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.