A DIFFICULT TIME

Winter Holly

It's such a difficult time.  Our President is a convicted felon. We who wouldn't vote for him--half of all Americans, praise God--are stuck with him too.   How many of the Ten Commandments has he kept?  Can we count to zero?  We are often encouraged to try to understand the minds of his voters, if only to sway them.  I admit, I'm not up for that.  Life's too short to decode the allure of an autocrat. 

Remember the Duke and the Dauphin in Huckleberry Finn?  A duo of shysters just chased out one town after another, they board Huck and Jim's raft claiming to be royalty.  No amount of failure or backlash seems to lessen their greed, which culminates in their stealing the runaway slave Jim and selling him off.  Yet in each town, the gullible do come to their senses. Tarred and feathered, the con artists are finally run out of the last town on a rail.  In those days, exposing a fraud was enough.  People knew when they were made fools of.  Today not so.  The duped and the duper dig in and deny.  Grifters are in power; at least two are on our Supreme Court.  Some others are being sworn in as I write.  We have a President/Billionaire bromance.  It's almost too much.  Like I say, a difficult time. 

And yet, out my kitchen window just now the robins and cardinals are assailing the holly trees laden with berries, diving in and out.  Here and there a blue bird joins in.  Stuffing themselves with the red fruit, finally just the right degree of ripeness.  As delectable as a tasty worm.  At first I thought the robins were getting fat from gorging, but then I checked:  no, they're just fluffing their feathers to create air pockets of insulation against the cold.  My husband pours boiling water on the frozen birdbath.

The snow we seldom get has melted quickly.  I use the blower to clear the mess the birds have made on the walkway, bits of berry, leaf and stem.  Yesterday at dawn I was at the same window to see the deer foraging amongst the holly litter for any bite to eat.  They are hungry this time of year.  All foliage beneath the deer line is stripped, as they're digesting ivy, verbena, any winter green but cedar.  Only the hellebores are left alone, poison as they are. 

"Don't let the meanness of the new/old president eat your soul, your heart, your mind," I tell myself.  Resist, but don't be consumed.  Earlier this week, our book group discussed Elizabeth Strout's Tell Me Everything   A Mainer and perfect author for a winter read, Strout creates a fictional town that carries through her oeuvre. In Tell Me, a character questions the value of the "unrecorded life," i.e. lives of  ordinary people, such as we, that hold trauma, grief and love.  The telling of these lives, she decides, gives them meaning.  The book is spare (the group wanted a shorter read after The Covenant of Water, a saga of Indian life) but the inner lives depicted are deep.  I like the idea that you can validate, or redeem, a life simply by telling about it.  I have so many stories about my mother, the Nina Naomi of this blog. 

Last year our book club read Middlemarch, another saga, by George Eliot. Eliot writes, "The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts...[by those] who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs."  That is most of us, isn't it?   My parents' ashes are in our church columbarium.  My son's body, a graveyard beside a country church.  My husband, a writer, published a book about our son's death, a parent's instinctual effort to preserve a record.  But our other family and friends remain unrecorded, including the four close friends we lost since Thanksgiving, each with their own achievements. 

So this is a difficult, serious time.  We have more to do with our minds and hearts than lament our fellow Americans and their idol.  I went to a memorial service for a friend this weekend.  I will tell her stories.  She is, as will be each of us, held steady in the mind of God. 

We will resist, in every way available.  If we have a sphere of influence, we will use it.  Our country will weather this dictator. As he has learned, so have we.  We are, after all, a freedom-loving people. The Republican-led Congress cannot run scared forever.  In the 1950s Sen. Joe McCarthy was an agent of chaos too, causing harm similar to what we are confronting today.  He lies in history's grave.  

Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek . . . .  Nowhere, nowhere are the greedy blessed.  

Tomorrow at my house and yours, the birds will awaken hungry and with great spirit.  Strangers and friends will need our help as we need theirs. Sadness and joy, fear and hope, dark and light will continue their dance.  Those who lived faithfully and lie in unvisited tombs will rest in the eternal and in our memories until our day too is done.                  In peace, Nina Naomi   

  

  

THE BLESSING OF A BIRTHDAY

October is my birthday month.  This year it is a very big birthday, and I planned a week of events.  A kind of self-care thing while my husband hits the last marks of his recovery from surgery.  

