Unhelpful thoughts are also heavy.  But thoughts aren't facts.  Have you noticed that when we don't fight them or coddle them they evaporate? Soon we're thinking about something else. That's how we're made.  What a blessing.  

We can rejoice that each day begins anew.  A fresh dawn, another glorious chance not just for the birds but for us as well.  We have survived the night.  Each morning is a birth day and for those we give thanks. When I open my eyes I give thanks for the daylight, the life out my windows, the person by my side. And so much more.  Parse it out.  What can you be grateful for as the sun rises?

Another help is acceptance. Our strengths and our joys easily, but also our losses and griefs . . . .  I have troubles; so do we all.  I am grieving; but perhaps you are too.  Or, my day is going well; yours too?  Life is so much easier when we accept the whole human condition. We can fashion our prayer, "Lord help me accept this."  Or, "Be with me now." 

Some goals can't be reached, for whatever reason. Often we can change the goal. I changed my work goals often.  My family goals too. And when we can't change the situation, we can change ourselves. The question is, "From this, what may I ask?"  You never go backwards.  Even setbacks move you forward.

Forgive yourself for what you did not know before now.  This is important, isn't it?  How many parents don't need to hear this? 

It's good to name our strengths and tell others theirs:  "You are brave. You are strong.  You are kind."  To myself: "I am brave.  I am strong.  I try every day to listen and be kind, to myself and to others."  "We are both enough."  If you're alone, just repeat, "Nothing is missing.  I am already whole." 

Mindfulness focuses on the acceptance of an experience.  Compassion focuses on caring for the person having the experience. Self-compassion is a shadow of God's comforting mercy.  Self-compassion says, "Be kind to yourself when you suffer."  This is a lesson well-learned.

Uncertainty is fine but let it not be about God.  "In God We Trust" is more than just the national motto on our coinage.  Some of the things in each of our lives defy a moment's peace, a second's happiness.  Yet joy abounds. The joy we thought would never fill our hearts again is the peace that passes all understanding. Who can explain it?  Always a surprise when we take the time to notice.  A gift from God alone.  The One in whom we may trust.  

Who am I to give advice, as it were?  Only a child of God.  That's all we need to be. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AN AUTUMNAL DAY OF CONTRASTS

President's House

You can enjoy beautiful walks now almost everywhere.  Cooler air,  leaves crunching underfoot, deep reds and russets and golds.  Nature seems happy to shed and reveal its shapeliness.  Knuckle-head pumpkins, red warty pumpkins, smooth white and traditional orange jack-o-lanterns.  Clusters of mums on doorsteps of homes and shops, shades of purple and pink, red or orange, yellow and white.   And apples of every variety ready for caramel, cinnamon or nutmeg.  Fall is a season of excess.    

I was feeling its bounty yesterday when I was caught up short passing the historic President's House on the campus of Princeton University. Life is full of contrasts, as we know.  So switch gears with me if you will.

In front of the President's House is an iron plaque commemorating sixteen of the enslaved men, women and children who were bought, sold, traded or inherited by the men who lived in the house.  They too lived their seasons in the spot I was standing.  Loved and worked, laughed and mourned in this lovely university town. In the house and on the grounds of the President of the University. It is not something to notice and pass by.

I studied the names.  Caesar and Harry served one President.  Joseph and Sue another, Peg yet another.  Names given them by those who enslaved them, of course.  In 1766 a Jamaican mother would not have named her infant "Sue."  An African woman wasn't given the birth name "Peg" by her family. Possibly the earliest dehumanization taken for granted by the enslaver.  

But there's something more particular that caught my eye. Look at the sign closely. The plaque lists two unnamed women, an unnamed man, three unnamed children and an unnamed 11 or 12-year-old boy.  

This memorial was placed by Princeton University in 2019. Much good has come from the Princeton and Slavery Project, which developed from an undergraduate course in 2013. You can look it up as I did.  

But why in 2019 would these children be listed as unnamed?  A name might be unrecorded; it might be lost to history or unknown; but a person is not unnamed.  The enslaved community was no different than any other. Their mother named these children. The children, the women, the man and the boy were each loved by others who knew their names intimately and called them out, lovingly or in anger; in whispers or in fear. Our imaginations do not fail us here. 

I feel like there is a carelessness in so describing these children and adults.  Perhaps a paucity of feeling.  I wonder if this is another way racism unconsciously affects even those who try to make amends. 

