COZY TIME

Hendry's Beach, Santa Barbara, CA

It's actually time to start being cozy.  We can't do this every day, but when we can, here's how:

Stop whatever you're doing in time to check the sunset.  The trees (or buildings) might obscure its descent, but nothing can stop those colors--reds, oranges, purples, blues--from flooding the sky.  Stare as long as you can.

Then, just a few minutes later, feel the cool air, check for the outlines of a moon and decide to stay in for the night.

Begin the evening with hot cider or any favorite drink and add favorite music.

Light a super aromatic candle or two.

Move on to pancakes for supper, real maple syrup, real butter, real easy.  Or everyone's favorite breakfast for dinner. Or everyone's favorite leftover casserole. Cook's choice.

Share your day, really listen, everyone gets affirmed.  Or think about your day, call a friend and share, or send a text that shows concern.

Enjoy a little TV snuggled under a blanket.

 Mesa View at Night, Santa Barbara

Tuck in whoever needs it then run a bath, take off the day's grime, perfume the water, get out your big puffy towel or robe and softest sleepwear.

Look at the moon again before bed, find it wherever it is, behind the trees, high in the sky; enjoy the dark, listen for the night sounds.

Maybe crack the window for the night, read a little, snuggle, nestle, hold onto your sleep-mate or spread out in your clean bed, alone and content.

PRAISE?

 

Lilac Field, Cliffside Santa Barbara CA

I've been thinking about the words we Christians use.  Other religions use them too.  Praise is one.  It is in hymns, liturgies, everywhere.  Perhaps my mind is on praise because of the wonders of the season.  I love the transition from overheated summer to clear-headed fall, from browning leaves of late August to autumn leaves of red and gold, from stifling air to a blowsy breeze.  Fall brings no negatives, not mosquitoes, not humidity, nothing I can think of today as I work by an open door with pansies, mums and red-orange nandinas in view.  My beans and kielbasa are in the pot and Basmati rice is simmering. My plum cake is on the counter.  This day is perfect. 

The Bible says, "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God the sacrifice of praise."  Hebrews 13:15-16.  As I read this, I note the word sacrifice.  Not all my days are like today.  Perhaps yours isn't perfect at all.  Sometimes sacrifices are forced upon us.  Many times.  We lose a pet, a job, a parent, a spouse, a child.  Or we are stripped of our agency and independence by poverty, war, accident, illness or age. Some days we may feel like our lives are nothing but sacrifice. 

A religious writer asked the question, "How can we offer praise when everything we had and hoped for lies slain at our feet."  How can the Ukranians?  How can the Israelis or Palestinians?  How can the families of another round of ordinary people--this time in Maine--killed by the endless supply of shooters in America?  How has Christianity, or any religion, survived the history of a world marked by wars and marred by those who protect guns over people?

Christian writer Melissa Nussbaum says one way to praise in the face of all things bad (my words) is to remember that praise is not applause (her words). Applause is a way to show approval and appreciation for a mountaintop high.  Our five-year-old spread her arms and spun in circles the first time she saw the ocean. When all is great, we stand up and applaud.  

But in grown-up life, when and where is everything great?  So if we continually offer our praise, as the writer of Hebrews instructs, the offer must be spiritually sacrificial.  We are not extolling our valleys of darkness; we are praising the One who accompanies us through them.  Biblically, sacrifice means to give to the Lord what He requires.  A burnt offering; a lamb; our very selves.  When we do that in the face of all that is wrong in the world, it surely is sacrificial praise.  And what is returned to us?  Somehow when we praise God in all situations we receive joy, peace, love and faith in return.  Praise keeps us in His presence, and we cannot be in God's presence without feeling the peace of God that passes all understanding. 

I should stop writing here because I've butted up against the inexplicable.  But something more:  an inexplicable Truth.  

                                                                       In peace, Nina Naomi

THIS MIGHT BE THE BEST TIME OF YEAR

What's your favorite way to greet autumn? When a bit of chill in the morning or evening means pulling on a sweatshirt, when the air is lighter, crisper, and the sun sets earlier.  When one deep delicious breath lets you know that summer is past.  

I see if the nursery has mums yet; that's my first autumn treat to myself.  Mums and pansies and some left-over snap dragons to fill in where the summer annuals and creeping Jenny are withering.  Some of the new mums will winter over and bloom twice, some will last for seasons and some never look as good as the day I buy them.  All good.  I set a few pumpkins by the mums.  Not all orange jack-o-lanterns like when we were kids, but cream and striped and green with warts too.  

