WE DON'T LIVE TO OURSELVES OR DIE TO OURSELVES

We can be an adventurer at heart and also love to be home.  As we move from summer to Fall and then into winter, we remember that everyone and everything needs some quiet time. We might see the leaves and think the beauty lies there, then see them fall and think the beauty lies on the ground in the piles of yellow, red and brown.  Then look up into the bone structure of the landscape.  

I love bare branches, the Halloween of it all, the way they reach and bend, clutching the air.  There is promise in a bare branch.  A Fall Day is a multiple cups of tea kind of day where you realize that life is too short to leave the key anywhere but in your own pocket. In Fall we realize that happiness is everyday joys lined up in a row.  

Fresh air, clean water, food, companionship and warmth.  Not everyone has these simple needs met.  If ours are, we must acknowledge the good in our life. If these needs are met, each stage of life is abundant:  childhood, adulthood, parenthood, grandparenthood and old age. Or being a friend, auntie or mentor. If these needs are met, we can sit by the window when it rains and contemplate, listening to our bodies and souls, or take a walk outside, or spend time with loved ones.  If these needs are met, we must see that others have the same chances, give, help, pray but don't stop there.

Life isn't perfect, but it does have perfect moments.  There are times we reemerge, refresh, even thrive. We live in our perfect imperfect homes, consoling ourselves and others when we need it. We pray, cry and hold each other.  We realize that being alive, just that, is so wonderful that we never need say we're bored, or too tired to help, or not interested.  We liberate ourselves by doing good things for others.  

As well, we enjoy our quiet moments. We look at our lives and hold on to some things and let others go. We remember what Ghandi said, "There is more to life than increasing its speed."  We make time for walks and thank God to be alive in our broken world.  We seriously try to fix it.  We aren't apathetic--we don't live that quietly. And we don't wait for extraordinary opportunities.  We seize common occasions and do our best. 

We learn what we have to get used to.  Aging.  Less relevance.  Even death.  We learn to trust life, which is the same as trusting God.  We find out that we are happier than we ever knew with the simpler things in life.  It surprises us.  We discover that we are OK where we are.  That being somewhere is more important than getting somewhere, a saying we now know is true. 

We have a few good people in our lives.  We love life even more than when it was new to us.  We live simply and well.  Or well because simply.  We don't live to ourselves or die to ourselves; we are the Lord's.  (Romans 14:7-8)

In peace, Nina Naomi