WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PLACE? WHERE IS YOUR JOY?

   

Pine Knoll Shores, NC

    We are at the beach again, which having been born and raised in the land-locked Midwest, might be our favorite place.  How does that work for you?  Is your favorite place where you were born and raised, or someplace else?  Maybe you live in your favorite place now.  How nice is that?  In a way I do too.  My home in the woods with the hawks and geese, lizards and frogs, deer and coyote, certainly could be the best place for me to wake up to.  

    I read the most interesting article in my favorite magazine, The Simple Things, a UK publication.  In an feature called Rare and Magical Sights, the writer noted her joy in spying a lizard.  I love lizards too, and box turtles, but  especially this time of year lizards are almost as common as pairs of Cardinals, nothing rare about them.  On any deck, patio or rock lizards lie in any spot of sunshine, necks outstretched toward the warmth.  If they show up indoors, we gently catch them to relocate outside.  Blue-tailed lizards, anole lizards that change from vibrant green to brown, male broadhead skinks with orange-red heads.  We see these sunning or skittering every day as soon as the weather grows warm.  

    That so interests me about the UK:  I had no idea that lizards were rare there.  But then, our friends from Santa Barbara, California, were taken with our squirrels.  That's not a thing with us; there are far too many squirrels where we live.  Yes they're playful and fun, but they also dig up my pot plants looking for the hickory nut they just buried yesterday.  

Home

     

Still, I love it all, don't you?  Never ever would I have a complaint about living in a woods.  Trees fall, creeks flood and the morning sun in the bedroom windows is still a gift.  But here too, here at the coast.  

    The North Carolina beaches are not crowded.  Some days  in July the sand is hot as coals, but yet the water buoys and lifts, literally, with waves to ride and hollows to float in.  May through October, volunteers walk the early morning sand looking for sea turtle crawls that indicate a nest has been laid.  The nests are then marked with yellow tape to protect these endangered reptiles.  We are careful to turn off lights at dark so as not to confuse them.  Volunteers continue to keep watch over the nests in case the hatchlings need help to make their way to the water.  Most of our hatchlings are loggerheads.  

    This is what we must all do, isn't it--find joy.  Here in America there is all kinds of hell going on.  In response, my blue-collar town holds demonstrations, occupies bridges, cares for our immigrant community members, supports public television and National Public Radio.  Duke University is our biggest employer and we support free speech on campus and medical research.   And elsewhere in the world.  Maybe like me, you are grieved each day when Palestinians in Gaza are killed as they wait for their food donations to arrive.  Children there are starving, grown-ups too.  We've almost forgotten about Ukraine, which I do not want to do.  People suffering at least deserve to be seen.  The Ukrainians are fighting for all  of western civilization.  

    All of this makes finding joy in our day-to-day more important.  We know the terms lifespan and time-span, but joy-span is a concept too, the concept of living your life, however long or short, with joy.  It's not something to put on your To-Do list, but it is something to recognize and accept when it comes our way.  City parks, forest-bathing, vacations at the beach or in the mountains, staycations, reading a book or taking a trip, calling a friend, rescuing a turtle or lizard or friend-in-need or stranger-at-risk . . . .   

    It's all God-pleasing I think.  To take care of endangered loggerhead turtles, to help our fellow humans who are without homes or even country.   I'd like to be able to answer the question "What are you doing?" with, "I'm doing the best that I can." 

                                     In peace and joy, Nina Naomi

 

 

 

MORE ORDINARY DAYS PLEASE

    Just when I was thinking about glimmers and planning a swim, Tropical Storm Chantal hit North Carolina.  With no warning, the afternoon sky turned black and rain poured down in sheets, all evening, all night and all the next day.  Power went out and we could barely see the creek in our side yard turning into a river as it does when it floods.  Since we live in the woods, trees began tossing their dead branches here and there.  One live branch cracked just over our boardwalk and now (still) blocks access to the front door and, more importantly for the birds, their feeder. No tragedies at our house, just darkness, close air and mud rolling down the hill onto every surface.  Water sloshed against the patio doors and the old '70s pool overflowed its coping and turned brown from debris.  

    We sweltered for two days, which given what has happened elsewhere, is nothing to complain about.  As our well runs by an electric pump we had not a drop of water to flush or brush.  Just two hot sweaty days worrying about what was spoiling in our refrigerator.  It made me think about people with less and what it's like to summer without air-conditioning or fresh water.  

