IT'S TIME TO TAKE A BREATH

Lady Banks in Bloom

Spring is a time when trust unfurls

From heights and depths we cannot touch.

Trees wave, they bend and bow 

As starlit eyes and ancient dreams

Push from the earth as we knew they would, 

Hungry for light.

Snapdragons waken, pansies plump in the just-so-warmth,

Their winter sallow turning bright.

Bearded Iris rise and tremble, steady then salute. 

Earth sheds her worries and so should we. 

We've done it again, each sprout declares (and so should we)

Flinging pink then purple then green.

Do more, love more, be more should we.

"I trust you, earth." the poet says.  "I trust you, God," say I."

It's time to take a breath. 

 

A LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE EARTH

Cherish sunsets, wild creatures, and wild places.

Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.

Steward Udall (1920-2010)

We were at the beach and the sky was clear, the water bright shades of aqua, darker at the shore, lighter toward the horizon.  Sunny and 70°.  The prior day was ravenous thunder, lightning and pounding rain, steel gray water with no visible horizon.  We stayed indoors to read and watch college sports.  

Then I saw this quotation and remembered the name Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.  He was a Morman, a lawyer, congressman, professor, and writer of poetic bent.  His papers are held at the University of Arizona, his home state.  Udall is known as Advocate for the Planet Earth. Who wouldn't be proud to be so named? 

I love the idea of a love affair with the earth. A love affair with the force that sustains us, provides for our needs, sooths us, is a source of beauty and awe.  So, I decided to learn more about Secretary Udall. 

He says that each generation has its own rendezvous with the land, that despite our fee titles (yes, we learned about fee simple ownership in 1st year Property class), we are all only brief tenants on this planet.  That makes sense.  The trees in my wood are far older than I and God-willing will outlast my living descendants.  The rocks even older. 

At home, I have my favorite trees and boulders.  Years ago, Udall said that our choice is not between growth and stagnation, but between short-term growth and long-term disaster.  Mining, clear-cutting, trading long-grassed meadows and forests for concrete and asphalt, or even a well-maintained lawn, is a search and destroy mission.  

Right now, my meadow grasses are long and shaggy.  Just days ago, the geese were strutting about after a rain. 

Now wild daisies and purple bugle weeds bloom in proliferation. And a scattering of buttercups. A neighbor mows in May and has never had a daisy.  How many turtles and lady bugs are lost in mowing?  How many pollinators and butterflies?  Whose habitats are destroyed? 

I do think that neighborhoods with no deer and azaleas in bloom, neat pine straw beds beneath the trees and all carefully tended are beautiful.  They bring joy too.  Order is its own pleasure. If no Roundup is used, rabbits make homes beneath many a pruned hedge.  At our house I think the hawks get the rabbits, we have so few. 

Deer eat our wild blueberries too, before we get a one, and the native black raspberries go to feed the coyotes and racoons as well as the birds. A beautiful red fox has been hanging around this winter and spring.  As much as a sighting thrills me, I'm not totally at ease with its presence. 

But for our love affair with the earth, rewilding is still the most wonderful trend.  Making a place for birds and worms and butterflies.  Waiting to see what weedy thing in spring is actually a delicate wildflower.  Becoming an advocate for our little patch of the planet earth. 

THE EVERYDAY TO-DO LIST

Fort Macon, Bogue Shores, NC

• Feel gratitude for your blessings.  Today when I woke up my worsening back felt stable.  I feel immense gratitude for every day that I can focus on all the wonders ahead and not my boring back. 
• Do something that makes you happy.  I met with knitting friends this morning.  Being with friends always makes us happy.  What would you like your happy thing to be tomorrow? 
• Live one day at a time.  Of course.  "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."  Matthew 6:34. But more.  When we live in the present our days are longer.  I want that. I don't want to miss a minute of my day, do you?  I tend to ruminate sometimes.  Things that I have already survived or am surviving daily come back to steal my energy.  Noticing blessings helps with this.  Praying helps.  
• Try to be content.  Content, at peace, those calm emotions.  Awe is wonderful.  Exuberance is a delight.  But mostly content; I'll take that.  
• Stay close to God.  And the peace of God which passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in the love of God.
• Do all things with love.  How else would we ever want to do something?  Carelessly? Angrily? No, with love. 
• Take good care of yourself and those whose care is entrusted to you.  This includes spouses and partners, not just children. Someone who loves us deserves our attention and to feel safe in our care.
• Think of positive words to describe yourself.  Right off the bat I thought of friendly, intelligent, thoughtful, empathetic, attentive, loving, eager and creative.  What about you?  I bet a list comes quickly.  Believe it.  Accept the good about yourself.  Nothing can be achieved by someone who is down on themselves. 