Next, I forage for tablescapes.  Branches of red leaves from Dogwood; as the weeks pass, yellow maple leaves; some acorns, bits of moss and a few blooms from the mums gather up nicely.  In the yard, I keep the leaves off the moss; it doesn't like a blanket.  And blow the leaves off my woodland trails so I don't lose them to the forest. 

Don't you love the predictability of October?  Green turns to deep red, auburn, gold and finally, once on the ground, to brown and new mulch. The colors are as welcome as those of Spring. I rake only the few that the wind piles near the house.  Those I put by the armful into the firepit for an afternoon of that wonderful crackle of leaves curling in the flames. When the leaves are gone, pinecones and kindling with a log or two continue the warming blaze. Now that's a heavenly smell, chary woodsmoke as the evening cools, under strings of outdoor lights drinking hot cider or wine. 

I feel like I'm describing something picture worthy but actually it's just a stained concrete patio with woods up the hill and loved furniture in groupings.  By Fall, rust shows through everything I repainted in the spring, odd tables and chairs and lawn ornaments, whatever a third or fourth coat of paint will salvage for another season. The shine on the copper firepit is long gone too.  Stacks of cleared brush and fallen branches lie about and caste their ragged shadows. 

Many people love Fall best.  Right now, I'm feeling like I do.  The movement from Spring to the heat of Summer hasn't nearly the charm as the transition to autumn, at least not in North Carolina. Summer is sticky and sweaty and heavy; we live mostly in air conditioning or in front of fans or in the water.  But now . . . new beginnings, perfect for walks and runs and biking. Stars shine brighter when the nights are cool. Plants stand straighter too with a chill in the air and the mist of a light rain.  

We grilled bone-in porkchops tonight on our little kettle grill.  With roasted new potatoes and sweet peppers in red, orange and yellow, it was an easy supper. Fall is too short, every year.  But let's appreciate every little thing it has to offer.      Nina Naomi 

   

  

 

SEASON OF MISTS, LAMENTATION AND HOPE

There's something about the change of seasons that is hopeful.  The heat of late summer has lifted.  Doors and windows stay open waiting for the evening chill.  No matter what is happening--and there's enough happening today for lamentations to pierce the Heavens--Autumn still comes.  For this we must be grateful. Our human sinfulness has not, so far please God, prevented summer, fall, winter or spring.  The world keeps revolving.  And here we are, in another October.

So easily this season gives rise to poetry.  In 1902, in "Autumn Day," Rainer Marie Rilke wrote, "Lord: it is time.  The summer was immense. / Lay your shadows upon the Sundial, / and in the meadows let the wind go free."  This speaks to me.  I have a sundial in my side yard that marks a death.  I have a meadow where the wind goes free. Then the last stanza, "Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore. / Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time."   A melancholy premonition that we must ready for what comes next, we and the birds and chipmunks and all who fly south, burrow or grow winter coats for warmth. 

The last lines tell a truth about war too. Here is where our lamentations lie. Palestinian citizens are being slaughtered in return for the slaughter of Israelis by Hamas. Children for children.  An eye for an eye.  Ukrainians are still suffering to defend their homeland and young Russians are being sent to kill or be killed. As fall turns to winter, "whoever has no house now will not build one anymore." 

Even earlier, in 1820 John Keats called autumn, "Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness," using sensuous imagery to describe its fleeting abundance. And isn't abundance always fleeting?  Robert Frost wrote, "Nothing gold can stay."  How briefly are the dogwoods red and the maples yellow?  Their radiance falls to the ground and turns to mulch.

How is any of this hopeful, we might wonder, if we have not changed since Robert Burns wrote in 1784 that "Man's inhumanity to man / makes countless thousands mourn."  How can hope live amongst historical rivalries and political chaos? Why do we find it in the turning of the earth?  

maybe each new season reminds us that the earth abides. Maybe we relish that something is predictable.  Something there is from which no one need run. 

I fear the sentimentality of this thought, I who am not being slaughtered or evacuated.  But surely moments of hope are good things.  Surely, we need not be ashamed to appreciate fat mounded mums in russet and yellow or smiling pansy faces in purple and white. The colors of fall are exuberant for a reason.  This October they might make one hope that death and destruction will not have the final say. 

They might remind us that while we cannot be complacent or resigned, nor should we be without hope.

For as it is written, "Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.  The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.  The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.  All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full."  Ecclesiastes 1:4

                                                    Nina Naomi