    I remember as a child in the Midwest relying on fans and sprinklers.  My mom would pull the shades against the afternoon sun and make cold suppers.  We didn't use the stove or oven for weeks on end.  We had a below-ground basement that must have been 10 degrees cooler and we would move games and chores down there with the skimpiest of clothes on.  The unforgiving concrete floor left bruises, but we played away.  My father hung a swing from the floor joists and made me a foldable walk-in playhouse with real glass windows.  He set up a plywood table on a couple of sawhorses for our Lincoln Logs and toy cars.  My mother would hose down the floor which made it slippery as well as hard, but never mind.  Anything to cool off.

    Now the power is back and yard cleanup has begun.  Collections are being taken at church for the parishioners whose houses flooded and cars floated away down the Eno River.  A lot of Durham is low-lying.  The sun is out and my outdoor plants seem happy.  Yesterday a deer came right up on the back patio not 2 feet from the glass and I couldn't figure out why; there's plenty to eat in the forest and meadow.  Just now a lizard was pumping and peeking in, but that's no problem.  Someone took advantage of the chaos and robbed a neighbor's car, she just called and told me.  They had forgotten to lock it.  But otherwise, back to normal.

    I love ordinary days, don't you?   Just days when you do what needs to be done without working in the shadow of tragedy.   That may be setting the bar low, but I think not.  In Texas the flooding killed hundreds, including girls at a riverside camp.  Everywhere someone is at death's door waiting for news.  If it's not us this time, that's a blessing to be counted.  

So this sunny afternoon with power and nothing on my schedule counts as good news and a day to be savored.   I hope you have one of these, if not today, in your near future.  A time to reminisce--as I've been doing about those sweltering St. Louis childhood summers--to read or write or play, a time for one of those glimmers I wrote about the other day.            

From me to you in peace, Nina Naomi

 

 

 

 

    

     

 

   

A VERY GOOD DAY

  

Farmers' Market Bounty

I wish everyone who reads this would tell me about their good summer day.  This week my stats show readers in Brazil, Argentina, Vietnam, the US and Ecuador.   I have no idea what a summer day in Brazil is like.  My only experience is that my niece and her mom went to Rio for a Taylor Swift concert.  Two New Jersey residents of Chinese-American-Hawaiian heritage had the time of their lives. Now my niece begins her sophomore year at NC State.  She will be only 20 minutes down the road.  How wonderful life is.  She and my North Carolina granddaughter are besties.  

    Argentina I know because one of my good friends is from there; some years ago she decided that I would be her "auntie."  I've been loving that role.  It means, she says, that I am always glad to see her.  Well, how easy is that?  I love her.  Vietnam is another story.  I lived through the Vietnam war.  My daughter's best friend, a Vietnamese refugee, was Miss Teen South Carolina.  It's a small world.  

     So if you are reading this and are from the US, where most readers are, please tell us about your summer day.  If from somewhere else, please tell us too.  My day was both ordinary and extraordinary.  Ordinary because we went to the Farmer's Market and got beautiful tomatoes for gazpacho.  Then went swimming.  Extraordinary because how good everything felt.  I've been so worried about our country.  But I've also decided that the felon at it's helm will not ruin my year.  I will do what I can, contribute, march, recruit.  But my mind remains my own.  It is free to roam and enjoy all there that makes life good.  A summer promise to myself.  

    Sending everyone good wishes.  Nina Naomi  

 

 

GLIMMER TIME

   

     I wrote about glimmers before, back in November of 2023.  But the thought came back today, when I was swimming laps.  Glimmers are those wonderful things that are the opposite of triggers.  Triggers bring up bad thoughts, glimmers bring up good thoughts. Swimming on these hot July days does that for me, floating on my back looking at the treetops and clouds, oh my, I'm thinking how good this day is.  I'm feeling both energized and calm, the best combination ever.  Another glimmer for me is a bike ride, smooth sailing on level streets at our North Carolina beach, sea level, no hills for miles.  Not all beaches are like that, but ours is.  I can coast and peddle a bit and think about how much I am enjoying a lovely warm day.  These are my go-to summer glimmers.