THE WONDER OF APRIL

 

Did you know that April is national poetry month?  It's a good choice. 

Chaucer (c 1340-1400) begins The Canterbury Tales in April.  "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote / The droght of March hath perced to the roote . . . " Many of us read those lines in high school.  I taught my seniors how to pronounce the Middle English vowels.  "When April with his showers sweet with fruit / The drought of March has pierced unto the root / And bathed each vein with liquor that has power / To generate therein and sire the flower . . . ,"  is when Christians make a pilgrimage to Canterbury, where Saint Thomas Beckett (1119-1170) was martyred for his faith.  That's Chaucer's story.

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), on the other hand, subverts Chaucer.  He writes in The Wasteland, "April is the cruelest month, breeding / lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / memory and desire, stirring / dull roots with spring rain."  Chaucer sees only the beauty of April. Writing after World War I, Eliot reveals the cruelty of the hope for springtime renewal in a world shattered by war.  

We can identify with that.  We see Gaza in rubble and Ukraine under siege.  And more. Daily, drones and bombs destroy all that lives.  Home is under strife as well.  There are places the spring rain won't touch.  Winter is not so cruel, Eliot writes.  "Winter kept us warm, covering / Earth in forgetful snow. . . " Snow obscures detritus.  It is easier to forget than to remember sometimes.  Easier to ignore than to notice.  

And yet, this April we have our own back yards, roadsides and parks fragrant with lavender wisteria and wildflowers blooming from the very cracks in the brick.  Or maybe you live where the prickly pear flower.  Or you may be feeling like Count Basie's 1956 jazz version of "April in Paris" with chestnuts in blossom.  

Ada Limón (b.1976) is our nation's poet laureate.  For poetry month she has tackled an ambitious project, reading poetry in National Parks.  Here are lines from one of her prose poems: 

The way I remember the name forsythia is that when my stepmother, Cynthia, was dying, that last week, she said lucidly, but mysteriously, MORE YELLOW.  And I thought yes, more yellow and nodded because I agreed.  Of course, more yellow.  And so now in my head, when I see that yellow tangle, I say 'For Cynthia, for Cynthia, forsythia, forsythia, more yellow.'  It is night now.  And the owl never comes, only more of night and what repeats in the night.  ©2022, Ada Limón

Such a conversational poem.  "More yellow," sounds like just the thing to say when dying.  "Of course, more yellow," the poet repeats.  Living or dying, who wouldn't want more yellow?  As my mother rested in a dark room, she suddenly said with great feeling, "All the lights are on."  "Where are you mom?" I wondered aloud.  "In heaven," she replied, not missing a beat.  The perfect setting for the sweeping branches of sunny spring forsythia.  "Light! More light!" was the last entreaty of the poet Goethe (1749-1832) as he lay on his deathbed.  Yes, yes, more yellow.  

We could study poetry all April.  Then May, then June. Matching our breathing to the rhythm of the lines.  Making connections.  Being enthralled at no cost at all but for time.  Covering ourselves with words that, like a blanket of snow, blot out the ugliness of aggression and starvation. killing and over-killing, narcissism and vulgarity, felony counts and delays.  

The wonder of April.  The wonder of poetry.  The wonder of color and light and renewal and the Resurrection of the body which happened just a few Sundays ago.  The wonder of words and the Word made flesh.  The wonder of night and what repeats in the night.  Oh, the wonder . . . 

With love, Nina Naomi

CLOSURE--WHAT IS IT?

Psalm 34:18
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

The simplest meaning of closure seems to be getting over something painful and moving on.  But what exactly does "getting over" mean and what is "moving on?"  Certainly, we've all ruminated over the past, sometimes wondering what happened and why, sometimes trying to figure out how to live with hurt.  Deaths, betrayals, broken hearts, losses of every degree and dimension, grief and sadness are no strangers.  So, yes, closure might be almost an everyday need.  

