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

 

A PLACE TO STOP, THINK AND WONDER, PART IV

Gerrit Dou, Dog at Rest, Dutch, 1650

Do you live near a museum?  We met up recently with someone who loves to travel.  I do too. Seeing something new or revisited far from home, enriches us.  For me, museums are places to marvel.  Maybe I'm not as awestruck as when we saw a breaching humpback whale, but standing in front of a Van Gogh is close.  Or a Picasso.  I wanted to know what museums this lunchmate had visited.  After all, she was in Paris.  "I don't go to museums," she said.  "I saw the Mona Lisa thirty years ago and it hasn't changed."  

Well, we can't all be alike, can we?  Among my favorite days are museum days.  Like many museum goers, I never tire of the Impressionists.  Another Renoir?  Yes, please.  One of Monet's "Rouen Cathedral Series?"  Paul Cezanne?  Mary Cassatt?  Lucky me! 

Summertime, 1894, Mary Cassatt

Famous museum, local museum, traveling exhibit, the Courtauld Gallery in London, the Louvre (of course) or the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, the Uffizi in Florence . . . .  These are places to dream of for me.  If I'm fortunate enough to have been, or to go again, I never forget the visit.  No, the Mona Lisa hasn't changed, it's eternal.  But I have.  The world has.  When we look at great art, we often see things we missed before.  We look with deeper eyes, wiser souls. Their beauty strikes anew.

Our North Carolina Museum of Art hosted a traveling exhibit of Dutch masters from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  That gently sleeping dog above is, not surprisingly, known as the most adorable dog in Dutch art.  It lies curled upon a shelf, half-awake with eyes slightly open, master perhaps nearby, perhaps not.  The fur is soft, the nose wet and the paws leathery. We could scratch it behind the ears and nuzzle it contentedly.  Knowing little about art history, I had not heard of Garrit Dou or this small (6"x8") exquisite masterpiece. 

I don't know if I'll ever see this painting again.  It caused many to stop, think and wonder.  Viewers kept coming back to it.  Maybe people with dogs, like me, struck by the tender realism of the work.  Or awed by the individual brush strokes of the pup's finely delineated fur.  Or admiring how most of the oil-on-wood painting covers the bottom half and right side of the composition, balanced perfectly by only light on the top left.  

How wonderful that the Dog at Rest won't change.  That for all who see it, it will continue to work its magic. Our friendly get-together and this local exhibit on an early January weekend brought these thoughts together.  A good beginning to the year.  

                                                           Nina Naomi

"AND NOW LET US BELIEVE IN A LONG YEAR THAT IS GIVEN TO US," RAINER MARIA RILKE

North Carolina Midwinter Sunset

"AND NOW LET US BELIEVE 

IN A LONG YEAR THAT IS GIVEN TO US,

NEW, UNTOUCHED,

FULL OF THINGS THAT HAVE NEVER BEEN"

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

So many reasons to like January.  Here where we spend New Years, the sun sets over the sea.  Soon that will end until next December.  It's a beautiful, long, cold month.  Much longer than December, that crowded month that moves like a speeding train after Thanksgiving up till Christmas.  As early as we put our decorations up, it's already Epiphany and time to take them down.  When you name who you've seen or heard from over the holiday, or baked or bought gifts for, or even just remembered, the list is longer than the rest of the year combined.  

January doesn't rush, it lingers.  Dusk still comes in the afternoon, and our evenings are long.  We sleep more when days are short.  We put the kids to bed early and they seem not to mind.  Dark signals a tuck-in and blankets.  Like the rest of nature, we kind of hibernate.  If it's not a workday, we wake more slowly, stretching to greet not only the day, but the beginning of our year.  Warming food, indoor games and maybe some snow-time.  Skiing and sledding and snow angels.  We don't have snow in the North Carolina Piedmont yet, but we can hope.  Today was, after all, our coldest morning so far this season at 26⁰ and a frozen birdbath. The meadow sparkled with frost.  

We need days like this.  We need to make the most of what this month has to offer.  We need a year filled not just with "things that have never been," but with good things that have never been.  Or good things that return each year in a new way. This Christmas and Hanukah were blessed, as always.  Even after great losses.  The first Holy Day after a great loss, as hard as it is, seems to bring us back to the consolation and joy of our faith. 

I found joy watching the sun set over the ocean this week.  I even enjoyed undecorating the tree today.  The ornaments are precious, packed now and ready for next year.  

We want to be content, at peace, safe in our hearts. We're all tired of pain and sorrow and the ever-disheartening news.  Yesterday, yet again dear Lord, a six-grader was killed in an Iowa school shooting by a 17-year-old who took his own life.  I've had children both ages.  The horror is no longer unimaginable, nowhere near unimaginable. 

There is much we dare not ignore.  We live in a disconnected time.  But we must also give ourselves permission to believe that we are strong, protected, not from death--not that at all--but from despair or indifference.  The year 2024 is new, untouched, filled with hours and days for us to embrace.  It is given to us to make the most of in whatever way we can for however long we can.  

If we watch the news tonight, it is with certainty that new crimes will have been committed against humanity.  I don't say this casually. But we can also take permission from this long midwinter night to cherish our lives and make plans with someone we care about for the unknown days ahead.  Nothing lasts.  That's why the year will be filled with things that have never been.  And we know with equal certainty that some of them will be very, very good.  

Maybe we'll even have snow.                         

In peace, Nina Naomi