So we went out with another couple. Old friends traveled for a visit. A special group met for lunch instead of knitting.  Women friends from church gathered for brunch.  My oldest grandson came for the weekend.  My granddaughter too. We had breakfast with our niece and her boys who were in town from New Jersey.  And we hosted an evening party for the rest of the family and some close couples' friends. Wonderful friends and family gave me flowers, soaps and other fragrant things.  I blew out candles.  It felt marvelous.   

I have never shopped and organized and straightened and planned so much for myself. It is a super fun thing to do; I recommend it.  Plus, with this approach there's no way to be disappointed because someone forgets your birthday.  You've taken care of that.    

I also recommend the pleasure of growing older.  I know the choice isn't ours, but the welcome we give it is.  What could be luckier than being the age we remember our parents being and finding out that it's not so old after all? What could be better than discovering that growing older is not a misnomer--that we actually do keep growing?  That we grow into all the important aspects of life--resilience, bravery, caring, joy, perspective.  We never stop learning.  Not all of our lessons are wanted, but most are helpful.  I have learned from tragedy what mortality is. No lesson is harder.  I have learned why caring for self is prerequisite to almost any other good thing. 

We learn not to squander anything, not time, or love, or friendship.  We learn what needs protecting and what needs jettisoning. We learn how to accept graciously and how to give freely.   

We learn where our safe places are.  We help others find their safe places.  We learn how to be by ourselves and to value that.  We're not so picky.  We learn how easy it is to wound someone and try not to feel wounded ourselves.  We give and accept second chances. 

We were born to age.  Growing older should never bring sadness.  We mourn for those who don't.  Every birthday brings us closer to eternity.  I am curious about that.  But I am far from the only one. 

The Christian rock band MercyMe wrote and first performed this hit in 1999, and it has been the most played song on Christian radio. The lyrics could not be better.  You might want to listen to it.  Here are the words:

I can only imagine 

What it will be like

When I walk by Your side

I can only imagine

What my eyes would see

When Your face is before me

I can only imagine

Surrounded by Your glory

What will my heart feel?

Will I dance for You Jesus

Or in awe of You be still?

Will I stand in your presence  

Or to my knees will I fall?

Will I sing hallelujah?

Will I be able to speak at all?

I can only imagine

I can only imagine

When that day comes

And I find myself

Standing in the Son

I can only imagine

When all I will do

Is forever, forever worship You

I can only imagine

                          With thankfulness for a long life, Nina Naomi

 

THE IMMORTALITY OF BLESSINGS

Books make us think.  If you've read My Grandfather's Blessings by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., or her earlier book Kitchen Table Wisdom, you know that this is a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, holiday or anytime book.  My copy is full of notes.  It is almost like a diary.  

The book is dedicated to those who have been given more than they have received.  This is confusing until you think how often we have left a blessing unclaimed and unappreciated.  I know that I have.  We catch ourselves ignoring a beautiful day; or not saying "Thank you" to someone whose heart we can rely on; or not finding time for a friend.  Or even just not looking up when someone enters the room.  Or worst of all, taking our very lives for granted.   It's like we don't have time to be blessed.  

Dr. Remen talks about celebrating life rather than trying to fix it, about healing rather than curing.  For Christians, that's why we pray for the "peace that passes all understanding."  When you get right down to it, that's the prayer that makes the most sense.  It's the only gift transcendent.  

One early chapter is about loss.  The author says that every great loss demands that we choose life again.  Have you not found this to be true?  The greater the loss the more we might wish to wither.  To escape the pain of the loss.  I remember one time wishing that I couldn't function, the toll that it took was so hard.  But, I learned, God made me functional; I had no choice but to choose life again.  And what a blessing that choice is every time.  

Remen says, "Grieving is not about forgetting.  Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain."  I can see from my marginalia that I wrote, "This book is a blessing."  She had removed her mask in writing and I in reading.  

In another chapter, she writes about someone "who brought beauty to everything she touched."  Don't you just picture a person full of love and creativity?  And a cancer patient who said, "I always knew what mattered.  I just never felt entitled to live by it before."  This reminds me of the Catholic writer Walker Percy, one of whose characters ruminates about how illness clarifies.  This is true, too, isn't it?  How when we are pushed to extremes, with narrow paths or none, the refinement of life becomes almost blinding.      

This book reminds us of the everydayness of our own blessings.  She says that most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know.  I can see that in others, that they don't comprehend their own value, or goodness, or worth.  Then mayn't it also be true for ourselves? 