Some psychologists use closure to mean cognitively understanding why and how an event occurred, processing it, and finding meaning in it.  With a natural death, at a late-enough time in life, that may happen sooner rather than later.  We don't feel cheated, we're not traumatized.  Some people have brought us so much good over the years, that what they gave leaves us with meaning.  Good deaths, you might say.  Sudden or prolonged, we remember them daily and with gratitude.  We accept the absence and have a sense of peace about it. 

For me, with my mother, there was no unfinished business.  "We have no issues," I told her.  For my father, by the time his aged body let go, we also had no issues.  "Why have issues?" I thought.  With my son, young and with cancer, I knew from the moment of his diagnosis that the joy of having had him would outweigh even the devastation of losing him.  His loss was greater than mine--unbearable (except that we all bore it) until that moment when he walked with God, as he does today.  

We might think of closure as change, rather than an end.  A change into our new selves and in some cases a change to something good.  The untimely death of a spouse might, in some cases, lead to a new love just as special in its way.  Not a replacement, but a different person to share the overflowing love we are blessed with.  Divorce the same. 

Some events we'll never understand.  They seem to come from an evil confluence of the stars.  Surely addiction and mental illness qualify.  Abuse qualifies.  Betrayals of any sort are hard to fathom.  Sometimes we forgive without understanding; we reconcile--if there's repentance--without understanding; we continue to love without understanding; we do what's best without understanding; we continue to have wonderful lives without understanding.  Rather than closure, people of faith might call this the grace of God or the peace that passes all understanding. 

But even without a rational explanation for something painful, we can still address our emotions, what the literature calls processing.  Again, psychologists say that closure is a self-compassionate process.  Given how much is beyond our control, it needs to be focused on us.  What do we need to do to make this better?  Accept that it happened.  Accept our feelings about it, feelings of sadness or confusion or anger.  Take self-protective action.  Be brave.  Let some time pass.  And then, with the help of God if you are a believer, give yourself the gift of a self-compassionate conclusion to your suffering.  In that way, what feels at times as the sole defining event of our life to the exclusion of all else, becomes a part of a longer narrative, a life full of love and meaning and care.  

Isaiah 43:2
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.

 

 

 

BELLA GRACE FIELD GUIDE

You can buy these just about everywhere.  Lovely little Bella Grace journals with beautiful pictures and writing prompts.  Just my type thing and maybe yours too.  Here are some of the quotes and prompts, if you're in the mood to respond.  We can think our responses, we don't have to write them.  

Not every day will be perfect, but every day will have a perfect moment.  This was an easy one today.  I napped outdoors in the sun.  Oh yes, a perfect 60 minutes.  My husband brought my tea in this morning as well, the sign of a day starting out just right.  

During dark or rainy days how can we add some brightness?  I'm thinking bad-mood days as well.  Even days when we've been hit by a trigger.  I have a yellow cashmere sweater with short, puffed sleeves that I always feel good in.  Also a turquoise bead necklace bought for me on a vacation.  But you might add brightness by baking or creating something.  Or a prayer of thanksgiving for the rain, or for having survived some bad time of life.  What do you think?

What makes receiving a hand-written letter special for you?  I don't get (or send) these often anymore. Cards, yes, but not letters.  But the ones I've saved are precious--the letter my husband sent my parents when our first child was born far from home in the UK.  Our love letters from pre-email college, full of longing.  Sweet notes from a high school boy friend.  A letter to my father from his mother; one from my other grandma to me; one from my father to my mother when he was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.  Are you thinking about what's in your stash?  

Forgive yourself the way God forgives:  late at night and all day long."  This is a quote by writer Sherihan Gamal.  Isn't it the best idea?  Forgive others this way too.  Who do I (we) need to forgive besides myself (ourselves)?  Here are a few more of her quotes that I like: 
        It's hard dealing with a heart that knows what it deserves."   This is a take-care-of-yourself quote.  And third, 

        There's a special place in heaven for the tired ones, those who lived and loved and worked and got hurt a little bit more than others.”   Isn't it nice how so-called inspirational quotes actually are inspirational?  How you can pop onto Pinterest and find positive emotions?  Not the eternal truths, maybe, but after any day's news cycle a simple aspirational statement cleanses the mind, points it in a new direction. Not everything has to be intense.  

