PURE STYLE, OUTDOORS

Pure Style Outdoors by Jane Cumberbatch is an old book (1998) I found (in my own house, underneath Decorating with Shells) that completely absorbs, lifts and deposits the reader away from distancing and isolation and stress into the world of making the best of our outdoor space.  Balcony, backyard,  courtyard or patio. . . .  Just what I need today and maybe you too.  I wish the photos were mine, but these are by Pia Tryde.  They're so good the color and texture leap from the page.  

When we step outdoors we are in a living organic space.  I in my untidy woods and meadow, or at the beach.  You the same, or with a manicured lawn, edged and mulched neatly.  Or less neatly by a creek or river or lake.  High over a city with a balcony or rooftop, or nestled in an urban bricked-in yard or patio.  On a front porch or stoop.  Wherever our own outdoor spaces are.  This book with its pictures inspires us to make the most of them.  

The picture above shows how a hodge-podge of chairs completes a charming table; a mix of old and new including even plastic chairs with a pillow or two can make for a relaxing look. The backdrop above is gnarly grape vines, but cedar trees, a ledge with window boxes, almost any background would do. 

This restful spot I could replicate.  I have overgrown grass just about everywhere.  Bringing out an old table and chair with maybe a bright cotton throw or cushion would be easy.  I have two metal tables that get a sanding and another layer of spray paint every spring.  (That makes 10 bumpy layers so far.) We sometimes need to be reminded that there's a place for uncut grass.  The same kind of spot on a pretty green mowed lawn would be just as appealing.

I've got an old worn bench too, like the one just visible in the next picture.  And of course a dish towel or napkin for the table cover.  These are such simple retreats--just a chair, table or bench.  The ones pictured have not been up-fitted, which I like, don't you?  I love it when someone shows me that the easy way is the best way.  That peeling paint has character, that a rusty old

bucket makes a great accessory or plant pot.  That a bench covered with moss doesn't need power-washing and
re-staining to look good.  That a tin can with the label peeled off actually looks stylish holding a few pansies.  And an old cabinet makes a good place for storage in an urban outdoor setting. 

My own outdoor furniture includes a teak potting bench that is quickly aging.  When I scrub it, it works just as well as a buffet for outdoor serving. 

 

Stone, Glass, Metal, Ceramic, Wood, Greenery

The theme of this book seems to be that we can make our own tranquility.  I don't have a veranda, a front porch, a rooftop garden, or a screen-in porch.  All outdoor spaces I've always wanted.  I don't even have much of a flower garden because we have deer.  They sleep under the cedar trees in the meadow and eat from the stickery patch of black raspberries that grow wild in the woods.  But we all have something.  Where we stay in New Jersey, I put plants on the fire escape and there is a community picnic table. 

Color, water, light, scent, texture and comfort are what the outdoors is all about. What could make us feel better?           From Nina Naomi

"Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" ♬

COMPASSION FOR YOU; COMPASSION FOR ME

I ran across a lovely way to practice compassion during this stressful time.  I'd like to share it.  

First, take a minute to think about someone with whom you might want a sympathetic relationship, perhaps a colleague or person who is in your circle.  Perhaps a friend, a neutral person, or even a difficult one.  Or think of a person you want to treat better, perhaps someone you snapped at or were about to.  This might be someone who serves you or works for you.  A brief encounter with one of the people whose feelings we're not always so careful about.  Or think of a stranger, the mail carrier, a road worker, our health care workers.  Someone whom you may want to understand better. Even someone with whom you're at odds or dislike.  Once you've read through this, a person is more likely to come to mind.  At least that's how it worked for me.  It may not be in any of the categories I mentioned.  You'll find the right fit.  

Then say these phrases: 

This person [or name them] has feelings, thoughts and emotions, just like me.

This person at some time has experienced physical and emotional pain and suffering, just like me.

This person has been sad, just like me.

This person has been disappointed, just like me. 

This person has sometimes been angry, just like me.

This person has felt inadequate, just like me.

This person worries, just like me.

This person is frightened sometimes, just like me.

This person will die, just like me. 

This person wants to be caring and kind to others, just like me.

This person wants to be content with what life has given, just like me.

This person wishes to be free from pain and suffering, just like me. 