She also says, "Blessing life offers us a certain immortality.  Our love outlives us and strengthens others. Even after we ourselves are gone."  Yes, we know not just from the Bible that "Love is stronger than Death" (Song of Solomon 8:6), but from our own experiences of longing and loving far beyond the grave; as well as from our being sheltered and buoyed by those whose feet no longer touch earth. 

Holidays have always been a time of both joy and sadness.  We may miss those who made our childhoods full.  Our gift-giving may put us in debt.  The traveling, buying, cooking and cleaning may be exhausting.  Our family may not be close.  For some social isolation is a problem.  Some may drink too much. There are help lines specifically for holiday depression.  

But this book--and much else in this Advent world of ours--is a reminder to find and focus on the good and to be better ourselves.  Hoping we all recognize our blessings this holiday.    

                              In peace, Nina Naomi  

                                                                   

 

 

TIME MOVED LIKE HONEY TODAY

 

Monet, "Sunshine and Snow," 1881

Time moved like honey today.  Maybe for most of the pandemic for those of us who from need or choice have been home-bound.  For a change the days have not been over before we've had a chance to pay attention to  them.  Slow like honey; sweet like honey.  When ever have Mondays been like that?  And in spite of the 1/6 events in Washington; in spite of even those.  Congress meets, the cabinet defects, we are another day closer to the inauguration and still the day redeemed itself, as days have a way of doing when we let them.

That's one of my intentions for the new year, to keep whatever good the pandemic has given birth to.  The habit of zooming with friends far away.  The habit of asking how others are doing and really wanting to know.  No more pro forma these days.  The habit of listening, tuning our ear to the nuance of fear or loneliness.  Bringing the indoors out with fire pits and blankets to live in consonance with the season. 

But perhaps most of all the new way of making the best of the worst.  When the mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 most of us watching the news felt our connectedness to eachother, much as we did on 9/11.  I don't know what all the ramifications will be.  But I'll be paying attention and looking for whatever small part is open to me. 

For now I'll still be doing it from home, whose every nook and cranny I've come to love more during these ten months of seclusion.  The place where we're safest from the virus; where the masks come off and we can hold each other close.   During these months I've lifted so many prayers from this space and had so many of them answered.  One of the unspoken ones today, when time moved like honey.  

Thinking of each of you,  Nina Naomi

 

 

 

 

FOR THE SOULS OF THE DEPARTED, TODAY AND TOMORROW

Trinity Church, Copley Sq. Boston

For the 218,746 souls of whatever faith or none who in our land have as of this day lost their lives to this virus let me offer the following: 

Isaiah 3:1-3

But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.  For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.  

Romans 14:6-8

Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the LORD.  Also those who eat, eat in honor of the LORD, since they give thanks to GOD; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the LORD and give thanks to God.  We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.  If we live, we live to the LORD, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the LORD'S.

Salat al-Janazah

O GOD, forgive our living and our dead, those who are present among us and those who are absent, our young and our old, our males and our females.  O GOD,  whoever You keep alive, keep him alive in Islam, and whoever You cause to die, cause him to die with faith. . . . O GOD forgive him and have mercy on him. . . . 

May they rest in peace. May the hundreds who will die today rest in peace. May those who stand before their GOD on a day that for many could have been avoided rest in peace. For each of us who will die from this plague, whether by carelessness or of necessity, whether preventable or not preventable, may we find rest eternal and perpetual light. May our memory be a blessing.  In peace let us pray, Nina Naomi.

 

BEST BOOK FOR SPRING,PART II

"MISTAKING ILLUSION FOR REALITY IS SAID TO BE 

THE ROOT CAUSE  OF OUR SUFFERING"

"Integrity usually comes to people slowly and takes them unawares, as part of a natural process of maturing or through the need to be there for someone else who is counting on them.  But it can appear full-blown in times of crisis or loss."  

Dr. Rachel Naomi Ramen has learned these truisms through her years as a medical doctor counseling cancer patients.  Her book is their stories, her story and, miraculously, often our story as well.  My copy of Kitchen Table Wisdom is filled with marginalia.  After the first quotation above I wrote a simple "Wow."  A wonderful person we love has an illness that when untreated causes delusion.  This mistaking of an illusion for reality brings great hardship. Everyone suffers, together and separately.   