I want to think about this.  I am glad during this bountiful fall of walks and road-trips for this time to think about the injustices of today that are so rooted in the brutalities of yesterday.  To remember our history in a tangible way, by the small gesture of touching the raised cast-in-iron mementos of people enslaved where, by the grace of God (and Abraham Lincoln), all now walk freely.  Simple things remind us how much remains for us to do.

Questions of evil like strings of seaweed rise tangled from the depths.  But we are meant to be aware of these contrasts, to confront the disconnects.  To not pass by but rather do good however we can.        

                                                 Nina Naomi  

  

 

 

 

 

A GENTLE PLACE

Matisse, "Interior at Nice," 1919

Lately I've been hard on myself. Why, I don't know. I'm critical of too much.  My aging body, what I eat and drink. Some wrinkles here, some sagging there; haircut uneven, walk not brisk enough . . . .  What unkind thoughts.  If someone else treated me like this I'd ban them from my presence.  How many calories in that brûlée?  How many in that drink?  Is it sugar-free?  How dare I even think about a hot chocolate with marshmallows.  

I hope you're not doing this.  I hope you're being tender with yourself. But if you're not, if you've veered into self-judgment like I have, let's not.  Let's not set rules for ourselves that make us unhappy.  Especially if they have to do with aging, which, after all, is a blessing. Living is a gift and living long . . . well, the greatest forfeiture of all is dying young.  If we've lost someone young it's been etched on our heart.

I would like to love myself the way I love my home.  That may seem like a strange comparison, but every morning I awake glad to see the forest out the bedroom windows, eager to walk down the hall past the courtyard to the kitchen, ready to set the kettle on and rescue Mr. Wiggles from his night's sleep.  I don't mind the age of the house, the broken upstairs bathroom fan, the (new) water marks on the ceiling. No, I just love it the way it is. It makes me happy every day.  

It's a home where with the same friends we've celebrated birthdays and anniversaries but also gathered after standing at the grave site or columbarium.  There's no human emotion this house hasn't held within its walls. Not one.  And its done so with grace.  You can laugh in one room and cry in another and the house enfolds you.  Isn't yours the same?  A place of comfort without judgment.  "I am here for you," it says. Lay down your head. 

And shouldn't the same be true of us?  Shouldn't we be a gentle haven for ourselves?  Like our homes, that see all, absorb all and don't critique.  I'd like to be as reliable a consolation for myself as my home is.  It's a good analogy.  Being our own refuge.  Retreating inward when we want, to a place of safety.  Coming home not just to where we live but to ourselves.  Wrapping ourselves in love with a tenderness we often reserve for others.  

The opposite of being hard on yourself is not being easy on yourself.  It's being kind. 

I'm glad I thought this through.  

                                                      Nina Naomi

REINVENTION

Matisse "Nude in an Armchair" 1920

I was meant for reinvention.

Never stopping, always falling.

Falling in love, falling in grace.

Changing my place, facing my fears.

Keeping my years cherished and clear.

Healing my brokenness,

New everyday.

This is the way

Of reinvention.

     Nina Naomi 

 

 

THE EXTRAORDINARY

"Olive Trees At Collioure," Matisse, 1905

 Where do we find the extraordinary? 

Seldom in black tie and tulle, behind news desks or in our palms.

Earbuds and head phones scare it away.

No, the extraordinary likes the outdoors best.

It likes waterfalls and geysers, old-growth forests and thumb-sized red mushrooms.

It's in shadows of cedars on snow.

Where children play and trains whistle.

The extraordinary doesn't like crowds and cocktails, 

Humble brags or dropping names, "likes" or thumbs up.  No not there. 

Sometimes it comes indoors where lovers keep their promises and lie entwined.  

Or into words that startle.

It's in the voice of Maria Callas and the soul of Puccini. 

Artists find it and poets.  And then like God they give it away.

                                                Nina Naomi

 

 

 

BE THE ONE . . .

 

Picasso, Woman in White, 1923

Be truthful.

Be kind.

Be the one who reaches out, who doesn't disconnect.

Be attentive, be brave.

Be wistful, be tender.  

Be alive to  each      drop      that      falls.

Be the one who who doesn't tally, the one who doesn't confuse.

Be the one who plays with the children, who plants the flowers, who climbs the trees.

Be the one who gets her hands dirty, who's not afraid.  

Be forgiving.

Be humble. 

Be the one who lets someone know they shine, their glory sweeps your heart. 

Share deeply love gently.

Write      Think      Dream

Ah, what a valuable life. 

