"THE CLOSER ONE APPROACHES TO GOD, THE SIMPLER ONE BECOMES" TERESA OF AVILA (1515-1582)

Many of our worries are unavoidable, but some take time and energy that we could spend better elsewhere.  And some that are legitimate and valid we simply cannot solve, not on earth.  Mental illness in our family, for example. Denied and untreated. That I must turn over to God.  Over and over again, as I forget and grind against this sadness, I must turn it over to God.  Lay it at God's feet and ask for help and guidance. Lay it at God's feet and walk away.  What could be simpler?

Whether our faith includes God or not, we can also recognize that there are some things in our life we simply must back away from, and do that gratefully. There have been things in my life that I have turned over and they have resolved. Or they have not resolved but I have become more accepting.  I have asked for help and guidance and have received it. We can begin anew after almost every heartbreak I suspect. When that happens in my life I give thanks to God. We all have places to lay our gratitude. What could be simpler? 

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) says that the important thing is not to think much but to love much.  How perfect is that?  Not to analyze, dissect, fret, project, but love.  What could be simpler? 

She says we have only one soul, only one death, only one life.  If we remember this there will be many things about which we will care nothing.  Again, what could be simpler than that?  

As  I am recovering from surgery this holiday season, I am not free to engage in anything hectic.  My holiday season is simple.  Maybe I can go to church this Advent, maybe not.  Maybe I can toast the New Year or, if still on painkillers, maybe not.  I don't know where you are as the Festive Season is in full-swing.  Minding children? Juggling work? Caring for someone sick?  Sick yourself? Planning dinner for the whole family? Navigating loneliness? On top of the world?  I think Teresa of Avila, Spanish saint and mystic, speaks to all of this.  What could it hurt to be closer to God?  Or to become simpler? What could be better than that?  Nina Naomi

A PLACE TO STOP, THINK AND WONDER, PART III

The Denial of St. Peter, Gerard Seghers (1591-1651)

Museums are such wonderful places.  I've written about them before.  So many people agree.  School groups, singles, parents and children all wandering about looking.  A place to stop, think and wonder.  But I hadn't paid enough attention to the museums close to home.  The North Carolina Museum of Art is a mere 1/2 hour drive away.  Because my brother is an artist we decided to go there when he came to visit.  What an enriching experience! Look at the light in this beautiful painting, how it shines on the faces, how St. Peter is illuminated. Of course I wanted to read about how this was achieved.  I learned that the luminosity and plasticity of the oils gave new color and realism to the Renaissance paintings. Before that frescoes had been painted with tempera--somewhat like the chalk paints we use for furniture today.   

The Museum was also having a Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) show, juxtaposing her work with younger artists influenced by her.  She is of course known best for her outsize flowers. She said about flowers, 

Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. 
We haven't time and it takes time--
like to have a friend. 

Isn't that a wonderful comparison, that taking time to see something as fragile and wondrous as a flower is like taking time for friendship?  Because I am now deep into my Mindfulness and Meditation course this resonates with me.  Seeing, paying attention whether to our friends or to nature.  Being aware, being present.

O'Keeffe didn't only paint nature, but I didn't know that before.  I'm an art novice.  This is one of her early portraits, Woman with Apron (1918), described as "whirling washes of saturated color."
 

Woman with Apron, O'Keeffe, 1918

This next one too is of pure saturated color and was maybe my favorite of hers in the exhibit.  It seems like the expression of an emotion.  I could look at it everyday. Do you like this sort of painting?  So different from her famous flowers.  

Evening Star No. II, O'Keeffe, 1917

But what I really loved was being introduced to the paintings of Anna Valdez (b. 1985).  Valdez, I learned, paints natural forms along side domestic objects.  Like O'Keeffe, her work is characterized by rigorous observation.  I love the floral forms and decorative patterning.  They're almost like illustrations. Yet every inch of the canvas is filled with color.  Different from the simple swaths of color in the O'Keeffe paintings.  What do you think?  Would you like to look at something like this when you woke in the morning?  Or came home from work?  Would it cheer you, make you happy?  Intrigue you?  I think it would me.  