The second quotation also brought an event about loved ones to mind.  When his grandparents were hospitalized our son intervened and met with the doctors.  He wanted to step up.  He was young.  Then he turned to me where I was waiting down the hall.  "See, I'll be able to take care of you when you need it," he said.  He wanted me to see his maturity.  By being competent in this crisis he was instilling confidence in his readiness for the next one. Ramen says that sometimes it takes a crisis to initiate growth.  

She also writes about anger, not giving it the bad press it usually gets.  I remember my mother being angry just about every time we went to the doctor's. Angry and unreasonable.  If you're a care-taker, that may be your experience too.  My mother  had cancer.  She could have used a counselor like Dr. Ramen. "Anger is just a demand for change," Ramen says, "a passionate wish for things to be different."  It can be a way to assert personal worth in the face of a trauma.  Anger can flare if we are sad, fearful or in despair--difficult emotions we all share.  But the book addresses this as well.  Over time, Dr. Ramen says, she realized that some things that can never be fixed can still be healed.  We all need this promise, don't we?  

The book is full of promises.  "Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing."  And it is something we all can provide.  We can listen generously, to ourselves as well to others.  We can create listening sanctuaries.  We can be mindful of our own needs and the needs of others.  

This book dovetails so well with the loving kindness I'm learning about in mindfulness and meditation training. At this stage my life has been both better and worse than I expected.  This may be true for each of us.  Wonders we never expected have helped us bear hardships we could not have foreseen.  For me some of the wonders have come from prayer.  

"WHEN WE PRAY, WE DON'T CHANGE THE WORLD,

WE CHANGE OURSELVES."

"WHEN WE PRAY, 

WE STOP TRYING TO CONTROL LIFE

AND REMEMBER THAT WE BELONG TO LIFE."

Aren't these thoughts helpful?  Dr. Ramen says that with prayer we can relinquish our attachments, our attachment to fear, for example, and even our attachment to hope. The most beautiful prayer I ever heard was, "Dear God, please protect the one I love."  A prayer like that goes a long way toward healing anything doesn't it?  With love, Nina Naomi 

 

    

BEST BOOK FOR SPRING --"Anything good you've ever been given is yours forever."

Dr. Rachel Naomi Ramen ends her book with this sentence.  I wrote about her book My Grandfather's Blessings in the Post "Best Book for the Holidays about Blessings (12/8/18).  Now I have read her earlier book, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal.  It is a perfect Spring read because Spring is a time to open our hearts and embrace life, to perennially renew ourselves with the trees and the grass and the flowers, to heal with the warm sun and a soft breeze. 

This book has so much to offer.  Some gems are just snippets.  In her Preface she says that writers are people born to write, while authors are people who do something else and then write about it.  Where do diarists fall, or those of us who journal or blog I wonder? Probably some in one category and some in the other.  Or a bit of cross-over.  But an interesting distinction.  Dr. Ramen says, "Because I am not a writer, when I sat down to write, all I had were my memories."  Isn't that encouraging?  

We all have memories that are stories to be savored and celebrated, especially if we pause in our minds to interpret them, to remember them fully.  And then perhaps tell them or write them down.  Even a painful memory may include something to celebrate:  our bravery, our perseverance, our survival, the way we behaved under pressure, those who helped us, those who love us through thick and thin, how we have grown to help others. . . .

Some issues stay with us our whole life.  Living with chronic illness is one.  Losing someone at a young age is another.  Our children's suffering.  An insecure childhood.  Our own limitations.  Each time we pass through these issues we understand more.  "Most of us live lives that are far richer and more meaningful than we appreciate," Ramen says. 

Because she is a physician, much of the book is about healing.  Not being cured . . . being healed.  And about grieving and loss.  Protecting ourselves from loss by avoiding grief is not the route to healing, she thinks. Avoiding grief distances ourselves from life.  Professionally it leads to burnout.  Grieving, she believes, is a way of self-care even in a work setting.  I've found this in my law practice.  As a lawyer I've met people catastrophically injured by preventable medical errors.  I remember the baby born after prolonged oxygen deprivation; the nurse failed to notice the alarming signs on the fetal heart monitor strip.  The doctor said she wished the nurse had called her earlier.  I cannot forget being racked with sobs over that baby's future.  "We burn out not because we don't care but because we don't grieve," Dr. Ramen says. Grieving is healing.

She also explains that for our wholeness, approval is just as destructive as criticism.  I did not understand that before.  But it rings true.  