     The idea with glimmers is that once we recognize them, we need to cultivate them, to seek them out.  We can't avoid our triggers, our intrusive thoughts that come without our bidding.  I had one today when I saw a photo.  It took me in a spiral that I must admit, is hanging on even now.  But the glimmers--they are a wonder.  What are yours?  What always makes you feel good?  What's your therapy?  Reading, cooking, kayaking, goat yoga, snapping nature photos?  Many people's glimmers happen outdoors.  Most of mine do.  Forest bathing, a term somewhat new to me.  But lesser things--a phone call with a friend always lifts my spirits.  My collage journal the same.  Anything creative.  

    Here's my advice, not special, but sincere:  look for your glimmers.  They could be anything, anywhere.  Keep them sacred.  Do them over and again.  Be attuned to what might buoy you.  Pile them up.  And if there aren't enough, create some.  Take a pottery class, listen to music or play an instrument, check on the moon before retiring, be kind to yourself.  

    My glimmer for tonight is good food and a movie.  A movie is too sedentary to be a regular glimmer, but I think it will do for tonight; I do like film noirs.  But tomorrow another swim.  

    Wishing us all a wonderful 4th of July with a glimmer or two.  Thinking of you, Nina Naomi 

 

 

TIDBITS TO HELP US THROUGH HARD TIMES

 

Storm Clouds over Derwenter Lake, UK

SOME TIDBITS TO HELP US THROUGH HARD TIMES

"There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm."  Willa Cather, Pulitzer Prize winning American writer (1873-1947)  Cather wrote about pioneers who were often European immigrants traveling west in this new land under hardship.  We can each do our own extrapolation from this quotation.  But it speaks to me of these days when we're learning how much we love our country and our democracy as it is under threat. We've had threats before but never has our president been against us, against We the People.  Never before has the congressional majority robbed this much and this blatantly from the poor to give to the rich.  We are in a storm and learning, learning what to value, what to fight for and how to protest peacefully.  Voting rights mean more to us than ever before.  We are learning not to normalize cruelty or sane-wash irrationality, and we are learning not to give up.  We are learning in a storm.  

Trust your relationship with the natural world.  Summer heat or not, these are go-outside days, stand in the rain, sit in the shade, mow the grass and water the flowers days.  Hit some golf balls, go to the pool, putter in the garden, pick a tomato or two days.  Tall trees, deep lakes, sand dunes, rocky shores all take us out of ourselves and our problems and give us perspective.  We are learning too how much we value the planet during the storm of climate change.  With us as its stewards, the world abides.

To unite and speak up is the only choice we have now.  If hate is rising, then love must rise higher.  Love is stronger than hate, it lasts longer, carries more power and is not self-destructive.  Love has the strength of God behind it; hate does not. Instead of acting out of hate for the opposition, we can act out of love for our country, or love for the refugee, or love for creation.  We do not need to hate anyone or anything.  Think about how constricted hate makes us feel, how open love.

In my life, and maybe yours, many people are in danger, danger of having to live an experience to the end.  Friends, even young ones, spend time with their oncologists.  Couples, especially old ones, walk side-by-side in fear for the other.  There are times when one can go no further, times of divorce or death or loss or betrayal.  No forward available, only a backward trek to begin anew.  

Funny how we get do-overs every day.  You felt hate but stopped it with love. Repentance intervened, and forgiveness, mine or theirs.  You forgot to do good yesterday, but remembered today. We shared our food with someone, had guests for dinner, worked in the food pantry, donated our coins and dollars. I dreaded the nursing home but went anyway.  Daily we are forgiven, and Sunday forgiven formally.  

July is the month we celebrate our freedom and Independence.  NO KINGS the protestors said.  I worry everyday about our country.  I didn't used to.  But we are learning in this storm, loving in this storm, trusting God and nature in this storm, uniting and speaking up in this storm, surviving and not giving up in this storm.  Thanks be to God.  

Nina Naomi 

WE THE PEOPLE

Lady Liberty

All night I watch the rain,

 I Wake and still it's falling.

Too wet for me but not the cardinals,

A pair of lovers search the ground beneath the feeder.

There must be something left.

All day we see our love unspool,

for country, future, freedom.

We fear but do not tremble.

Do not appease, Remember that, 

Appeasement feeds the PIG. 

 

There's so much danger in our land and all from one benighted man

power without stature, words without soul. 

Others, vacant from unknown causes,

Shorn of  bravery, confidence and heart,

They lie and preen and call it truth--

If truth be subterfuge with hollows where its eyes should be.

 

There are enough of us. you know

Who clearly see and won't appease.  

remember how it feeds the PIG? 