What are the things you did when you were younger that made you forget time? "There lies the myth to live by."  So says Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), teacher of comparative mythology.  One of my escapes/teachers/simple pleasures that made me forget time ("time for dinner," "time for bed," "time to leave . . .") was reading.  I read Gone with the Wind the summer before 6th grade, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead the summer before 8th.  Also playing outdoors, of course makes children forget time.  So, my myth of a good life might be reading and being in nature.  What about you?  

What are your favorite ways to instantly make your day better that cost nothing? Oh, my goodness, there are so many of these.  Mine are simple:  go outside, go to a bookstore, post on this blog or work on my collage journal, write a devotion for church, wash my hair or take a bath, get dressed nicely, talk to or text a grandchild, talk to my daughter-in-law, watch a movie with my husband, tend to my plants, iron some clothes that need it . . . .   And, of course, what if we're at the beach?  This afternoon I went out after a storm and gathered shells.  Free and exhilarating. Then made shrimp and grits for supper.  I'd love to see your list!   

Nina Naomi     

• 
  

A LITTLE MARY OLIVER WITH OUR EASTER

 

Common Bluets on a Rocky Hillside

"The Veil"

There are moments when the veil seems 

almost to lift, and we understand what 

the earth is meant to mean to us -- the 

trees in their docility, the hills in

their patience, the flowers and the 

vines in their wild, sweet vitality.  

Then the Word is within us, and the 

Book is put away.

Mary Oliver is a mystic poet, open and attentive to the presence of God in the world.  She calls the earth "God's body."   To wit, "It is not hard to understand / where God's body is. / It is everywhere and everything."  "The Veil" is a poem that helps us find God.  When I am in the woods or Duke Gardens or where the ground is soft with pine needles underfoot or leaf litter, or when I spy those tiny bluets that are waving on their fragile stems amongst the spongy moss right now, I can feel the Word within us.  God becomes accessible in our daily rounds.    

Oliver lives by curiosity and her image of death is breath-taking.  "When death comes / like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, / I want to step through the door full of curiosity . . . ." Using biblical language, in the same poem she writes:

When it's over, I want to say all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

from "When Death Comes"

"I believe everything has a soul," she says.  Not a human soul, I expect she means, but its own soul.  The soul of something alive and precious to its Creator.  When we love the world, we please God and give God glory.  In the world's beauty we see the beauty of God.  If we all treated the earth as our sacred home, how healing that would be.  If we did that, we couldn't bomb our home into rubble or fail to respond to its needs. 

One more:

"In Blackwater Woods"

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it 

against your bones knowing 

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

Well, no words are truer than these.  We love what is mortal, ourselves and our dear ones, with our minds, hearts and souls.  Nothing is more precious than the body of someone we love.  We stay alive not only for our own sakes, but so as not to cause pain to those for whom we are the gift of life itself.  

But Christ also taught us to let go.  He was able to say, "It is finished" and relinquish himself to God.  Our faith helps us do the same.  Because what we have learned every Easter is that we move from our fragile mortality to our eternal immortality.  In the interim, I am grateful for Mary Oliver and her vision. 

Now, for all of life, let us give thanks.  

                                                                        HAPPY EASTER from Nina Naomi

 

EASTER

I'm so glad it's almost Easter.  The world is Easter-ready.  Today we saw two purple finches courtship-feeding. The male, a rosier shade, delicately passing seed to the female. She, assessing him as a mate for one sitting on the nest and needing a bite now and then.  He was proving his worth, I thought.  He wasn't letting her out of his sight.  He would be a good helpmeet.  

The dwarf red maple is leafed out.  The snap dragons wintered over and are radiant.  Forsythia are just shedding their yellow flowers for vibrant leaves.  Red bud are lining country roads. 

Sundays are marching to Holy Week and ultimately Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter.  I haven't been as attuned to Lent as I wished to be. I didn't go to mid-week Lenten services.  I have been following politics and nursing my getting-worse back. I didn't go to Friday afternoon Stations of the Cross. I worry about Gazans and Ukranians and Israeli refugees held by Hamas.  I worry about our country.  When that's too much, I do Wordle and follow college basketball.  Preoccupations and distractions.  