"To seek approval is to have no resting place. . .

Like all judgment, approval encourages a constant striving. 

This is as true of the approval we give ourselves as it is of the approval we offer others.

Approval can't be trusted.

It can be withdrawn at any time. . . .

Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it." 

Ramen also explains that our wholeness can be whittled down by family, cultural beliefs (boys don't cry; neither do professionals; girls don't speak their minds), or spiritual beliefs. It made me question whether I have to judge myself against a yardstick of Christian acceptability that always finds me short.  I expect God never intended that.  Such a blessing to outlive our self-judgments, to let go of a standard of excellence.  All love is unconditional Ramen states.  Anything else is just approval.  What a message for us parents, spouses, lovers, friends. . . . 

According to Talmudic teaching, we do not see things as they are, but as we are.  The author calls this a trap.  "Life usually offers us far more than our biases and preferences will allow," she says.  Isn't that wise?  This book is full of wisdom.  Inner peace as a spiritual quality rather than a mental quality.  This fits with the way I practice mindfulness and meditation.  It fits with our weekly liturgy that includes the prayer for the "peace that passes all understanding." 

I am only touching the surface of the life-affirming nature of this book.  This post needs a Part II.  Buy or borrow the book if you wish.  Or just ponder what is written here.  Like My Grandfather's Blessings this book is a slow read.  So much to absorb.  To enjoy this Spring.      Nina Naomi  

THREE BLESSINGS FOR SPRING

Whatever our faith we need times to repent and rejoice.  Repent for what we have done or left undone. And rejoice for the forgiveness we receive from those we have harmed, our friends or our family. . . .  Forgiveness also from God.  Forgiveness that is open to all humanity without condition.  What could be more freeing than repenting and forgiving? We all find that receiving a sincere apology for a hurt brings an almost immediate calm.  When someone recognizes that they have wounded us, our soul can breath again.  Repentance, forgiveness, rejoicing.  Three blessings that allow us to thrive. This is most certainly true. 

Today is the 4th Sunday in Lent, a day when Christians traditionally take respite from the penitence of early Lent as encouragement to the coming action of taking up the Cross and carrying it through the Crucifixion of Good Friday until the Resurrection and rejoicing of Easter Sunday.  

So today in church was a rejoicing Sunday. This morning's guest choir was the Duke Amandla Chorus, an African music group that performs traditional music from African countries in their native languages.   Like many, my husband and I love the traditional music of Africa.  We have visited when our daughter taught in Lebowa, at that time a nonindependent homeland for the northern Sotho people.  

The first offertory anthem today was an invitation in the Swati language from the landlocked Kingdom of Eswatini (also known as Swaziland). Here are the words of "Ngena Nawe" in English. 

Here is the door

The door to life

It has been opened for you

It's wide open for you

Enter, you are welcome

For your freedom and upliftment

Do not hesitate

It is also open for you

Here are the gates

The door to life

It's wide open for you

Wake up; listen to his Glory

Do not forget

The door to happiness

Is wide open for you

Do not be afraid

The living waters

Have come abundantly and with strength

Come in, you are welcome

This is the source of life

Drink, drink

This is all for you

You are invited to eat; eat, be merry, be filled

What welcoming words.  "Here is the door, It has been opened for you, It's wide open for you."  This could be a meditative refrain.  So affirming no matter what our beliefs are.  A place to enter for "freedom and upliftment."  "The door to happiness is wide open" for us. For me I think of the door to eternal life as well as the day-to-day happiness that is available to us all.  I hear compassion for self and others.  You may hear something else.  I wish everyone could have heard the drumming, the call and response. And felt the rhythms.  So Lent can be as energetic and joyous as Spring.  It was today.   

 

 

"FIND YOUR INNER CALM"

When our children were young mindfulness was the last thing on my mind; mindlessness was more like it.  Even past the toddler stage.  Where's money for the book fair? Where's that permission slip? Where's my homework?  Where are my boots? Can someone pick me up?  I have flute lesson tonight.  I have drum lesson.  It's church youth group.  Every parent knows this drill.  Working parent[s], kids, pets and then add the wonderful holiday season.  

I would have rushed past the idea of an inner calm.  Who had the time?  And mindfulness was not even a fad, let alone a movement.  I know there are readers at this stage in their lives.  Not many, because who at this stage has the time to read?  On the other hand, I see inspirational mommy-bloggers who help other moms feel less alone, less isolated.  Some are natural comedians. All are super-moms in my opinion. I read as many as I can.  