We are the lovers who search the ground for country, future, freedom

Who search the sky, the by-roads, towns and squares  

Who protest peacefully

 

More of us than anyone has counted yet, five million? Ten? One-hundred? 

So don't succumb, there's more than something left. 

It's all there, our country, future, freedom,

In our hands, no one else's. 

WE THE PEOPLE 

God bless the fight  

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE ART OF BEING HAPPY ON THE SUMMER SOLSTICE

“The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.” ~ Rev Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

 

North Carolina shore  

    The longest day is a lovely time to think about finding happiness in common things.  I say that after a morning where I got to walk on the beach, not an ordinary day for me by any means.  Many in the world live on or closer to water than I.   Having begun the day like that--the beach wider than usual, the breeze sultry of course in mid-June, but not over-heated--I may be more prone to recognize happiness than I would be on other days.
    Everything seems easier when our mood is one of appreciation.  It's interesting that Beecher talks about "extracting" happiness from common things.  Extracting is active, it's a bit of work, isn't it.  But that's OK. These days we don't expect to be wooed.  We're willing to say, isn't it nice that I woke up by my husband today to the hum of the ceiling fan?  Isn't it nice that I packed the Grape Nuts and milk for breakfast?  Can you believe there's a line of pelicans out the window, and that the walk to the water is not far at all?  
    And that even though we live in the southern United States, we will still have a long day with the sun rising at 5:50 am and not setting here in Atlantic Beach until 8:23 pm. So that we can sit on the windy deck after a supper of local fish I bought at the market today and some luscious heirloom tomatoes that are almost bronze in color. All these pleasures are common to someone, if not always me.  But summer tomatoes?  Who doesn't have memories of those dripping down our chins? My dad grew tomatoes in a small garden behind our first house in north St. Louis.  Strawberries too.  My mother tried her hand at peonies.  They definitely extracted happiness from common things.  Friends over for cards.  A beer.  
    My grandparents too.  They fished in the rivers of the Missouri Ozarks and fried up the catch.  They stayed in $5/night cabins and swatted the mosquitoes.  We kids stayed with them and fended for ourselves in dangerous currents during fishing season.  
    Well, it looks like we can extract happiness from memories too.  What are you thinking about today?  Do you live where the light lasts far longer than a mere 8:23 pm? Are there sheep grazing in the twilight where you live, or cattle lowing?  Or is there nightlife, songs and dancing? One year 9 years ago we were in Fairbanks, Alaska for the longest day and went to a midnight baseball game, sans lights.  That was fun! 
     I'm almost sorry that days get shorter from now on.  We want long summers don't we?  We want moments of happiness to bank for times of sorrow or worry.  And we're willing to work for this, to cook for friends, to put on clean sheets for guests, to clean up before and after.  That's the Art of Being Happy.  
Nina Naomi

JOY IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD

    I know, summer is different for everyone, some people traveling, but these few weeks we're doing nothing but opening the doors and windows to this fragrant midsummer in North Carolina.  I'm feeling 100% blessed.  The solstice is almost here, June 20, the longest day will be upon us and I'm trying to think what to do special.  Before retirement I never had time to care, but now . . . .  I love both winter and summer, every day and every time of year.  It is an exuberant feeling.

    Our neighbors have a farm and this weekend we had all homegrown veggies and fruits on their cabin porch sitting in rockers.  They promised us figs later in the season. Sometimes it's good to let the world pass us by long enough to savor all that is on our doorstep. 

    We've had so many nature adventures this week.  First the Canada geese. Handsome heads balanced on tall necks in our high-grass meadow, they have been blocking our path daily, using the cartilage along their beaks and even on their tongues to forage for seeds.  And they don't do it quietly.   My husband caught a pair waddling nonchalantly down our driveway after keeping watch from our roof all morning.

 

Next a lovely box turtle, all gold and brown, treading water in our small pool, neck outstretched, looking for help.  We gently grasped her with her legs waving and took her carefully into the leaves. away from the tree roots that seem to tip her over as she struggles to climb over them.

tadpole haven

    Then, the most surprising of all, a knot of tadpoles (I had to look that up--knot) dashing about our small pool after several nights of a deafening chorus of tree frogs and bullfrogs.  Apparently we had let the chlorine run low and the frogs had left their eggs and with their strong legs, escaped the pool.  That was a job liberating all those tadpoles.  