With all the suffering in the world you would think it would be easy to focus on Christ's suffering and death, but that's not necessarily true.  However, that's what our faith requires of us.  From Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, we move in step with Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem to the Last Supper, the crucifixion and the Resurrection.  

This is what we do.  We will be ready as we are every year.  We will recognize that the suffering Christ understands our own suffering.  We will know that we are not alone.  We will wait at the tomb and see it empty.  We will share an Easter breakfast with our church friends and hide eggs for the children.  We will pray for peace on earth.  We will align our own renewal with the renewal of the earth.  We will face all that threatens our world with the peace that passes all understanding.  That is what we will do. 

In peace let us pray to the Lord.  Lord have mercy.  AMEN 

  

THAT SOMETHING WILD

 Coyotes don't surprise me, their howling far away,

Or closer but not visible.

And yet the dog's alert, my maltipoo.

He turns and waits for me before he leaves the step,

When clocks strike ten and dark it is.

My torch the only light unless the moon is full.

But last night straight across our path a red fox sauntered by.

From whence he came I could not tell 

'Till Wiggles sniffed his trail down to the boardwalk.

It had lain where I had walked that day.

I do not want a fox so close although it carried awe.

A small intake, a taint of joy 

That something wild should freely go

And pass me by without a glance.

And I should live where fox and deer, 

Fat badger, possum, Hawk and owl 

and who-knows-what reside.

All calling home where I call home, 

And none surprised by me. 

Home

GO GENTLY

Go gently when your morning comes and thoughts are waiting prey.

Go gently when the evening falls if thoughts still trembling there.

Go gently if your mind's awry remembering every wound,

From words that drop like nerves gone bad, 

Your shelter out of reach. 

And then you write and say it straight or say it slant

Or don't say it at all. 

The thoughts recede; they have before.

It was so long ago. 

IN A CREATIVE WAY

Each year I do a collage journal.  I've read, "Do more of what you liked as a child."  Well, I liked cutting and pasting.  And glitter and warm words and inspirational quotes and writing and coloring and lace and creating.  It all comes together in my collage journal.  So easy.  So calming.  Definitely a flow-state.  We all have these, flow states, where we are satisfyingly present and engaged.  Here are some of the special words I've included in the past months, from all kinds of sources including my own heart.  I hope they resonate.  

Learning to do and think less is an important skill.

What dark did you conquer in your story?

"I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps." Edith Wharton

Enjoy being alone.

Getting lost in a good book is one of life's great pleasures. 

Love stretches your heart and makes you big inside. 

"It's no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then."  Alice, Lewis Carroll 

Go outside.  It always helps.

The sun and moon rise and set every day.  Don't miss so many of them.

When nobody's home but you, that's your time. 

"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." Vincent Van Gogh

You'll find many beautiful wintry sights at dawn, dusk and dark.

Always protect yourself from despair or indifference.  Help others do the same. 

"Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all."   Emily Dickinson

A wounded heart can still sing.  Mine does.

Spend time close to home with the simple pleasures that make up your life.

One thing we can hope for is that the Lord will enter our minds and hearts and help us bear the sinful world in which we live. 

"Do anything but let it produce joy." Walt Whitman

Just keep on going; look ahead to see the blessing around the bend. 

"No need to hurry.  No need to sparkle.  No need to be anybody but oneself."   Virginia Woolf

There are decisions I may not have made if I hadn't taken sadness as a warning.  

The act of documenting my life in a creative way has improved my life. 

DO LESS, THINK BETTER

A Coming Storm, North Carolina Coast 

There's a lot going on in the world that isn't good.  I don't need to name it.  Follow the news, open your inbox, talk to your children, read your own heart.  

So, we look for ways to foster our wellbeing.  I used to think that sounded too new age, or impractical.  With kids and parents and work, who has the time?  And many don't. 

But remember as a child lying on the floor looking at the ceiling?  Or on the ground looking at the clouds?  When my schoolwork was done, I used to put on a record, stretch out and daydream until I was called for the next chore (lay the table, sweep up the dog hair, feed the bird).  In those days busy held no status; we didn't feel guilty for--if we could--letting our minds wander.  That's when we got our ideas.  

