ONCE by Nina Naomi

Vinyards at Auvers, Van Gogh 1890

I'm standing outstretched to reach what's next.  

Once this, then peace. 

Once we turn the corner, bury the hatchet, forge a new path . . .

Once we arrive, we'll relax.

Once the baby is born or the kids leave home

Or the project ends or the transfer comes

Or we buy a house or sell or move or stay,

Once I get a diagnosis, or he does or you do, then we'll take a breath.

Once when I was waiting for my mother to die and then (O God) my son,

I thought things would never get better.

But they did. 

We did find a path; so much lay ahead.

We did turn the corner and saw mirrors more.

No one ever arrives, they say.

They grow up and leave by train or car or casket.

Death is not proud.

Leaves fall and if we're alive 

We hold each other tight.

Children are born, family comes home,

Marriages falter and marriages last.

God grips our hand.

It all gets better (waiting to die) my mother said.  

And it did.  

  

"PUT YOUR EAR DOWN TO YOUR SOUL AND LISTEN HARD"

I know you've noticed.  The ebb and flow of the tides, the appearance and disappearance of the sun, the rising and waning of the moon . . . the cycle of the seasons, our menstrual cycle, the nine months of gestation, the movement from infancy to adulthood, from adulthood to old age . . . the change from health to sickness (and sometimes sickness to health).  All of life is rhythm.  

Like overlapping stories, there is rising action, a climax, falling action and dénouement happening in different spheres all the day long.  

We sleep and wake, we walk and settle, we race into space and hunker under the stairs.  We find comfort in repetition.  In our bed, we sleep like spoons every night; turn to the left, turn to the right until daylight parts darkness and enters the room.  

I know you've noticed.  The more we listen, the more we create.   We hear bird song and hum a tune.  We hear leaves rustle and with acorns and foliage make a tablescape.   We see, hear and feel the whole color spectrum and we mix, swirl, dab and drip paint.  We hear a story and retell it to everyone's delight.  Or create a ballet or an opera.  We listen to strangers arguing and it becomes a play; or to family dynamics and out comes a novel; or to our own inner dialogue and we write a memoir.  We listen to our hearts and journal.  We hear the rain and cry.  The poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974) says, "Put your ear down to your soul and listen hard."

I know you've noticed.  Abundance and lack are parallel realities.  Every day we make a choice which one to inhabit.  When we treat the present moment sacramentally, we live abundantly.  If we accept God as our silent companion, we live abundantly.  As we learn to pause and live in the adagio, we live abundantly.  

I'm sure you've noticed.  God owns the heavens, but He gives us the earth.  If the only prayer we say in our lifetime is "Thank you," that would be enough.  "Gratitude," says a French proverb, "is the heart's memory." No matter how deep our misery, we love the earth, and it loves us back.  Nothing is more abundant:  over and over 365 new mornings and starlit evenings; 52 promising weeks; 12 months of possibilities; and 4 resplendent seasons.  A tapestry.  

Soon outside winter's darkness will spread and we must search for the light inside.  Let us find it in daily rhythm, in listening and in our beloved earth, for which we give naught but thanks.  

                                                In peace, Nina Naomi

DEATH ON THE NEUSE RIVER GREENWAY

On October 14 we were enjoying a break at the beach just over the causeway from Pamlico Sound where the mouth of the Neuse River flows from its source in the North Carolina Piedmont where we live. The Neuse is 275 miles of wild beauty and a recreational haven, widening as it reaches the Sound, big enough for graceful sail boats and the cargo ships that leave from the Port at Morehead City.  

Then the news came.  Five dead on the Neuse River Greenway Trail in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of them a police officer, the shooter a 15-year-old boy, in custody and all promise of his life--which surely every life has--now over.  A teenage boy with too few friends and too many guns--this is often the scenario.  

In my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri just eleven days later more murder.  A 19-year-old who had graduated from the Performing Arts School there just last year, opened up and killed a student and a teacher.  We have a performing arts school in our town too, filled with dedicated teachers and promising students.  I wrote about it on May 25, 2022 ("Yes Things are Hard but We Go On"). That was right after a white supremacist killed ten Black shoppers in Buffalo NY, and I remembered a moment of fear in the crowded school auditorium.  

The parents of this 19-year-old and the police had flagged him as a danger, but he bought an AR-15 style weapon legally from a private party.  The police arrived and he was dead within 14 minutes.  A note was found in his car which read, "I don't have any friends.  I don't have any family.  I've never had a girlfriend.  I've never had a social life.  I've been an isolated loner my whole life."  And yet he was remembered at the school as friendly and helpful.  Imagine if he hadn't had access to a gun.  

Imagine if all the lonely, misguided boys and men at their wits' end due to the life crises that happen to us all didn't have access to weapons.  Imagine if there were some limits or some small amount of sense to the number, power and capacity of the guns that just about anyone can legally acquire.  

Imagine if instead of scapegoating the mentally ill, the weapons just weren't out there.  Gun lobbyists say, "Arm the good guys," but good guys become bad guys in a nanosecond.  With the number of armed Americans, can we really predict which one will respond to a situation with violence?  