    And of course, the dried flower arrangement I put by the back entry is now home to a mossy nest of the tiniest eggs we have seen ever, and the tiniest mom keeping them warm.  Doesn't that happen to you too, in your hanging plants and wreaths? We put up a sign to reroute friends and neighbors to the garage entry.   

Then yesterday our local No Kings Day march was a great success.  So heartening.  If the opposite of fear is hope, many of us felt less fear and more hope for our country yesterday, with over 5 million people participating in peaceful protest around the country and world.  If you want to see the pictures, just search on Substack or The Dworkin Report or the Guardian online.

    At the same time, our brave military was doing its best to celebrate their history of 250 years in Washington DC.  All-in-all it felt like a day and week of buoyancy.  I hope your week was good.  We all know not to take those weeks for granted. 

Posted in peace and love from Nina Naomi

    

"TEAR DOWN THE WALLS OF INDIFFERENCE AND HATRED," POPE LEO XIV

 

Iona, Scotland

I've been thinking.  Christianity is a cross-shaped faith.  The vertical beam could be our relationship with our God.  We mortals made of dust reach to the heavens.    The first and great commandment is, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind," Matthew 22:37.  Christians strive to love the Lord with heart, soul and mind so that He shall abide in us and we in Him, John 15:4. That striving to reach God is bound to the horizontal beam, which could be the side-to-side relationship with our neighbors, whom we are to love as we love ourselves. 

Cruelty toward a neighbor is no more Christian than hating Christ would be.  Cruelty and hate are not Christian virtues.  They are not virtues at all.  A vertical relationship with God (Jesus loves me, I love the Lord), creates horizontal obligations (I will befriend the poor, the widow and orphan, the fellow Christian, the Jew, the Palestinian neighbor, whether next door or across the sea). 

I wrote before about an evangelical turn against empathy ("A Word About The Stranger," April 17, 2025 post).  Empathy is a virtue.  It allows any of us to place ourselves in another's shoes and see what we would want or need if we were in their place. What does a trans or gay person need to be safe in this world?  How does it feel to be bullied for one's gender or religion or status?  How does it feel to be without status, or to be hungry or homeless?   

There are Christians (which we might put in quotes) who have chosen power over principle.  I think we have to admit that these are mostly MAGA Republican "Christians."  Those who approve the the cutting of AIDS and vaccine research, the firing of 6,000 veterans who are Federal employees, the waste of $92 million on a military parade that is without history in our country, the end of Supplemental Nutrition for our poorer school children, and so on.  

Many speak out against this, but no one, I think, with more authority than Pope Leo XIV who in Sunday's Mass in St. Peter's Square asked that the Holy Spirit   

“break down barriers and tear down the walls of indifference and hatred. . . ."

 "Where there is love, there is no room for prejudice, for ‘security’ zones separating us from our neighbors, for the exclusionary mindset that, tragically, we now see emerging also in political nationalisms,”

 the first American Pontiff said.  He did not name a specific country or leader, but it's hard to deny that the shoe fits us.

In our church on Sundays we say the creed. "We believe in one holy catholic (small c) and apostolic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the Life of the world to come."  The leader of the Catholic (large C) church, has told the world in this statement that there is no room for prejudice or political nationalism.  In our country today this is called Christian nationalism or perhaps, again, white supremacy. 

If we are being tested by the times we live in, we might say that many are failing.  But many are not.  Many are doing much to protect the weak, the sick, the old, veterans, children, refugees, the air we breathe, the principles we live by, our democracy. Opportunities abound.  Common Cause, Indivisible, MoveOn, The No Kings Team, the Contrarian, Lawyers Defending American Democracy, the Dworkin Report (a favorite), the Watchdog Coalition, Civil Discourse, all found on-line supporting community activism.  Plus opportunities for churches, non-profits, individual actions, community protests, voting, prayer, financial contributions and contacting Congress. What have I missed? One such opportunity is this Saturday, 1800 peaceful protests and counting across America on our first ever NO KINGS DAY.     

Christianity is a cross-shaped faith.  As a gift to us, there are calls to action everywhere and much for which to be thankful.  Let us rejoice and be glad.   