     Nina Naomi

     

                            

ANYTHING THAT LIFTS OUR SPIRITS

 

Mt. Washington, NH

This blog began in 2017 on our first Princeton, New Jersey adventure.  This is our third.  We all need adventures, small and large.  I count almost anything.  Anything that lifts our spirits.  It can be a day kayaking, a pile of new books to read, some new spices to upgrade my cooking, you name it.  

We just came back from the nicest road trip.  This was something I yearned for pre-vaccine.  I wish I could say post-pandemic, but we reached a new milestone of 711,522 US deaths from Covid as of today.  The last 21 hours added 2,522 deaths; 97% were unvaccinated. That's 2,446 preventable deaths in less than a day. In my home state, 133 North Carolinians were added to the tally.  An unhappy thought. I can't fathom not being vaccinated.  We all need a spirit boost.    

For my husband and me, our two shots of Moderna are holding steady and we are grateful.  We felt safe to plan this trip to Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Connecticut.  I  never saw New England in the fall before. The leaves are a palate of their own, the reds sharper, the russets deeper, the yellows brighter. We live in the Piedmont North Carolina woods where autumn is not this luminous. No wonder the rest of the country descends on New England this time of year.  And yet it isn't crowded.  Plenty of countryside.  

 

Dickinson Home, Amherst, MA

Emily Dickinson Grave with Offerings

We began in Amherst, MA where Emily Dickinson lived and died.  We sat in her garden and visited her grave.  We saw the church her family attended. My life would be less without her poetry.  The world would be less.  Perhaps you feel the same. Surely those who left sweet offerings on her tombstone do.  Even now, remembering her everyday realm feels momentous.  Reading her poetry always lifts my heart.  We don't need to travel for that.  We can find the world in her poetry. 

 

Frost Home, Franconia, NH

We also took a road less traveled, overgrown and untrodden, high in the New Hampshire hills to see where Robert Frost lived and wrote.  When you're there it feels like you can hear his gravelly voice reciting "The Gift Outright" at President Kennedy's inauguration.  Later we hiked the Flume Gorge in Franconia Notch State Park, the most rigorous part of the trip for me.   

Flume Gorge, Mt. Liberty

The Gorge extends 800 feet horizontally with walls of granite that rise to 90 feet and are as narrow as 12 feet apart, with roaring cascades and waterfalls. A loud chasm with board walks and railings.  Tiring but not unsafe. When we came once decades ago my husband and I were both more agile.  Aren't places like this wonderful?

Do you love traveling in this country?  I do.  Day trip, road trip, camping, a weekender, a local get-away, a mini-break.  All of these lift our spirits.  Being so far from home and long-planned made this a bigger than usual adventure for us. I know life can be hard.  Mine often is.  But somehow after this I'm feeling like there can always be something good around the corner.                   

                                            Nina Naomi

 

THE TINIEST OF PLEASURES

The tiniest of pleasures.  This furry little grey mouse is about the size of a golf ball.  We were walking along a street in Boothbay, a small town in coastal Maine.  I was here years ago and have long wanted to return with my husband.  It turned out to be worth the wait.  

But amongst all the charm what captivated me most was this busy guy nibbling sunflower seeds laid out on a bench. The interest of nearly every bystander was captured.  Holding each seed in its two front feet, scurrying from bloom to bloom for the choicest bit, chewing thoughtfully.  The mouse paid us no thought at all.  If we want an example of mindful eating, this mouse would be it. Each morsel had its undivided attention. Not at all the way Mr. Wiggles approaches a snack.

Burnt Island Light, Southport, ME

We spent a few days in this scenic place.   I found us a cottage at Spruce Point Inn, small and inviting. We took a cruise and saw narrow rocky islands, a lighthouse, harbor seals and cormorants. All part of a long-awaited post-vaccine road trip.  Most of us love to chance upon a lighthouse, don't we?  North Carolina has seven.

Boothbay Harbor, ME

I also love the artistry of buoys, and outdoor coastal buildings here are festooned with them. If you live here of course you're used to the sight.  I assume that these are haphazardly hung but the result seems as careful as the most attractively  arranged wall of photos. Almost five years ago I posted about cheerful racks of canoes in "Colorful Canoes At Home and Abroad," Feb. 2, 2017. Buoys and canoes brighten the grayest of days on the water. 

But more than anything I was enchanted by the mouse and want to put sunflowers out to attract little critters back home. I bet the chipmunk named Doug that hangs out by our bird feeder will like that. How is it that I had to come all the way to Maine to see this?  Maybe its just that on vacation we have more time to notice the tiniest of pleasures. I want to try to make this an everyday thing.