Imagine if boys weren't given guns as a right of manly passage.  Think if when you were feeling hopeless no gun was within reach to take your own precious life. What if it were simply harder to find a lethal means to do harm?   

This is a sad time.  Whatever our faith, as we know, it doesn't protect us from pain or loss.  No religion is a shield.  In fact, religion can be profoundly misused in a partnership with nationalism to glorify gun ownership, the 2nd Amendment flown on high and the Ten Commandments buried.  We are left mourning the present carnage and dreading the carnage to come.  

We lament and pray and hope (because we must).  We try to alleviate despair and give each other reasons to live.  We can and must cast our votes with candidates who are best prepared to help set our society free from the domination of guns.  

I am home now witnessing a beautiful yellow autumn.  The reds and golds are ankle deep and our driveway can't be seen.  There is wood stacked by the door waiting for a cold snap.  If left to God alone all would be right with the world.  But it isn't. We must ask God to save us from ourselves.  This is my prayer.  AMEN 

Fall Lantana

ACCEPTANCE IS THE KEY

Bogue Sound Waterway

I am at the beach.  The water and the sky were gray this morning.  Now the clouds are moving to make room for Carolina blue in shapes irregular peeking through haze.  Daylight but no sun even though it's noon.  Where I live at home in the woods every day is wonderful.  Where I live at the beach every day is wonderful.  There are just those times when every day is wonderful. 

It seems to me that acceptance is the key.  Accept that at home my house is old and the woods untidy with always a few downed trees.  Accept that here our beach is not fancy but rather that it's over the causeway from a small North Carolina town with an unpretentious waterfront.   Accept that I view the ocean over the trees, not ocean front, from the deck of another old house.  Perfect.  A house at the beach, on an island in North Carolina is wonderful beyond any dream I ever had growing up on a busy street in a St. Louis suburb in an almost-ramshackle house that I also thought was wonderful.  

But acceptance is more than that, more than the accoutrements of our lives.  Day-to-day I need to accept my own body, my soul, my very self.  We all do, at levels both simple and profound.  Our age, our hair, our weight, our talents, our minds, our shortcomings . . . what else?  Every one of us needs to accept ourself as we are today, not tomorrow, not when we are stronger or feel surer of ourselves or achieve this or that.   That is what loving ourselves means.  Loving as in "Love your neighbor as yourself. " Luke 10:27. If we accept our neighbors as they are, surely we can do the same for ourselves.  

Acceptance is acknowledging the reality of a situation.  I need to accept that my son died young, and I have.  I need to accept that someone I love has a mind that doesn't work as well as I (and maybe she) hoped, and I'm trying.  I need to accept that I have no control over things I wish hadn't happened.  Even the hardest of times we need to accept.   

Life batters indiscriminately.  The wounds we suffer may be visible or silent poundings of the heart.  We all have dark days when we feel anxious, fragile or frightened.  When we accept those days, they pass more quickly.  When we show ourselves love on those days, we heal faster.  For Christians, when we give our wounds to God, the relief is palpable, at least it seems that way to me.  My breath slows and I wonder why I spun my wheels so long.  I don't mean that the pain is gone but I do mean that it lifts.   

We all might tend to be Scrooges when it comes to accepting ourselves.  Not just the inconsequential but larger, even eternal.  When I remember how God accepts me--wobbling on my bike as I begin my ride at the beach, walking with an awkward gait and slow as I scan the horizon for dolphins, tripping over nothing as I drag brush in the woods, not giving my all when I should--then the day is one of those wonderful ones.  And they seem to happen so often.  More often than I could possibly deserve.  I hope for you too.   Nina Naomi  

CHASED

Blowing Rock, NC

 Chased by the sunset, chased by the moon  

Chased by the morning coming too soon 

Chased by my thoughts as I open my eyes

Pushing back covers confronting the whys

Feeling my blessings as arms hold me tight

Loving the warmth that has sheltered the night

Sometimes the memories confound morning's peace

Leave my mind hoping their circling will cease

Why, I now ask, have they have lasted this long 

But the touch and the breathing can right an old wrong

If I let it, I help it, I sing our true song

    by Nina Naomi

THE TONIC OF WILDNESS--THOREAU

Henry David Thoreau said that we can never have enough nature.  "We need the tonic of wildness," he wrote.  At the same time that we want to explore and master, we also want mystery and infinity.  Start a thought like this:  "I go into the woods . . . " then finish the sentence.  For me, I go into the woods not to find myself but to enjoy myself.  Maybe you are the same.  Or if not the woods, somewhere else that you love--by a pond or river or the ocean of course, or a sidewalk in a leafy neighborhood. Or your balcony or patio when the moon is out. 

If I find someone, it would be God.  God in the lively birdsong, in the pulsating frogs on my walkway at night, in the gracefully skittish deer, even in the annoyingly rambunctious squirrels.  I go into the woods to find peace, but also excitement, the excitement of discovery:  young ferns by the moss, curly fungus or red-capped mushrooms, the rain-swollen creek, a turtle or even just its empty shell. Sometimes--but hardly ever--I find an antler a deer has shed. We can all find treasures in nature. Do you like rocks?  Quartz or crystal or stones smoothed by water or lava rocks like we found on our trip to Iceland?   We have a friend who collects rocks and we brought her one.    