Many experts say that's still true:  do less and think better (note:  better not more).  They make pausing and contemplation a path to wellbeing.  There seem to be lots of ways to turn down the noise and give our minds a chance to wander.  We know that moving our bodies helps to clear our minds, especially activities we do outside in nature. I gather brush.  That's about as nothing as you can get.  My dad asked me, "What do you think about when you're clearing brush?"  "I think about clearing brush," I answered.   

Noticing ordinary things, rather than those that arouse strong emotions, helps to focus an overthinking mind.  Noticing little things can deepen our perception and clear our head.  So can enjoying pockets of silence. Our minds respond to stimuli, and while we might be uncomfortable in silent spaces, think about how hard it is to have a fruitful conversation with a friend in a noisy place.  We must find silent places to hear our friends' serious news or share our own. We cannot thrive without silence.  

Finally, apparently, everyone has intrusive thoughts (not just me).  A way to calm these is to notice and label them:  "this is my thought about when I felt alone and not valued. That time is over.  I survived it."  I can vouch for this:  after they are labelled, intrusive thoughts start to disappear.  Isn't that nice? 

Calm Waters, Kenai Peninsula, Alaska

IT'S ALL GOOD

There's nothing to eat.  But wait.  I'm good at creating meals from tidbits.  I have a potato and some left-over chicken.  With a spoonful of raisins and nuts and a bit of veg, I can make a curry sauce.  Or eggs.  There's always eggs.  Or pancakes, even better.  

The whole house is dirty.  But I love this house.  It's bright and open.  A swiffer, Endust, Windex, a mop and vacuum won't take long at all.  The clean floors will feel smooth under my bare feet.  The glass will shine.  Everything will smell lemony.  I'll get some bending in, and it won't cost me a dime.  I'll put on music--good idea. 

My dog needs a bath.  Mr. Wiggles can't help being stinky sometimes.  And he's such a sweet boy.  A bath only takes 10 minutes, and he knows I do it with love. Then he'll be soft and fragrant and nicer to pet. 

What happened to the laughter that filled the house?  It's true, most days are the two of us.  Well, three if you count you-know-who.  But calm has replaced hectic.  Low stress has replaced rushed.  And let's tell the truth:  freedom has replaced responsibility.  All stages of life are precious, this one no less than the parenting stage.  Two can also fill a home with love, quite nicely.  It's not routine, it's practiced.  And honestly, there's still a lot of laughter. 

I'm growing old.  Yet my days are longer not shorter.  With less to do, they lengthen; more time to savor.  I must remember that.  The years might fly, but not the days.  Plus, I am so lucky to have earned and saved enough to retire.  My losses have not overwhelmed me.  God is with me every day; when I sit still and write this, I can feel God's presence.  As we grow older other things diminish, but not our faith.  Prayers are more intentional.  No more "Now I lay me . . . " * without a thought that in fact I might die before I wake.  There's no greater gift than long life. 

 Nina Naomi

*"Now I lay me down to sleep.  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." 

KNOW THE EARTH AS POETRY

Reflections, Bok Tower, Florida

The other day my granddaughter said, "I think being a follower is underrated."  "So is being an introvert," I replied.  So, two generations apart, something we could agree on.  Although we agree on many things, actually.  If you have a granddaughter you know, treasures beyond compare.  

Some of us don't want to be tough alpha leaders.  I read this somewhere:  "Some of us just want to write and wander the garden and breathe in the sky and nourish and nurture and quietly create new pathways and live our lives as our art.  To know the earth as poetry."  I know women like this, a few; well, more women than men.  

This would have been a pipedream for me when I was practicing law.  You don't win a case for someone wandering the garden.  (Although quietly creating new pathways is a fearsome legal strategy.)  But now, now it suits me.  Maybe you too.  Maybe on your free days you write or wander your garden and live a creative life.  Maybe you even make a living that way. 

Paulo Coehlo (b. 1947, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), author of The Alchemist, wrote, "Don't allow your mind to tell your heart what to do."  I would add as well, listen to your body over your mind.  So many times, our bodies know what is best.  When to forgive, when to move on, when to accept, how to love. . . these are all body-driven, aren't they?   

"So, what if, instead of thinking about solving your whole life, you just think about adding additional good things.  One at a time.  Just let your pile of good things grow."  Again, I don't know who said this.  But we were traveling recently, and I felt like my pile of good things was growing.  We were in Florida.  One day we saw a lighthouse.  

