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 him with legs waving and took him carefully into the leaves. away from the tree roots that seem to tip him over as he 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 10 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 the Florence 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