This person wishes to be safe, strong and healthy, just like me.  

This person wishes to be loved, just like me.  

As I wrote these phrases and as you read them, I bet we both felt like we were admitting something important about ourselves:  that we are frightened sometimes, that we worry, that we wish to be content with our lives.  Even that we too will die.  I will and you will, not just others, not just those who are passing in this pandemic.  

So I think the first thing that this exercise does is create self compassion.  We see ourselves as vulnerable and needing tenderness and understanding.  As we realize that others are like us, we see more clearly what we ourselves are like:  persons wishing to be safe, free from suffering, healthy, loved.  Persons who have experienced every emotion, every feeling, and every thought one can imagination.  We begin to treat ourselves as tenderly as a friend would, or a mother. 

Next, send the person you've chosen thoughts of well-being:  

I wish you the ability to navigate the difficulties in your life.  (Or whatever words fit best for you, such as  "May God help you to navigate the difficulties in your life.")

I wish that you'll be peaceful and content.  (Or, "With God's help and guidance may you be peaceful and content.")

I wish that you are loved because you and I are fellow human beings together in this world.  (Or, ". . . because you and I are children of God.")

Whatever best fits us and the person with whom we sharing our compassion practice.  As we do this I feel like we can't help but also send compassion to ourselves.  Good to do in these days. 

"If you want others to be happy,

practice compassion.

If you want to be happy,

practice compassion."

-Dalai Lama

IT'S HOLY WEEK. THIS YEAR IT'S NOT THE SAME.

Duke Chapel, Durham NC

It's Holy Week.  Normally I am looking forward to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter.  All good services.  Each a little different than the other.  The striping of the altar, the Crucifixion, a day of waiting, then the Resurrection.  A lot of silence during Holy Week.  A lot of contemplation.

This year it's not the same.  At least today, Monday, I feel like it won't be. Of course maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe when Thursday comes and I follow our service on-line it will actually feel like the day of the Last Supper, the day of the first communion.  "Take, eat.  This is my body.  Take, drink.  This is my blood."  Even though we can't take communion except from prepared packets available by drive-through.  

Maybe if I listen to the Friday service in the dark it will feel like Tenebrae, the service of darkness where candles are gradually extinguished, leaving only the Christ candle to be carried out of the sanctuary symbolizing Christ's death; followed by a loud noise, the slamming of a large Bible symbolizing the closing of the tomb. Maybe I can somehow replicate leaving the church in silence in my home.  

Of course on Sunday I can't parade around my home in my Easter clothes (today is the first day in 3 weeks that just for a change I didn't pull on jeans).  There won't be a congregation singing "Jesus Christ is Risen Today," though the organist I'm assuming will play it.  There may be some Easter lilies in the background of the video but we won't be able to smell them.  We won't share an Easter breakfast or watch the children hunt for eggs.  

Still, as I write this I am changing.  I can feel it.  Writing can do that.  I find I am picturing each service, each part that I will miss.  The foot-washing on Maundy Thursday, reminding us to serve each other in humility.  The pace of the Good Friday service:  hymn, lesson, candle snuffed, lights dimmed, repeat.  Slower and darker untill we tiptoe out in silence.  The hiatus of Saturday when Christ lies in the tomb.  The newness of Easter morn that matches the bright green spring leaves in my little part of the world perfectly.   


The self-isolation and my classes on meditation have brought me closer to God.  My Prayer Journal the same.  I read this morning that we bring our suffering to God and I agree.  I am more likely to think of God out of need than gratitude.  Gratitude takes practice.  Need doesn't.  Usually I write in my Prayer Journal because I have something I desperately need to tell someone; only God will do.  God keeps our secrets.  He listens.  Now when I open the Prayer Journal--take off the rubber bands, slide out the pen--my breath slows, I am focused.  I know what's coming.  God will be there.  Maybe that will be true of the services this week, on-line or not.  I can still hear the organ, still hear the words.  Maybe God will be there.  After all, God often finds me in this house.  

