The problem with writing about falling leaves, multi-hued pansies, heirloom pumpkins and the beauties of the season--those little ordinary things where our hearts can rest--is that here in the United States, Donald Trump et al are making it so much harder for We the People to flourish.  

So let me admit, that is our background.  That is what colors all we do, those millions of us who are not MAGA Republicans, who think and worry and work every day to ensure that our children get vaccinated, that COVID shots remain available, that cancer research grants are restored, that our neighbors are safe from ICE and off-site Gulags, and that voters are heard.  It's no small task since never before have the President and his supporters worked to destroy democracy.   1984 by George Orwell is no longer science fiction.  When you read, or reread, it, you will see the outcome of giving up.  Giving up, as they say, is unforgivable.  Or, in less judgmental language, not an option.  The next national #NoKings rally is October 18--find the one near you!  Nothing is more inspirational that to remember that the 1% is just that.  

This week Charlie Kirk was murdered.  Another victim of gun violence by another young white man discontent for some reason, it doesn't matter what.  But because Charlie was a right-winger who hated blacks and trans people and gay men and women and people from Latin American countries and Mexico, the United States flag was at half-mast.  Shame, that. We have had 100 school shootings thus far, and no flag was ordered half-mast for these innocent children. 

And what happens while all this goes on?  Well, at my house the dogwood have turned red.  At my house the frogs are as loud as they were in Spring.  The humidity has lifted and we open the doors and windows.  No heat or AC.   The meadow is ready for its last cut of the season.  The fire pit will be used soon, maybe this weekend if evenings are chill.  I am so looking forward to long nights and short days.  All the things I posted last, the things I love that are the same every year, are splayed before me.  Before you is splayed the same.   

At my house, like yours, children and grandchildren are the light of our life.  We cook, we pick fresh herbs, we fold laundry, we work, we clean gutters, we take care of family, we love friends.  There is no magic.  There is faith, if we have it.  There is activism if we are so inclined.  And yes, we are not giving up but while we gather and rally and vote, we will enjoy the sweetness of autumn, the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."  We will live in this duality of things.  We will resist, we will not despair, we will flourish.  This we will do.

In peace, Nina Naomi 

 

 

OLDER BY A DAY WITH A CURIOUS MIND

Renoir, Misia Sert, 1904

Today I am older than I've ever been,

With hair still long and curious mind,

A peaceful home and love forever by my side.  

At night we coil and kiss and he says, "I adore you."

I wake to birdsong, legs entwined and back just shy of pain.

Yes, older than I've ever been, but feeling almost young.

Sometimes when memory interferes, I scold and back it stays.

" Not wanted," my heart beats and chastised it retreats. 

Thoughts of that never-time when from great fear I persevered. 

That never-time I wanted not. 

That blot that fades as we grow older than we've ever been,  

That cannot change the truth and--now I know--that never could. 

I am not plagued by worry or perfection, not of body nor of soul.

I've layered doubt with intuition and asked my God to comfort me. 

My ears are full of silent sounds, my eyes the trees, the meadow grass, 

My heart the shaggy hickory bark, the bugle weed and ash. 

To find faith everywhere is such an easy ending, 

And yet an ending to embrace when--you know--we grow old.   

DEATH ON THE NEUSE RIVER GREENWAY

On October 14 we were enjoying a break at the beach just over the causeway from Pamlico Sound where the mouth of the Neuse River flows from its source in the North Carolina Piedmont where we live. The Neuse is 275 miles of wild beauty and a recreational haven, widening as it reaches the Sound, big enough for graceful sail boats and the cargo ships that leave from the Port at Morehead City.  

Then the news came.  Five dead on the Neuse River Greenway Trail in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of them a police officer, the shooter a 15-year-old boy, in custody and all promise of his life--which surely every life has--now over.  A teenage boy with too few friends and too many guns--this is often the scenario.  

In my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri just eleven days later more murder.  A 19-year-old who had graduated from the Performing Arts School there just last year, opened up and killed a student and a teacher.  We have a performing arts school in our town too, filled with dedicated teachers and promising students.  I wrote about it on May 25, 2022 ("Yes Things are Hard but We Go On"). That was right after a white supremacist killed ten Black shoppers in Buffalo NY, and I remembered a moment of fear in the crowded school auditorium.  

The parents of this 19-year-old and the police had flagged him as a danger, but he bought an AR-15 style weapon legally from a private party.  The police arrived and he was dead within 14 minutes.  A note was found in his car which read, "I don't have any friends.  I don't have any family.  I've never had a girlfriend.  I've never had a social life.  I've been an isolated loner my whole life."  And yet he was remembered at the school as friendly and helpful.  Imagine if he hadn't had access to a gun.  

Imagine if all the lonely, misguided boys and men at their wits' end due to the life crises that happen to us all didn't have access to weapons.  Imagine if there were some limits or some small amount of sense to the number, power and capacity of the guns that just about anyone can legally acquire.  