I'm thinking that I don't go anywhere to "find myself" (so very 60s), but to "be myself."  I can sing in the woods, talk to the trees, revel in the leaves dripping after a storm, collect brush, sit on stones ... in the woods we can be grungy, outside of time.  Being alone in the woods with fallen leaves, thorns and fragrant pines can feel sacred.  God is not only in church or in other people or in our hearts or in the scripture we read.  

What discoveries do you make in nature?  It depends on where we happen to be, I suppose.  Do you sometimes take a picture of a tiny something that enchants you?  A flower or perhaps a spider?  Or just notice it and not take a picture.  At a garden shop I found a begonia with variegated leaves that I had never seen before.  Now it's a pot plant in my kitchen.  I hope it grows huge.  Begonias do that

Now is such a good time of year for finding God outdoors, for being with God as we do the things that we enjoy.  The earth is softer underfoot and the foliage richer in scent as we gravitate toward earlier nights.  This may also be a good time to count our blessings.  No one's life is all blessings, of course.  Our trials can seem more than we can bear, but yet we bear them, we all do, one day at a time, one prayer at a time, one walk in the woods at a time. For this let us give thanks.  

In peace, Nina Naomi

THE BLESSING OF THE EVERYDAY

I hate to admit that when my husband wakes first, I ask him to bring me hot tea and my phone.  Why don't I meditate or stretch or begin the day in prayer?  But more often than not I look at the headlines.  Those first moments of the day would be so much more enjoyable without the frustration of last night's news.  

When I'm up first I make the tea.   I let Mr. Wiggles out, give him his favorite food, and then look at my phone.  Have you noticed that sometimes being informed costs us?  What can I do about guns, abortions rights or Ukraine?   

We don't like to give in, and we haven't.  On November 8 we can vote.  But our mental well-being is important.  Nothing will be changed by my witnessing the news.  Why not enjoy the simplicity of the moment?  Why not focus wholly on the life before us?  

Isle of Mull, Scotland

There is a deep satisfaction that is the undercurrent of the everyday.  It was so easy to find that satisfaction when we were traveling.  Iceland with its geothermal pools; we submerged ourselves into their other worldliness.  The islands of the Inner Hebrides with their grazing sheep.  But satisfaction is here too:  an autumn that's cool, leaves that fall, mums of all colors and vintage pumpkins in earthy shades. 

It's glorious to stay in the moment and appreciate the good that comes our way.  It turns out there is more than I can count.  Many of these good things are small, but not all.  All three grandchildren were here for my birthday this weekend.  This is not small.  They are old enough to give me hope for the future.   My brother is coming.  Not small either.  

God gives us a heart and not just the muscle.  Otherwise, it could not be broken--and mended.  God gives us feelings, hopes, emotions, desires . . . we are complicated.    There are safe places to leave our heart--in our Journals, in a poem, with a child, with someone who loves us, with God.  One thing I have learned is that sadness has an expiration date.  When sadness is most new this is hard to believe, but no feeling lasts forever.  Each day is a new opportunity.  We are never reduced to who we were yesterday.     

We can always be surprised by the joy of simple things.  I get great pleasure out of finding antlers shed by the deer who graze our meadow.   Have you brought home a pumpkin yet?  Or made apple cider?  Or sat by a fire?  I love All Saints Day, which is soon, and the singing of "For All the Saints Who from Their Labors Rest."  The first year after our son died, I skipped church on that day for the raw grief of my emotions, but now I see our son walking with God.  As I write, I anticipate the exhilaration I will feel singing this hymn.  All of us have someone whom we remember in glory.    

I'm going to try to give the rest of October to the God of our Fathers and Mothers and skip the recap of the evening news.  Habits are hard to break, but it's worth trying.  In peace, Nina Naomi 

MEMORY AND INTUITION

Memory and Intuition

 This is how memory works.  

If you want to forget you remember. 

If you want to remember you forget.  

One day your memory comforts. 

The next day it torments. 

A memory never finishes.   

 A picture incomplete, an angle out of view,

It travels side-to-side.  

We can or can't recall and that's its way. 

A broken mind with broken thoughts does not a memory find.  

Where there's a memory shadowless its shelter fills our heart,

My childhood home, my children young, so much that's kind and true. 

Or memory takes a hurt and rags it like a bone.

"Leave me alone," we say, yet it does not. 

What's over not our choice. 

But intuition quite apart,  

Itself a memory shadowless, on it we can depend. 

Our intuition holds our hand as we approach the wall. 

   Unready for the news we fear forever heart on hold.

It doesn't let us fail. 

With intuition there's no doubt, it's always on our side.  

With memory we can fall right through and land upright or not. 

But intuition could be God, His saving grace a balm. 

His wisdom greater than our own,

His insight only bliss.