Perhaps this has been a prayer.  AMEN.              Nina Naomi

The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani

THE TEMPO IS DIFFERENT AND THAT'S OK

Working From Home

We didn't intend it, but it seems like our life is on hold.  We've had unintentional holds before.  When we're sick; or a child, parent, partner or good friend is.  When we're job hunting or don't know what's next.  When someone we love is absent, or we wish we had someone to love but don't.  My clients often felt like their lives were on hold until their legal problems resolved.  And it's like that now, isn't it?  There's a lot of uncertainty. Not only "Will I catch (and survive) the coronavirus?" But when will we next see (and touch) our family and friends, not to mention a steady paycheck?  And it's just beginning.


One help is to remember that being in a difficult situation is real life too.  Waiting for the coronavirus to end does not have to put us on standby.  It changes our life, it doesn't stop it.  So we do things differently.  Unless we are on the front line, we do things now more slowly, more intently.  Auto-pilot no longer applies.  We're settling in.  

What does this mean?  For one thing, we don't have to be productive at pre-virus stress levels.  To continue that way doesn't make sense, does it?  We owe it to ourselves and others to confine stress to those direct coronavirus consequences that are unavoidable.  That's enough.  

We also don't have to follow every on-line time-filler.  I thought I would watch an opera replay from the Met every night, but I haven't.  I thought I would de-clutter more but there's no where to drop off.  I thought I would face-time more often, but do I need to get together with friends more than we did before social distancing?  I'm attending only one Zoom class (yoga) and contributing to two fun chain-mail invitations. I'm reading what I please and keeping Alexa busy with my music choices.  My outdoors never looked so good.  My meals are delicious.  We each need to pick what's right for us. The last thing we need is to import guilt into these days at home that we've been given.

I know I'm not the only one giving this advice.  To let go of expectations.  Do what we need to do with our kids and our work.  Then what we want to do.  For our families, ourselves, others . . . .  The tempo is different now and that's OK.  
                                                    Nina Naomi

Lulu enjoying the family stay-at-home Order

 






     

FEEDING THE GOOD WOLF

You know the story of the two wolves?  A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson.  He said, 

"I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart.  One wolf is vengeful, angry, lying, arrogant, greedy and mean.  The other wolf is loving, serene, truthful, compassionate, generous and kind." 

His grandson asked him, 

"Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?"  

The grandfather answered, 

"The one I feed." 

Given the way things are, I feel like I'm hearing this story for the first time.  A story that reminds us of the power we have over our experiences and emotions. 

It's easy to feel like a victim in challenging times.  I was talking with my cousin.  She reminded me of the generations that lived through the Great Depression and World War II.  Before that World War I and the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, an influenza that lasted 3 years and infected a quarter of the world's population.  Since then the Vietnam and Civil Rights generation.  We could add the Black Lives Matter the #MeToo generation and now COVID-19.  It's our turn.  That doesn't make us victims, it makes us human.  

My mother, the Nina Naomi to whom I dedicate this blog, was named after two beloved family members who both died in the 1918 pandemic, a mother and baby together.  Generations later my cousin was named after all three of them.  One year she and I put down the top on her convertible and visited all the family graves in St. Louis that we could find, including that mother and child. We had the best time!  We were feeding the good wolf.  When I reminded her of this the other day she said, "Wouldn't all those people have loved it that we were visiting them?" 

For the most part I think we are all feeding the good wolf.  We recognize that when we self-isolate we are saving more lives than our own.  We act out of self-interest, yes, but we know that our interest serves the greater good.  We are taking personal and communal responsibility.  

I'm reminded of the battle so many face against cancer.  I overheard a patient say, "I've got a year of fighting in my path.  I have to look at little things as big things and big things as little things."  We understand that.  We are doing that now everyday as we learn how the coronavirus takes no prisoners.  My husband washed the windows today; this became a big thing; I am so grateful.  We will be able to see the sun streaming into the bedroom in the morning without the haze of pollen.  The small becomes large.  

By choosing to spend our time and thoughts in ways that keep us healthy we feed our good wolf. The patient in cancer treatment mulled it over, "Yes, I've got a tough year ahead, but I plan to smile everyday because a positive attitude is sometimes the only thing I have."  How brave.  The good wolf is winning; I would like mine to win too.  
                                                                      Nina Naomi

 

MARY OLIVER SPEAKS TO US, TODAY

"The Uses of Sorrow"
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift. 