Imagine if instead of scapegoating the mentally ill, the weapons just weren't out there.  Gun lobbyists say, "Arm the good guys," but good guys become bad guys in a nanosecond.  With the number of armed Americans, can we really predict which one will respond to a situation with violence?  

Imagine if boys weren't given guns as a right of manly passage.  Think if when you were feeling hopeless no gun was within reach to take your own precious life. What if it were simply harder to find a lethal means to do harm?   

This is a sad time.  Whatever our faith, as we know, it doesn't protect us from pain or loss.  No religion is a shield.  In fact, religion can be profoundly misused in a partnership with nationalism to glorify gun ownership, the 2nd Amendment flown on high and the Ten Commandments buried.  We are left mourning the present carnage and dreading the carnage to come.  

We lament and pray and hope (because we must).  We try to alleviate despair and give each other reasons to live.  We can and must cast our votes with candidates who are best prepared to help set our society free from the domination of guns.  

I am home now witnessing a beautiful yellow autumn.  The reds and golds are ankle deep and our driveway can't be seen.  There is wood stacked by the door waiting for a cold snap.  If left to God alone all would be right with the world.  But it isn't. We must ask God to save us from ourselves.  This is my prayer.  AMEN 

Fall Lantana

"GOD UNBOUNDED NET UNFURLED" BY NINA NAOMI

 

Faith is the water that buoys the soul. 

Rising, rocking

Heart-held, fear-felled. 

 

Faith is the thing with wings 

That lifts me from the mud and sets me loose. 

That lets us fly. 

No more this, no more that,

Just God unbounded net unfurled. 

 

Faith is the memory of all we believe.

All we trust. 

For you, for us.  

Our lovers perhaps, ourselves, our God.  

Faith makes a nest for love. 

 

Faith can be borrowed when all is ruined,

Until your own returns.  

Faith can sleep and then awaken like a moth.   

It will take hold of you, gently, and say in your ear 

"I am here.  I am here."  

 

 

YESTERDAY WAS ONE OF THOSE DAYS

Meadow Wildflowers

Yesterday was one of those days.  Too much ruminating, too many unhelpful thoughts.  Does this ever happen to you?  Like all of us I suspect, things have happened that I wish hadn't. Sometimes one of those is right there waiting for me as I wake in the morning.  As if whatever happened isn't enough, my mind decides to enlarge it, creating unpleasant scenarios against my will.   

Luckily I had signed up for a free course at learning@mindful.org.  I love this sort of thing.  Choose what you want whenever you want.  So I picked the soothing voice of Jessica Morey on the topic of nourishing emotional resilience.  The meditation helped.  It was calming.  Then I went outside.  Outside always helps.  The daisies are just beginning to fill the meadow.  In a week they will look like this, bending with the grasses to follow the breeze.  

Even yesterday there were enough daisies, lavender bugle weeds and buttercups for a bouquet for my breakfast room.  Still, the unhelpful memories kept interfering, some triggered by a short conversation later in the afternoon.  That bugaboo hyper-vigilance was roused.  

I decided to open my prayer journal.  That turned out to be just what I needed.  After writing I began reading over prior entries.  Of course there are prayers of supplication, prayers that arise from need or fear or concern.  All the emotions we feel.  But so much gratitude.  So many reminders of the goodness of everyday.  Of healing, of lessenings of traumas, of the love I receive and hopefully give.  

Life goes on in a haphazardly beautiful way. A way good enough for me and I hope for you too.  That goodness is what a diary of any mindful nature lover should be mostly about.  

                                           from Nina Naomi 

 

 

SEVEN STANZAS AT EASTER

 

John Updike wrote the most famous Easter poem of the second half of the 20th century.  If you believe, or want to, it is worth rereading.  

SEVEN STANZAS AT EASTER (1960)

S1                                   Make no mistake:  if He rose at all

it was as His body;

if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules

reknit, the amino acids rekindle,

the Church will fall.

If I'm not in a hurry, I find God in nature every time I walk outdoors.  But loving God's creation isn't a belief.  A belief is knowing that the tomb was really empty and that the man Jesus showed his pierced palms to Thomas.  Updike's "if" in line 1 is not hedging his bets, and we don't need to hedge ours.  

S2                                       It was not as the flowers,

each soft Spring recurrent;

it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled

eyes of the eleven apostles;

it was as His flesh; ours. 

His flesh rose and ours will too.  That's the promise of Easter.  We won't turn into Monarchs floating among the Lantana.  Our very bodies will walk (or stand or sit or lie) with the risen Lord.  

S3                                 The same hinged thumbs and toes,

the same valved heart

that-pierced-died, withered, paused, and then

regathered out of enduring Might

new strength to enclose. 

 More anatomy.  As His heart re-beat, so will ours.

S4                               Let us not mock God with metaphor,

analogy, sidestepping, transcendence

making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

faded credulity of earlier ages:

let us walk through the door.

The Resurrection is not a parable.  Not a puzzling little narrative where one thing might stand for something else.  It is simply, literally, true. It needs no interpretation. Jesus rose from the dead.  That's why he is the Christ.  Take a breath.  Open the door to the room of faith and walk in.

