SUMMER TIME AND THE LIVING'S NOT EASY

 

The children are back to school where we live, masked and excited to return.  Tomorrow it's my turn to pick up.  Only a few more days of summer, but not a summer of yore.  I don't think many will look back on these last 10 weeks with nostalgia.  With the unvaccinated, the Delta variant, wildfires and floods, many of us feel grateful for the vaccine but tense nevertheless.  Nightly I feel sorrow for the Afghans on the tarmac and in hiding who need help that's not coming.  We haven't done our best.

Margaret Renkl, a Southern nature writer, quotes poet Mary Oliver: 

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

In a NYT essay Renkl reminds readers that in the midst of grieving what we have wrought, we should still appreciate the good there is. She names the bumblebees, goldfinches, red-tailed hawks, black-eyes Susans and mock strawberries--all fauna and flora that lie outside my North Carolina door.  

Remember the song from the musical "Porgy and Bess," Summer Time and the Livin' is Easy?  Ms Renkl says that for no creature on earth is the living easy.  I agree.  Not for the baby birds nesting in the wreath in my courtyard, not for the chipmunk under our deck who avoids the resident hawk in peril of his life, not for the unvaccinated who drive this pandemic, not for the rest of us. We have a dear South African friend, a widower, whose girlfriend has declined the vaccine; he now has break-through Covid. No, the livin' is not easy. 

The UN report on climate change (AR6 Climate Change 2021) sets our task clearly before us.  Our guilt is inescapable. 

But to ignore the good that we experience everyday is to trudge with head down, missing the stars.  We cannot move forward without minding the beauty that is.  You have to prize something to want to save it.  Our democracy, our diversity, our earthly home . . . .  "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  Matthew 6:21

Perhaps I'm looking for a way out, permission to find occasions for joy even though others are suffering.  But perhaps that is healthy.  To find moments of joy even when we ourselves are suffering.  Only then can we work hard to preserve the good.  

 

 

ME: YOU CAN'T CHANGE THE PAST. HEART: NO, IT CHANGES YOU.

 

Mr. Wiggles

  Me:  I love the way you follow me.

  Mr. Wiggles:  That's my job.  I find somebody to love  and follow.

  Me:  God made you a wonderful being.

  Mr. Wiggles:  You too. 

 

   

Me:  You're so green! And the daisies make my heart sing!

Meadow:  I feel the same! 

Me:  I know a poem . . . 

Meadow:  Yes, me too.  "Mine, O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain." 

Me:  How could you. . .?

Meadow:  How could I not?

                                   

Me:  You can't change the past.    

Heart:  No, it changes you.

Me:  It's immutable.

Heart:  It does fade though, like everything else.

Me:  When?

Heart:  When it doesn't matter. 

Me:  That sounds negative.

Heart:  Would you have me be a Pollyanna? 

Me:  No one knows what that means anymore.

Heart:  Like I said, it doesn't matter.  

 

IT'S ALL OUT MY WINDOW

It's all out my window.

The leaves, the trees, the grass, the weeds;

the rain, the breeze, the sights I need

to find the time to seek the peace.

All here. 

The Holy Spirit here with the birds

waiting for me to find the words of praise.

These are the days of miracle and wonder says the song.

The song's not wrong.

It's as true as the blue of the sky when the rainbow glistens.

Listen to it all, outside my window.

Outside yours.  

IF WE HAD NEVER MET

 

If we had never met,

you'd never get to be loved like the trees

Set free by the breeze.

If we had never kissed

We would have missed our future.

Well, some years I'd like to undo,

So I hope would you.

But most I'd keep, the way we sleep,

The way we care, the thoughts we share, the touching.

Grief and mountains too. 

Higher than I ever knew I would have to see, to be

Able to be brave.  To save

What matters most.

If we had never met, our life would be bereft.

It is after all one life, just one. 

Nothing now to be undone.

 

WHY WE WRITE

 

Word Collage by Nina Naomi

Why do we write? "He has no unpublished thought," the editor of a scholarly journal once told me about a professor.  Some people write solely for publication. They love to construct sentences, but only if there is a readership for them.  I am not that person.  My prayer journals, volumes now, are not meant to be read; I mark them "Private:  Do Not Turn the Page."  But here I am blogging.  How is a blog different from a diary, from the tattered journals we hide in our drawers?

 

There are 5 volumes of Virginia Woolf 's (1882-1941) Diaries, unguarded and not written for publication.  I've been reading these.   If we read so that we are not alone, do we write (or publish) for the same reason?  Or can we write simply to know ourselves better, to create and enjoy all that words can do?  A rhetorical question, I believe.

Emily Dickinson wrote, 

A word is dead

 When it is said

 Some say.

 I say it just begins

 to live that day.  

She is talking about the spoken word, whose power is immense. We know that words can wound or heal. They live forever.  If you've ever tried to forget something you or someone else said, you know the eternality of words.

 

This is true whether the words are meant for us or not.  I have a friend whose mother said something hurtful about her in a letter to another.  The letter came to light years later and the hurt was as fresh as if no time had passed.   

Words create an obligation.  They must be chosen as carefully as a name.  Nothing exposes more. Words show who we value, where our allegiances lie, what our needs are and if we can be trusted.  Think of the scandals of public life.  Think of those we love and how the pain they cause us invariably involves words.

 

Some writing (speaking too) is high in secondary gain.  Example, the humble brag: "When the bad news came I had to reschedule my interview with CNN"--a sentence I actually read.  Such words leave the speaker barer than they know.    