                                        Nina Naomi     

 

WISHES AND DREAMS ARE NOT WASTED

Wishes and dreams don't have to come true to have value. I'm taking this thought from the nature writer Sydney Michalski on Substack.  Maybe you know her.  Wishes and dreams are hopes and hope is good on its own.  It is never wasted.  As Emily Dickinson says, 

Our hopes may be dashed, this is not unusual.  But then the hope changes and continues to live.  Hope sustains us, whether the hopes are large or small.  Today I hoped my dermatology biopsy would turn out negative, and it did.  A hope fulfilled.  My husband's turned out to be a basal cell carcinoma and so we hoped they would get clean margins and they did.  Another hope fulfilled.  Last summer a spot turned out to be melanoma, so I hoped it was early stage and it was.  It needed no treatment beyond removal.  One hope disappointed but the second one fulfilled.  Were any of these hopes wasted?  Not at all.  

There is always something to hope for.  We each ultimately hope for a long life and a peaceful death.  But in the interim we might hope to get into college and then to graduate, to find a partner or be happy single, to find a job or be brave enough to leave one, to have enough to survive or enough to share.  Each hope today is for something tomorrow.  

A dream or wish looks to the future.  I hope I get to go Florence, Italy again.  I want to see the ancient chapel where Dante met Beatrice, the Duomo, Michelangelo's David. This may or may not happen.  But the wish itself is lovely.  It sets to mind these beautiful places, my memories of them and the feelings that seeing them again would bring to my heart.  My breath enlarges, a bit of the awe returns.  Every time this wish surfaces something good happens to me.   The wish itself brings joy. 

A daydream is a happy thought.  Living in the woods, winning the chili cook-off, taking a dream vacation, remodeling the kitchen, being debt free, learning an instrument. . . .  These are all worth thinking about, each a dream that might become a plan.  

Michalski writes, "To look ahead to what is possible in the future, and fashion a thoughtful vessel to contain its potential, and offer it into the sweeping current of the present, could never be a waste of time." In nature that vessel might be an acorn, or a seedling from the Rose O' Sharon that jumped the fence and might bloom this year, or another forsythia plant emerging through the pine straw as a shoot from the root of my giant spreading shrub.  

In our lives that vessel is our heart.  As vulnerable as we are, as fragile as our hope may be, we set it afloat before our eyes and rest upon it.  And if it becomes a plan, we work to make it happen.  But in the meantime, if it brings some relief, or respite, or even joy, let's continue to wish and dream and thank that faithful thing with feathers that perches in our souls.  

Nina Naomi

THREE QUATRAINS AND A COUPLET

 I found some light verse I composed, just little chats with my Journal that I wrote on a day I needed to backtrack to a time when I was worried.  Goodness, I may have written these 4 years ago.  And even then it was a backtrack.  Do you ever do that?  Have a need to re-process something, not a present worry but something that intrudes less over the years, yet still intrudes?  There's a cost to this, it's said.  But writing an emotion gives you some distance from it.  You're not there if you can write about it, I've found.  Anyway . . . 

Me:  I tell you secrets.

Journal:  You can.

Me:  How can I be sure?

Journal:  Heart of my heart, we are one.

Me:  Sometimes I'm embarrassed.

Journal:  Oh no, please.

Me:  Please what?

Journal:  Please know that I welcome every word. 

Me:  You know why I started writing.  I was betrayed. 

Journal:  They betrayed themself too.

Me:  I should have forgotten by now.

Journal:  It doesn't matter if you forget.  It was repented.  You forgave. 

Me:  You can't change the past.

Journal:  No, it changes you.  

 

"WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE OF YOU BUT TO DO JUSTICE?"

 Every morning I begin the day with a look at my phone--the New York Times, the Guardian and Substack.  Some of my Substack favorites are about nature, poems, watercolors, attention to the minute like a salamander or frog that lives happily on someone's front porch or daisies in a meadow (like mine).  

But I also get stuck in the news:  the wanton destruction of Ukraine and Gaza, the cruelty of cutting food for the hungry, medical research for the chronically ill, educational budgets for our school children, Medicaid for the deserving poor . . . the list is long.  When I think it can't get worse, it does.  Like the $4 million jet from Qatar or the attempt to exclude international students from Harvard.  (full disclosure:  My grandson is an international student at St. Andrews, Scotland.)  Or maybe the worst, some movie-inspired parade of military might on Trump's birthday. We've all seen those in old black and white Nazi propaganda clips. 