Deer Skull with Blue Vase, Valdez, 2017

Study-ing, Valdez, 2015

Sometimes it seems like a museum won't provide enough entertainment or stimulation.  We're so used to speed and instant gratification.  But a museum is always worth a visit.  We look beyond ourselves into the creative minds of others.  I'd like to do this more. 

GETTING AWAY MAY BE ALL WE NEED--FALL IN THE ROCKIES

Aspens in Fall, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Sometimes we have to get away, even if just for a day.  Surviving two hurricanes and with my own surgery and rehab looming, I knew that was what we needed.  A few days away from everyday cares.  Visiting our national parks is high on my list.  There are enough for anyone's lifetime. Sixty in fact, in twenty-eight states plus the Virgin Islands and American Samoa. I looked it up.  California, Alaska, Utah and Colorado have the most.  With enough credit card miles and a direct flight, I picked Colorado for us.  The Rockies!  

No where is America more beautiful than in our national parks. They belong to us all.  To drive through, hike, camp and canoe, horseback and bike ride, fish, swim, raft. . . .  So many people have been to more of our parks than I have. Eighty-four million visitors a year! 

So I found a cabin on a river--no lodge, no fancy meals, just the same cooking I do at home.  But there was elk and bison from the Safeway to grill, and Filet Mignon at  prices we've never seen in North Carolina.  The first day we saw the bright yellow aspen in full fall glory.  The second day the elk were everywhere.  We were so excited!  

Bull, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

And the third day it snowed!  We walked around Bear Lake then lit the fire in the cabin and settled in.

Bear Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park

Funny how even a trip of 4 nights can be a trip of a lifetime.  And planned on no notice.  Just make up our minds and go.  I see so many lessons here.  The "Just Do It" slogan of Nike, for one.  That kind of thinking can propel us to grab the chance to make a difference in our lives.  Being in nature, feeling awe, standing before majesty, these experiences are not so hard to come by.  Tomorrow I can't get on a plane, but I can go outdoors at dusk and wait for the stars to come out.  I can get up in the night and see the moon.  I can walk Mr. Wiggles before the sun comes up and feel the chill of autumn.  

Maybe you're somewhere special right now.  Or maybe you're at home and that's special.  Maybe your pansies are blooming, or your mums, and your trees are turning, or the first snow has fallen, or the berries are on your cedar trees.  Something good is happening in nature.  Whether near or far, something good is happening.  Let's enjoy it.  Let's just do it!  Nina Naomi

HOW OLD ARE YOU? DOES IT MATTER?

 

Picasso, "The Mother," 1901

There's some conventional wisdom about age, about the difference between being young, middle-aged or old. The young do more, the old know more, so they say.  The middle-aged do a little less than the young and know a little less than the old. Still, it's considered by most to be the prime of life. 

Where being young ends depends on our age, doesn't it?  Our parents always seem old, even though my mother was 44 at my wedding and thought she was pregnant!  I didn't smoke because my parents did.  How could anything they did be cool?  Our children always seem young even though they may be middle-aged themselves.  My grandsons can't sign a contract, buy a car, support themselves, really do much besides homework.  But they think their mother is old and their father even older.  Their mother bristles at jokes about her age, but their father takes it in stride.

Within my family I'm old (and loved) because I'm the grandmother.  But as a wife I'm just me, no age at all.  When my husband and I go to bed at night we don't think, well here we are--two grandparents.  

As professionals, as each of us ages we become more experienced and high-priced.  As consumers we have more disposable income.  And of course with our friends we are all ageless.  Same with our interest groups--yoga, biking, book club, kayaking. . . age is not relevant.  

The question is, is it ever relevant?  

Every day we are both young and old--the oldest we have ever been and the youngest we will ever be.  So said Paul Simon (b. 1941) in "The Boxer." 

I am older than I once was

And younger than I'll be 

But that's not unusual.  

No, it isn't strange 

After changes upon changes

We are more or less the same

After changes we are

More or less the same

                         

There are so many quotes on aging--"Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age."  Who said that? You would think a comedian, like Nora Ephron.  Instead it is Victor Hugo (1802-1885), the creator of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. 


Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014), Nobel Prize for Literature 1982, wrote: "Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega.  An end in itself."  