But writing to help, to uplift, to inspire--writing that harms not one soul present or future and gains for oneself at no one's expense . . . this is writing of a different sort.  Anne Lamott (1954- ) says that writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation.  They feed the soul. Yes, we say.

 
The French writer Anais Nin (1903-1977) says, "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."  Such writing needs no reader, no audience.  Like looking at one's own picture albums.  "I was here." "This is what I looked like." "This is what we did that day." Writing, like our photos, documents our life. For that no applause is necessary.

Gloria E. Anzaldua (1942-2004) says that she writes to convince herself she is worthy.  I like that, writing as a kindness to oneself.  Gao Xingjian (Nobel Prize in Literature 2000) says, "Writing eases my suffering."  How many of us don't journal for that reason? In writing our sorrows, we bear them.    

Maybe the difference between what should be kept private and what needn't be has been explained by Amy Tan(1952-).  She says it's a luxury being a writer because all you ever think about is life.  Your own history may be the context, we might say.  In a memoir or blog it invariably is.  But, not our ego, our minutiae, our needs.  Rather:  Life.

 

HOME IS THE NICEST WORD

"Home is the nicest word there is."  Laura Ingalls Wilder

This is our last beach trip of the season.  Just a few days at the North Carolina coast enjoying a small bit of sun and much rain and wind.  The flags have been red most days, High Hazard for swimmers.  And with the Delta variant now spreading among the unvaccinated, of whom there are many in Eastern North Carolina, we're being careful.  Eating outdoors again and masking indoors.  Most people here aren't.  Still, we're loving our time. This is home, too. 

Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina

Yesterday we woke to a window leak and water splashing--indoors!  It reminded me that as a child in St. Louis I loved to sleep with my head facing the open sash at the foot of the bed, rain in my face or just cracked with very cold winter air. 

What is your memory of home?  To me childhood means spacious old rooms, crumbling plaster, back stairs, piles of laundry and dog hair wafting. We had a coal furnace, a window air-conditioner and year-round, scratchy music on the turntable.  Always living within our means, never too hectic, never wanting more or being dissatisfied. What a luxury.  Four people all invested in eachother.  And Sheba, an amazingly-shedding mongrel dog. 

We've been nesting here at the beach because of the rain.  Mr. Wiggles hates his walks when it's raining, of course, but loves to nest too.  August brings the last days to savor the season we wait for all year.  Summer can almost never live up to our expectations, can it?  I didn't see my grandchildren quite as much as I'd hoped and have more home chores than I want (things fall apart; it's a motif). More seriously, I didn't quite comprehend how ferociously the unvaccinated could keep the pandemic alive.

But on the whole we'll make the most of August.  And prepare to spend the Fall again in another home--a three-room furnished apartment in Princeton, NJ, with busy sidewalks out the windows, laundry in the basement and a fire escape out back ("Home, Not So Simple," Mar 12, 2018). There, like everywhere, we'll nestle into whatever preserves us: the things we love; maybe our past and our memories; surely our hopes.

Alice Walker

                                               

"NOTHING THAT HAS BEEN IS NO MORE"

So often we think that only our bad memories survive.  If I have suffered and the trauma lurks in my heart's subconscious, some small thing can trigger how I felt when I learned something hurtful. Thoughts are their own master.  

But no, nothing is forgotten.  Not the good things that have happened to us either.  Their daily presence is as strong as any pain.  Good memories buoy us up, lifting heaviness from our bodies. A friend sent a quotation from the autobiography of German theologian Jurgen Moltmann (b. 1926), which captures what I'm thinking better than I can express it. Moltmann writes: 

The people to whom I owe my life are unforgotten. 

They are present to me, because in their love

I became free and can breathe in wide spaces.

Unforgotten for me are people to whom I am bound in affection and respect.

They have entered into my life, and I perhaps a little into theirs.

Unforgotten for me are the dead whom I miss.

They are always especially present to me.

Nothing that has been, is no more;

everything that has happened remains. 

We cannot make anything undone, not the ill, but not the good either. 

What was lovely and successful,

and the happiness we have experienced,  

no one can take from us, 

neither transitory time nor death.

Isn't this reassuring?  "We cannot make anything undone, not the ill, but not the good either."  Not only the good we have received but also that which we have offered.

These words make me think about dealing with loss.  Loss has a context, the open field of all the good that went before.  Without that good there is no loss.  We can only lose what we value.  Like refugees, we too can feel displaced from our life as we know it.  Something can rock our image of self or the image we hold of someone else, or of God. An emotional earthquake.  But because the good that was remains, we can slowly glue the pieces of our life back together. Because "everything that has happened remains" there's always more to our lives than any sadness or disappointment.  

"What was lovely and successful, and the happiness we have experienced, no one can take from us, neither transitory time nor death." This is a truth for which I am very, very thankful.

 

A SAINT'S PRAYER FOR US

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

 Saint Teresa, Spanish mystic, prays for us:

May today there be peace within.

May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith

in yourself and others.

May you use the gifts that you have received,

and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content with yourself just the way you are.

Let this knowledge settle into your bones,

and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us. 

Thank you, Teresa, for praying for us; for sending your prayer across the ages to each one who reads it; for speaking directly to me. I have read every line slowly.  I will trust that I am where I am meant to be.  Word by word, what you wish for me is what I wish for myself.  To know the love of God in my very bones, so that they are never dry.  How did you know? 

With appreciation, Nina Naomi