Many are saying that America isn't immune from cruelty, recalling Indigenous genocide (full disclosure again:  we just visited the Taos Pueblo, what remains of the sovereign nation of the Tiwa of New Mexico); the cruelty of slave holders; the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during the second World War.   Three groups that looked different from the whites with the guns or whips and power.  But it does seem simplistic to conclude that this administration loves cruelty for its own sake, as sadists do.  After all, what our president seems to love more than anything is gold and wealth, for himself and his friends.  Think of the golden escalator at Trump Tower (more disclosure:  we've ridden that thing) leading inexorably to the glorified new Air Force One from Qatar (no doubt embedded with golden listening devices).  

No, as analysts are noting, the demonization of immigrants, gay adults, trans youth, women who need abortions, Medicaid recipients, international students who might support Palestine, protesters, grant recipients, NPR and PBS (I loved Downton Abbey!), scientists, the judiciary, is not for its own sake but rather the playbook for fascism, dictatorship and white supremacy.  We live in a hard time.  

As a Christian, many wonder, what can we expect from our churches? In a different time, Martin Luther King Jr said, "The church must be reminded once again that it is not to be the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state." Surely this is true.  There is no conscience in this administration and its supporters.  No empathy.  No kindness.  To speak up is a duty; to waffle or remain silent, a sin. 

After the new Pope Leo XIV (Chicago native) appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's in Rome, a writer for the New York Times (David French, an evangelical from the rural South) noted:  Trump is no longer the most important American in the world.  We have an American of malice and an American of love and compassion.  French said, "Christianity is an ancient faith, one that has endured through rulers and regimes far more ignorant and brutal than anything we've ever confronted in the United States."

I find hope in this, that our faith will help us endure--not passively but in active protest--and that long after Trump is gone from public life, Pope Leo will be preaching the Gospel that has sustained us for over 2,000 years.  

We have two visions and only one is sustainable.  The Bible says in Micah 6-8, "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your god?" 

There will be protests all over America on June 14, easy to find under No Kings, Mass Protest, June 14, 2025.  I signed up for our local one.  It is something we can do, a showing of conscience.  For what is required of us but to do justice.  

                   In peace, Nina Naomi

 

PESSIMISM IS FOR LIGHTWEIGHTS by Selena Godden

Think of whose that marched this road before

And those that will march here in years to come

The road in shadow and the road in the sun

The road before us and the road all done

History is watching us and what will we become

This road is all flags and milestones

Immigrant blood and sweat and tears

Built this city, built this country

Made this road last all these years 

This road is made of protest

And those not permitted to vote

And those that are still fighting to speak

With a boot stamping on their throat

There is power and strength in optimism

To have faith and to stay true to you

Because if you can look in the mirror

And have belief and promise you

Will share wonder in living things

Beauty, dreams, books and art

Love your neighbor and be kind

And have an open heart

Then you're already winning at living

You speak up, you show up and stand tall

It's silence that is complicit

It's apathy that hurts us all

Pessimism is for lightweights

There is no straight white line

It's the bumps and curves and obstacles

That make this road yours and mine

Pessimism is for lightweights

This road was never easy and straight

And living is all about living alive and lively

And love will conquer hate.

                  Selena Godden, b. 1972 Hastings, UK

 

IF YOU LOVE THE TREES, THEY WILL LOVE YOU BACK by Nina Naomi

 IF  YOU LOVE THE TREES, THEY WILL LOVE YOU BACK.

IF YOU LOVE THE BIRDS, YOU WILL WAKEN TO THEM.

IF YOU LOVE TO SING, YOU WILL LIVE YOUR LIFE SINGING.

IF YOU LOVE THE EARTH, YOU WILL TEND TO YOUR GARDEN,

WALK IN THE GRASS, GO BAREFOOT IN SUMMER, 

IN SPRING AND IN FALL, THEN SOCK FEET IN WINTER.

IF YOU LOVE THE NIGHT, YOU'LL STAY OUT AFTER DARK,

LIGHTS IN YOUR WINDOWS SEEN FROM AFAR, A CHILL ON YOUR ARMS.  

IF YOU LOVE TO CLIMB TREES, YOU WILL GROW UP THEIR FRIEND. 

YOU WILL NEVER FORGET THEIR TRUNKS IN YOUR ARMS. 

YOUR FEET FIND THEIR BALANCE, BY FEEL YOU CLIMB HIGHER,

A PLACE TO STRADDLE MAYBE A PLACE TO DANGLE, 

TESTING THE STRENGTH OF EACH LIMB, A PLACE TO SIT,

A PLACE TO HIDE.