Edouard Vuillard, "A Seamstress," 1892

I had a great grand-mother who used to sit by the window in her bedroom.  The window was upstairs over a front-porch roof, so she couldn't see the people passing on the sidewalk.  But she could smell the trees and hear the leaves rustle and the rain fall.  She could hear the thunder and feel the air.  She was nearly blind.  Thin, frail, skin drawn over sharp bones, white hair pulled back from her face.  This is my memory.  A daughter lived with her, my great-Aunt Lillie.  I wish I knew if Aunt Lillie helped her dress, brushed her soft hair, creamed her hands and face for her. She must have. I picture this done lovingly.  My great grandma had none of the sights or smells that sometimes children associate unkindly with old age.  She was soft and sweet-smelling, her bony hands just slightly chilled, her eyes blue with cataracts, her house-dress clean and crisp.  We loved her. 

When my mother died and I wrote her obituary, my father said, "I never thought of her as 82."  Seeing it in writing surprised him. 

Robert Frost says, "The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected."  In my own mind now that my father has died too, I must be in the afternoon.  Still, younger than I'll be.  That's not unusual. It isn't strange.  After changes upon changes I am more or less the same.   Do you feel like that?  Are you happy with yourself no matter what your age?  I'd like to stay that way.  Our inner lives eternal. That could be a prayer.    With affection, Nina Naomi

"LIFE IS LONG IF YOU KNOW HOW TO USE IT," SENECA

On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (4BC-65AD), the Roman Stoic, is a brief work that is so full of ideas that are current.  How can it be that someone from the 1st century can tap into our needs today?  It speaks to the universality of everything human I think.  It's like when I happen to check audience stats and see that someone in Andorra has looked at this blog, or someone in Czechia, the Netherlands, Portugal, or the UK. We must all have universal interests and thoughts.  We're not so different from one another, maybe not at all different from one another.  That may be true across time as well, across centuries, not just across the globe.  

Some things we are all drawn to.  The sea is one. -- Not today exactly, as we in North Carolina watch Hurricane Florence make land fall and flood our rivers, as our causeways are closed and we have evacuated with our re-entry passes in hand.  As we wait to either lose power or for its return and the branches crack and the trees thud.  No not today.  But most days.  Most days we all enjoy the tides, the mystery of the forests, the views from our mountains, the healthy endurance that nature requires.  We know that going out is the same as going in.  

So as we have the day off and I have a momentary return of power, I am reading Seneca.  How apt to read a Stoic philosopher during the silences and surges of a storm.  Let's begin with the quote,  

"Life is Long if You Know How to Use It."  

Seneca is a chider in this essay, a bit of a scold.  But what he says makes sense to me.  Think about these two statements:

"They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn." 

 "But putting things off is the biggest waste of life:  it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future.  The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today."

Or this one, 

People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy." 

I am guilty of all these things, I know that.  Losing a day or night to agitation when my worries have gotten the better of me.  Putting off something I want to do.  Allowing screen time to suck away the hours. Neglecting the joy of being outdoors.    

Or this  worst--letting memories of a bad day color what could be a good day. Or a past hurt destroy the present. I like the way Seneca addresses this.  Focusing on the bad he says is like punishing ourselves for our misfortune, increasing our ills instead of lessening them.  Isn't the original loss or hurt punishment enough, he asks.  Lingering in our suffering, coddling it with attention, is like pleading for more lashes.  If that profited us, he writes, if a night spent in sorrow instead of sleep brought relief, that would be one thing.  But it doesn't.  

I'm not suggesting we all read Seneca's Consolations. Or become Stoics. But I do like it that a literary form that dates from the 5th century BC can reach us today. That the need for consolations from life's ills was the same then as now. That part of Seneca's philosophy was that contentment could be reached through simple living, reason and social equality.  Especially the contentment through simple living part.  

So I've signed up for a 14-week MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction)  course at the Center for Integrative Medicine at Duke University Medical Center.  Something I want to do that I'm not putting off!  It's part mindfulness (staying in the present non-judgmentally), part meditation and part Yoga.  Maybe a bit of Roman stoicism, I'll find out.  No pleading for more lashes in this course I bet!  I'm ready to put in the work.  