Fernandina Beach, Florida

Do you also feel like a lighthouse is something special?  There are so few remaining.  The job of a lighthouse was to warn and protect.  They were sentinels.  Doers of good.  Seafarers trusted them.  Now they are symbols. 

Another day, breathing in the sky, we saw hundreds of manatees sheltering in the 72° central Florida springs from the colder Gulf and ocean waters.   

Blue Spring State Park, Florida

Yet another day, we saw the sun set over the lake at Mount Dora.  A quotation from Paulo Coehlo came to me again:  "the secret to immortality is this:  let yourself be reborn every day, every moment, even." 

Sunset at Mt. Dora, Florida

So, yes, let's "wander the garden and breathe in the sky and nourish and nurture and quietly create new pathways and live our lives as our art."  Let's "know the earth as poetry."  Let's be introverts if we want, or followers and creators, travelers and seekers, reborning each day to each day's beauty.  Alive to sunsets and sunrises, manatees and moons, stars and snowflakes . . . .

Adding additional good things one at a time.  

                                                                    

THE DAY SUPRISING MILD

Hellebores, the Lenten Rose

Window cracked, sky a shadow, 

Moon just out not dark enough to glow.

I'll shut the window soon,

The day surprising mild.

I see jonquils, pushing through and crocus, a few, confused in purple bloom. 

My heavy Lenten roses bending pink, pale green and white, 

More clustered this year than last, next year than this. 

Their fingers spread beneath the soil.

"We know it isn't Spring," they say, 

"But hope is ours to share like broadcast news.  

Come, forsythia.  Let's fling our spectrum wide." 

The leaves are legion, ground still covered, deepening mid-winter damp.

The sky grows darker as I write.

That's always true at 79, which gratefully I am.

The sky grows darker as I write. 

DAILY BITS OF HEAVEN

"Still Falling"

Go outside every day even if just for a few minutes.  Cold and sunny, warm and drizzly, hot and prickly, it doesn't matter.  Feel the air on your skin, your face, your palms.  This is your day.  Meet it, greet it, tell it good morning or good night.  Walk out, hobble out, wheel yourself out or ask for help.  Open a window if you must and stick out your head, all the way, your neck and shoulders and arms.  Feel nothing else but the day.  Savor the air that sits on your tongue, presses your forehead, licks your cheeks.  

"Facing West"

Watch the sun set.  It falls behind trees, behind houses, behind oceans and mountains.  Right where you are, it is dropping every single evening, lower and lower in the sky it slides, millimeters at a time but just turn your head and its gone.  You don't have to be at the ocean.  I saw it dip behind an old Kroger once and see it now in my mind dripping red and orange down the sides of the building, painting it in watercolor, then spreading out until nothing is left but a rim of light.

"Gift of Gold"

"Out of the Night"

Look at the sky.  It's there every night for you to applaud.  Dark gray and cloudy or black and deep or clear and starlit.  The moon, when you spot it, head lifted this way and that, is always new, always different from the night last and the night tomorrow.  Just a sliver maybe or behind a cloud luminous or full and rich as heaven making shadows like noonday.  Put your bed or chair by a window or under a skylight or outdoors and lie awake until you feel your senses up high where they live with the moon.

These joys are not small.  They're big like your heart, sweet like your body, eternal like your soul.

Thanks be to God.  

 

LIFELONG LEARNING

Lifelong learning, including about ourselves, is just that. Here's what I learned this year.  It may not be too much different from what you learned or knew already.  I learned that almost every day, every week now, passes too quickly.  Even as I work to live slowly and in the present, my week jumps from beginning to end.   

I learned that even with sadnesses and disappointments, time can be almost idyllic, almost just exactly what anyone would want.  Because over the years, we learn to cope with sadness and disappointment.  They become less devastating.  We integrate missing someone, or worrying about someone, or even forgetting someone, into our lives.  Somehow no matter what personal trauma is in the background of my heart, I can still have a perfectly wonderful day.  I expect it is the same for you.  We recognize that our life is imperfect because everyone's is.  Imperfection is human.  So is yearning and so, thankfully, is accepting.  So is finding goodness in the smallest of things.  