THIS BRANCH WANTS TO HOLD ME. 

IF YOU LOVE A TREE, IT WILL LOVE YOU BACK. 

            by Nina Naomi 2025

A DAY OF WHALES

Southern California Shoreline

 This place we're staying, and which we leave on Monday has been full of magical experiences.  I mean the kind that evoke awe, that intake of breath where you feel respect, wonder or even a touch of fear, as when you first hold your newborn or witness her grown-up achievements, when you stand at the edge of a canyon or by a water fall, or when you swim with the dolphins or sight a whale.  Those things that take us out of ourselves so much that we don't want to move away. We all have them. We want to stay with the moment.  And when this happens in nature we receive a healing like no other.  

While I love home best, where I live does not have mountains or whales.  Our dear friends who live here in Santa Barbara, California have both.  History, mountains and valleys, whales and seals and dolphins, orange and lemon trees, a bit of the bohemian which I like, views from every hillside. I can't get over it.  

Yesterday was whale watching day.  We drove to Oxnard Harbour, about 40 minutes away, and booked a Winter Whale Watch.  The whales hang out in the channel between the southern California coastline and the Channel Islands, just doing their thing.  The day was bright and clear, gentle swells and blue-black water about six-hundred feet deep the captain said.  And all about humpback whales spouting, fluking and diving.  We stayed out for hours.  So many people live off the water, fishing, boating, sailing, diving; scientists, oceanographers, marine biologists.  What is miraculous for me is an everyday event for somebody else.  

But whales are special.  It's their size, isn't it?  There's something about size that pushes a natural wonder up into the awe category.  The mountains and valleys, looking up at the cliffs or down at the frothing waves.  We've been doing a lot of that.   And yes, we have the Atlantic off the North Carolina coastline, but our coast is sea level, not a cliff in sight.  Our wonderful sandy southern coast is too warm for a whale highway, or for seals.  

This has been a healing time, something I am always up for.  Nature helps depression, boredom, fatigue, stress; it even helps our grief.  We are as much a part of nature as any other animal, part of its rhythm, if we let ourselves be.  The whale watch was a group of 35 strangers with nothing in common but an overwhelming desire that day to take a boat ride far from land and see whales.  What an interesting thing to have in common.  We made space for each other, helped each other get a better view, shared the wealth.  

I suspect I won't see whales again for a long time. We have much else to do in our lives, most of it the ordinary chores of an ordinary day, nothing wrong with that.  Like most North Carolinians, we'll go to our own beach at some point and enjoy the hot summer days and humid nights, tiptoeing on the scorching sand and rinsing off before going indoors.  It sounds wonderful and I will be glad to be home. 

I don't usually make a general comment that Life is Good.  Because I know how varied our burdens are, my own included.  But as for today, why not accept it:  today this life is good.  Wow, that feels like a prayer.

      In gratitude, Nina Naomi

A PRAYER FOR DISCOMFORT, A PRAYER FOR OUR TIME

Protesters, April 5, 2025

May God bless you with discomfort

At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,

So that you may live deep within your heart. 

May god bless you with anger

At injustice, oppression and exploitation of people,

So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears

To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,

So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them

And turn their pain into joy. 

And may God bless you with enough foolishness

To believe that you can make a difference in the world,

So that you can do what others claim cannot be done

To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

AMEN

Sister Ruth Fox, OSB  (1936-2023), written 1985

SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER by William Sloane Coffin

May God give us grace never to sell ourselves short;

Grace to risk something big for something good;

And grace to remember that the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth

And too small for anything but love.

   by the Rev. William Sloane Coffin (1924-2006)

SO NICE TO GET AN AWARD

 

I am so happy to be chosen by FeedSpot as #32 on their 100 Top Simple Living Blogs for 2025.  I remember my pride as a practicing attorney being chosen for different awards, Top North Carolina Attorneys and such.  I would look down the list and see my colleagues and be happy to be recognized with them.  It's the same here.  I scrolled down the list and saw 100 Simple Living blogs I intend to sample and enjoy.  I hope you do the same.  Look at bloggers.feedspot.com/simple living blogs/

It's so nice to be part of something that's growing.  If ever we needed simple living it's now.  Simple nesting, simple living spaces, simple time in nature--all to balance when times are hard or just plain wrong.  If you don't hear from me for awhile, I'm busy reading all the new blogs out there for me.  

Thanks to readers from all over the world.