With thanksgiving for my long life, Nina Naomi 





 

  

THE NOWNESS OF LIFE

I was thinking about this--how much our life is more like a river than the top of the mountain.  How seldom we can say, "OK that's done."  Carly Simon has a beautiful ballad she wrote after her mother died.  The chorus is

I'll wait for you no more like a daughter,

That part of our life together is over

But I will wait for you forever

Like a river...

The first three lines are just a small range of even notes until her voice rises and soars on the word "forever," drawing it up, out and down.  It sounds like falls in a river.  I love the song, maybe now more than ever since my mother is gone.  

When we climb the mountains in our life, we never reach the top.  They're rugged and hard but they're beautiful and we love climbing.  We see wonderful views along the way and find treasures, but we also love coming back down.  Then we can follow the river, float, swim, survive its currents and climb another day if we want.  These are good choices.  They last. 

So what are these things that are never over, the tops we don't reach?  You know them.  Forgiveness is one, ourselves or others.  That takes forever, sung with our own voices rising and lingering on the word.  Understanding our children is another.  Or our partner.  Or even ourselves--maybe especially ourselves.  We never say, "OK that's done!"  

Making a home is another.  That's why we feather our nests over and over.  We add a blanket or a new plant.  We rearrange our collections.  We paint a room, plump the pillows, or even move and start over.  We don't want our homes to be finished.  We aren't, why should they be?

Enjoying nature is another one.  Yesterday I read an article called "In Life's Last Moments, Open a Window," by Dr. Rachel Clarke.  She works in palliative care in Britain. She says that even (or maybe especially) the dying want the experience of nature.  When the doors and windows of their rooms are opened their spirits lift, they're more peaceful, accepting and calm.  They want the sights and sounds of birds, of leaves rustling, and the feel of the breeze.  The idea seems to be that in our last days the trivial and the important merge.  Perhaps we need nature to remind us that we are part of its cycle.  She quotes a writer who said about his ending, "The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous."  I think being on a river or climbing, pausing, climbing, pausing are wondrously in the now. 

Dr. Clarke says that people often imagine a hospice to be only about the dismalness of  death.  But it isn't, she says.  It's about "the best bits of living.  Nowness is everywhere. Nature provides it."  We want this all the time, don't we, the best bits of living, nowness everywhere, nature providing?  I'm going to do my best to put myself in a place where this can be true for me.  A place in my river or on my mountain side. 
                                   

LET YOURSELF GO

Summer just opens the door and lets you out. 

This is a quote by Deb Caletti (b. 1963), young adult author.  I like it.  But actually, it can apply to any season.  Spring certainly, the season of rebirth.  Fall, which is also new beginnings, crisp air, the school year, the end of a hodge-podge summer schedule.  Even Winter with the cleanliness of new fallen snow and the brightness of Christmas decorations.  I figure just about any time is a good time to take off, to soar.  I am thinking partly about the times when we can be who nobody thinks we are.  

When we're alone of course.  We can dance around the house, sing as loud as we want, turn the music up, clean like a dervish or let things go, cry if we need to or practice scream therapy, sleep with the covers over our head or stay up all night. . . .   But also when we're on vacation, whatever time of year.  We won't run into our high school teacher at the super market, or an old friend (or enemy) grabbing coffee.  On vacation, especially if alone, we can wear hats, red lipstick, chat with strangers, do something outrageous, create a persona.  If a friend wants to do this with us, all the better.  

It's fun to be someone different.  I rented my husband and me a place in the mountains, just for a couple of nights.  At home we are straight-laced grandparents.   On a mini-break we added spa treatments, late-night oysters, mountain views, hair-pin curves.  Oh my goodness.  Just 3 hours from home but so good to be someone else. 

You parents and grandparents, family members, care-taking children, teachers, accountants, lawyers, bosses, have you done this?  Gotten away for a night?  Gotten to be whomever you want?  Students can do this when they go away to college.  A chance to change who they were in high school.  We can do it in a new job or new city.  A do-over.  It's downright liberating.  

I don't mean a break from our values.  Or what we believe in or who we trust or who we would lay down our life for.   Just a chance to lighten the load, to let ourselves go.  To be someone else for awhile or forever.  Do you have a weekend alone or away?  Can you plan something? Why not open the door and let yourself out?  I'm looking for a time right now.