I learned that good and evil, pain and joy, love and death can exist simultaneously, in the same moment, the same heart.  In 1859 in The Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . . " Now is not 1794 and the invasions of Ukraine and Gaza are not the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.  But sometimes it feels like we live in the worst of times.  You know the litany:  too many school shootings, too many guns, too many invasions, too many hostages, too many terrorists, too many dead Gazans who did not declare war on or invade anyone.  And then outside the political realm, too many deaths from drugs and addiction; too much hunger and poverty; too much cancer. 

But Christmas and New Year's were good. Even after someone dies, the first Holy Day brings us back to our faith.  These first weeks in January have been just right. Many people do more than I, many less and as we age, we lean toward less.  Some year I may be a person living in a retirement community with a new pet to claim Mr. Wiggles' spot.  

We adjust.  We never lose hope.  Politics, injustice, poor health--we never give up and we never stop trying.  We know that we are in this together. With our friends, we are in it to the end, side by side, facing the unknown.  If we're the one on chemo, someone brings food or sits with us.  If we're not, we try to practice a ministry of presence.  We pray.  It's the least we can do.   

So, it is not the worst of times.  Neither is it the best.  It is simply our time.  The suffragettes marched for the vote.  The civil rights workers marched for justice.  Tyranny and dictators and would-be dictators and insurrectionists have been defeated before. Trump lost in 2016 and, God willing, will be thwarted again. And as we work for good in whatever ways we can, we enjoy our days whether brief or long, we learn to know ourselves better, grow stronger in our faith, and take time for simple pleasures. 

Here's one:  tonight look at the stars.  Then say a prayer and have a quiet rest. 

                               In peace, Nina Naomi   

LEANN FORD'S "FEEL FREE MAGAZINE" (WONDERFUL!)

In my stash of collage journaling stuff, this morning I found Vol. 3 of "Feel Free Magazine" by Leanne Ford.  It was in a stack with "The Simple Things" from the UK, "Daphne's Diary" from the Netherlands, and a pile of Stampington back issues filled with collage paper.  On a rainy January day, being inspired to find creativity in nature is just what I need. So, I'm going to share some of the words and ideas that seem so true.  I wish I could share all the lovely photos too.  

Aiming for perfection is fruitless.  And ruthless really.  It's a waste of freedom. Time and freedom we might say.  Ruthless is the perfect word:  hard on ourselves, never-ending.  Thank you "Feel Free" for this reminder. 

The garden is a perfect analogy to life and its messes--always imperfect, but always some beauty in it.  The more it is loved, the more vibrant it becomes and the more it spreads that light. 

When we create, it's our job to know that what we create is good.  We just know in our hearts that we our happy creating and happy with what we created.  That feeling, that confidence, that kindness to ourselves, the lack of judgment to ourselves, that is contagious to those around us.  Yes, happiness is contagious.  And if we're not bound to perfect we can be very happy with what we create.  Creating is freedom.  

Love what you do and let people see you loving what you do.  You will inspire others to find the same joy.  

Create freely.  Trust yourself to make a home and life that looks and feels like it belongs to just you.  Don't you feel like your exact home could never belong to someone else?  In the whole world, it doesn't have a double.  Your vision, your touches, large or small.  Your books or music or paintings.  Your favorite textiles.  What you've saved and treasure.  

The unpredictable brings excitement and intrigue. 

Look to Nature.  It's a free and wonderfully rich source of inspiration.

Sometimes we find a place where life is pure, raw beauty.  [Mostly in Iceland I say to myself.  Or the Scottish Hebrides.  Or when a whale breaches.  Or one morning when every bud on the camellia by my door is in bloom.]

Pull inspiration from everywhere.  It's not copying.  You'll create something new.  

"The universe is real, but you can't see it.  You have to imagine it." --American artist Alexander Calder (1898-1976).  Well, I don't know what this means.  It sounds like something an astronomer would say.  But Calder was an engineer-trained artist.  Many things are real but we can't see them, maybe the things that mean most to us.  

Every day do some of what you love.  

A Garden is literally a Dream come true.  We always see it before it happens, don't we, gardeners? 

Thank your plants for keeping your space green.  

Be brave and follow your heart.  Just believe wholeheartedly in your ability to create.  With words, with chalk or pencil or paint, with fiber, with trowel, with mixing bowl, with herbs and spices, with hammer and nail, with AutoCAD, with heavy equipment . . . .  

With love, Nina Naomi