S5                            The stone is rolled back, not paper-mache,

not a stone in a story,

but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow

grinding of time will eclipse for each of us

the wide light of day. 

It's all literal.  The wounds, the death, the grave, the stone.  And next comes the angel, literal too, wearing a garment that somebody wove!  No one imagined the angel.  We don't need our imaginations here. 

S6                                And if we have an angel at the tomb,

make it a real angel,

weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,

opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen

spun on a definite loom.

S7                           Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are

embarrassed by the miracle,

and crushed by remonstrance.  

I remember (always) when our son died.  Instead of harming my faith, his death made it more logical.  We wouldn't be created in all our complexity to end on the 9th Floor of Duke Medical Center.  Now that would be ridiculous, not eternal life.

Let's have a wonderful death and resurrection.  Happy Easter!  

                                                    Nina Naomi 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIND COMFORT HERE

Quote by Jane Austen

 These are thoughts I have that comfort me.  May they comfort you as well.    Nina Naomi

     There will be better days ahead. 

    When we look for the light, we find it.

Faith is the water that buoys the soul. 

    Everyone has their fair share of bad days.  I have no more nor less than anyone else.  

Faith is the thing with wings that lets you fly.  

    Hard thoughts, prayers and petitions, thankful hearts:  these can be a good day's work.  

Faith is the memory of all we believe.  

    To live in the moment is to be unaware of the hours. 

    There is goodness in setting your face to the sun. 

Faith makes a nest for love. 

    It's possible to grieve and live fully at the same time.  

    We are called upon to care.  

    Anyone who has knelt in desperation knows that they have not reached the end.

Faith can be borrowed until you find your own.  

    No one regrets an hour spent with a thankful heart. 

    There is room to breathe for all of us.  

Faith can sleep and then awaken.   It will take hold of your shoulders and whisper in your ear,  "I am here.  I am here."  

 

 

 

 

  

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.

 

HOW CAN IT BE AUGUST?

How can it be August?  We've been making peace with the sameness of days, and even weeks, but now months?  In our town K through 12 will be online again. The school buildings are shuttered.  September will be the same as May. I'm relieved really. 

I watched the news this morning. Maybe a mistake, I admit.  Forty-seven thousand (47,000) new cases in the US today.  China had 43.  Not 43,000.  Just 43.  And they don't have a vaccine either.  But they've brought down their numbers now, wearing masks and distancing. It's not rocket science, as they say.  No trickier than buckling a seat belt to save lives.  Takes no longer than putting on a pair of glasses. 

I think I'm feeling discouraged.  Do you have days like that? 

My family's favorite baseball team is the St. Louis Cardinals.  But we're seeing that dissolve before our very eyes.  Four more players tested positive.  Games postponed (aka cancelled).  Football no better. Our teenagers love their marching bands, but that's a no go.  We've been anticipating the diversion of sports.

Remember when Trump said he wanted to see the churches packed on Easter?  At our church we're hoping that's true by next Easter.  We don't expect it by Christmas.  My husband preached at a funeral this afternoon, for a man who spent years building friendships and doing good.  But only 25 of his friends could attend, and those carefully spaced.  The total dead from the coronavirus today in the United States is 160,375 people. We're doing worse than any country in the world.

It's been hard to remember that this isn't just a number.  It's real people, like the person we buried this week.  Someone for whom the prayer, like today, might have been:

It is better to rely on the Lord than to put any trust in flesh.

It is better to rely on the Lord than to put any trust in rulers.

. . .

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.

So then, life goes on.  Unless it doesn't.  There's no business-as-usual; rather a mix of confusion and hardship, anger and resentment, compassion and kindness; a hodge-podge, some of which helps and some of which can make everything worse.  Yes, not such a good day.

Mindfulness helps.  An antidote to the discouraging news of the day.  A practice.  Not offering salvation, not offering the hope of eternal life, which I find elsewhere,  But encouraging a kind of calm.  Something for which I am grateful.  Mindfulness, like many things, has a slogan:  taking time for what matters.  Time is so amorphous now, but when we think about it, what matters isn't at all.  It's still right here, ready for our attention:  the health of our own mind; the care in our heart for the suffering of others; our faith; the love of family and friends; our compassion for those who support our lives:  the grocers, cleaners, doctors, nurses, drivers, teachers . . . .  Maybe we are some of those people for others. Our love of nature:  for me the trees I live among, persimmon and tulip, cedar and loblolly; the boulders and moss, creek and meadow; the hawks, the deer, that possum ("Good Morning, Possum," 7/30/20). 

I have been given my daily bread, every day.  And today in the service I asked for my trespasses to be forgiven, and to forgive those who trespass against me.  I asked not to be led into temptation but to be delivered from evil.  I prayed, "hallowed be thy name."  You know the words.

And I received a benediction, which I pass on however your day has been:  Let us go in peace. 

                                                  

                                                                         Nina Naomi