Why bring this up?  Well, because the holidays are laden with memories. Memories piled as high as gifts on Santa's sleigh.  Because my husband and I are sifting through memorabilia to create family treasure boxes for the grandchildren. Because so many of our Christmas decorations were made by a child.  And because all of my favorite magazines, the ones filled with Christmas crafting ideas, are reminding me to find my inner calm. 

So, I'm going to count my blessings and do it.  First, the blessings.  We made it through that early period of our lives. We're being recycled as grandparents, but we're not in charge.  Our role is limited:  school pick-up, enjoying a band concert, supporting school fund-raisers, sleepovers and lots of unconditional love.  So I have time for mindfulness, for seeking inner calm.

Other blessings.  Yesterday my two teenage grandsons paid a surprise visit while I'm still recovering from surgery.  Their surprises used to be scaring me to death.  Jumping out from behind something or other.  I'm great at feigning scared, aren't you?  It seems to be a grandma's  job requirement. But yesterday's visit was truly welcome. Nothing is better than seeing the love between these boys. 

More blessings.  With me s t i l l housebound from my surgery I thought we would have a lonely holiday season.  Far from it.  So many wonderful friends have made sick-calls.  Most bring soup or bread or a poinsettia.  Some have brought whole meals and joined us to eat them.  One of my friends today bathed Mr. Wiggles for me!  Can you believe that?  Our stinky little boy needed a bath and she corralled all 10 pounds of him and left him fragrant and soft. 

Then she brought in some outdoor pot-plants that needed saving.  Of course I immediately had negative thoughts about myself.  Have I paid visits and brought food and good cheer when others have been sick?  But mindfulness says "banish that inner critic."  So I did.  Thank you friends for sharing tea and cookies, for listening to my tales of recovery, for relieving my husband so he can do all the errands that pile up at Christmas.  And bathing Mr. Wiggles. Now that goes above and beyond! 

So I would say that I have found my inner calm.  Being in a recovery mode has eliminated all the hassle of the season.  Friends and family have picked up the slack everywhere.  The trick will be to retain that inner calm when my recovery is finished and I no longer need the help that has been so freely given.  What has been your experience?  How do you reach and maintain an inner calm?  I want to know everyone's secrets.  In peace, Nina Naomi

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND NATURE

"I believe in God only I spell it Nature."  So said Frank Lloyd Wright (186-1959). "Stay close to Nature. . . . It will never fail you," he told his students.

"Just connecting to beauty is consoling.  You see that people don't only make wars; they can also create great works of art."  Marieke Nijmanting

We were fortunate this winter to realize one of those life-time goals we all have. We visited Fallingwater in rural Pennsylvania.  The day was a lovely, crisp 18 degrees.  But the waterfall over which the house is built kept on flowing.  The noise of nature a constant for the people who lived there.  Somehow the freezing cold for two North Carolinians made it just that more memorable.  This picture is taken from across the creek, looking back at the cantilevers that jut out from the body of the house and follow the waterfall itself.

A fire burned in the open hearth and the furniture was swathed in fur rugs and blankets.  A true house built upon a rock. 

The shadows cast in the winter sunlight were stark with symmetry.  See how they crisscross?  It seemed like a very livable home, one that, even with the expanse of open space would cozen you in winter and free you in summer.  We were awed. 

Later in the week we went to the Guggenheim Museum across from Central Park in NYC.  It is said that Wright was inspired by the nautilus shell in designing the spiral ramp.  As someone with a twenty-year collection of sea shells, I resonated to that.  The museum seems to be a spiritual place, with rhythm and movement, unfolding like an organism.  Look at the rotunda skylight, letting in the sunshine through glass panes fashioned with the symmetry of a spider's web. 

Central to the rotunda is an Alexander Calder (1898-1976) mobile called Red Lily Pads.  After we saw it, I did some research.  It reminds many of leaves skimming a pond.  Ovoid disks floating parallel to the earth in a way that echoes the unpredictable activity of nature.  What amazingly simple beauty.  We took the elevator to the top ramp then walked slowly down, enjoying the mobile from every level.  Something millions of people from all over the world have done.

So much to be thankful for.  Great architecture and art.  The freedom to visit and enjoy it.  Armchair travel.  Photography.  The seasons.  Some days blessings abound.