Right now many of us may feel as if our arms are full of darkness.  Or if not yet, this darkness may be closer than we're used to.  In our sleep we may feel this way. Or as we waken--disoriented, a little edgy, or even depressed. It takes awhile for our wonderful ways of coping to comfort us.  A cup of coffee perhaps, a look out our window, the voices of our children, a cuddle or two. Whatever routine we've adopted during these at-home times.  

This poet believes we can learn from sorrow, we can learn from grief, we can learn from our losses.  We can choose to be softened, to keep going, to find whatever gifts there are in our communities and togetherness even while physically apart.  Mary Oliver lived a long time.  She died before this pandemic but at age 83 would have known others.  The longer we live the more inevitable it is that there be darkness with the light.  I find comfort here.  I hope those nurses and doctors and all who are keeping us alive are finding their bit of comfort too.  

"In Blackwater Woods"

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go. 

These lines are from the last three stanzas of Oliver's poem about (inevitably) losing something that you love. She uses the burning of a forest that had sustained her as the vehicle for what she wants to express. The poem begins with flames from the trees turning their own bodies into pillars of light; next the cattails on fire; then the cinnamon smell of charred pine cones.  

In these final stanzas she tells us how to live in such a world:  a world that is mortal, where everything, everything, dies.  Love it, hold it, hold it close against our bones--that close--and then when we have to, let go.  So simply said, words that a child would know.  When a poet starts with "To live in this world . . . " she needs insight greater than most.  That Mary Oliver has.  I can't explain why this brings comfort except that the truth almost always does.  The truth, whatever it may be, sows its own kind of peace. 
 

"The Veil"
There are moments when the veil seems
almost to lift, and we understand what
the earth is meant to mean to us -- the
trees in their docility, the hills in
their patience, the flowers and the
vines in their wild, sweet vitality.
Then the Word is within us, and the
Book is put away.

I bet we all have these moments more and more often as we rely upon nature for solace.  Appreciating--no loving-- the trees, the hills, the flowers and vines.  But the trees aren't always docile, we might say.  Sometimes they bend frighteningly close to our shelter in the March winds.  The hills aren't always patient; sometimes they send water and rock where we don't want it.  And the vines aren't always sweet.  Some, hairy and toxic, try to choke whatever they can.  Still we recognize what Oliver is saying.  When she writes, "[W]e understand what the earth is meant to mean to us," a special place might come to mind for each of us.  Then God is with us too.  Perhaps so close as to feel within.      

In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, 
and the Word was God. 
He was in the beginning with God. 
All things were made through him, 
and without him was not any thing made that was made.
John 1:1-3

God bless us one and all, Nina Naomi                
                                      





  

TODAY IS DIFFERENT

In a conversation once I said complaining, "My life isn't what I expected it to be."  A fair statement given the deaths in our family that summer.  "Whose is?" was the reply.  

I think a lot of us are feeling that way.  At least right now our lives are not what we expected them to be.  I don't need to list all the ways.   

I know of no new sickness among our circle of family or friends. And the friend who was in intensive care is home.  We give thanks.  But this morning I stood in line behind a young man wearing a protective mask. I had seen him before the pharmacy opened, stretched out on an out-of-the-way bench for customers. He lay there alone, eyes closed keeping his distance.   Tall, thin and with a shaved head, now he was kneeling at the pharmacy counter.  Too weak to stand for long, he waited on his knees as his prescriptions were filled.  My first thought was, "Here is someone to pray for."  Then he rose and slowly left the store.  

Each of us in line--three women all standing 6 feet apart--looked at him and at each other with visible compassion.  It was hard seeing this man, this stranger with whom it was so easy to feel kinship.  I don't believe I'll ever forget the sight he made.  Him tall enough to easily reach the counter while on his knees and me immediately thinking of prayer.  In a safer world I could have knelt beside him, though he would have surely found that strange.  After all, we were in a pharmacy not church.  After he left the three of us spoke about him briefly from our distances.   

I had a tall thin sick boy of my own a few years back, that summer that I mentioned.  I've written of him before ("The Sundial," 7/23/19).  I came home and lit a fire to ward off the inner chill and saw this:

Life is messy and complicated and we are afraid.

But we show up anyway.

All the changes of this season are not this difficult.  But for this post, I'll leave it with the picture of the young man kneeling and how he woke compassion in the women in line behind him.