Today I sat inside by my warm fire and watched the wind whip across the garden.
Being close to nature is deeply grounding and necessary for my well-being .
There is something that centres me .. no matter which country I am in .. if I can see trees or flowers , or walk amongst them .. my system regulates and I can take full breaths .
I am newly moved to a new city, to a new job, and I preach my first sermon this morning for my new congregation. And I am spending the early hours before my family awakens to have a cup of coffee on the new (to me) couch in the parsonage library. Because I carry my books with me when I move to a new home, so that the stories that have carried me from place to place to place can hold me in this new place, too.
Best wishes for your first sermon for your new congregation, Kathy. I love that the stories in your books are what hold you.
I also love the word "parsonage" as it has such a lovely sound. I had dinner last night with friends in the parsonage of a small church, with a friend who landed in this new home with many books that she's carried from place to place. I believe that they hold her (a former librarian) and her stories, too.
As I contemplate culling and packing my own books, consolidating for another move, I'm glad to know that I'm not alone in toting these heavy objects that I so love – filled with the words and ideas that have shaped me – from place to place again in a new place.
Thank you for the reminder that there is a good reason to carry the next heavy box of bound stories and collected artworks into my next home.
Oh the joy and burden of books. I too face a downsizing soon. What to do with a poetry collection of more than 5,000 books? These objects, new and second hand, I have collected with care. But now at 72 the real awareness of the small acts of letting go within the shadow of the once in a lifetime letting go!
oh my. And here am i fretting about moving my 1000 volumes of poetry from one room to another to convert what has been my poetry study and guest room into my teen son's new bedroom. What treasures you must have in that abundance. I know that "letting go" is somewhere in my future though hopefully some time away. I wish you well in your "letting go" which, perhaps, might be like a dandelion seed head releasing its wee parachutes to the winds of the world.
Thanks Chris. Trouble these days is very few people or places, like libraries, want the dandelion seeds! I would love to find a poetry house here in Canada like Hugo House in Seattle that could take them all! So many memories shelved alongside the books of where I bot them , when I bot them at second hand stores all over Canada, the US and the UK.
Sadly, i know what you mean. Our beloved Toronto Public Library receives thousands upon thousands of donations a year only to pass them on through various sales (which i've mined well over the years). I'm with ya on a Canadian version of Hugo House. Alas. I know of many small writing groups that have started over the years but it seems the norm that all that can be afforded are very small quarters. And spaces are so important. I love our TPL but the accessibility exigencies of serving a vast and diverse population militates against specialty reading rooms. Once there were a few, one of which was a simply enchanting room of folk and fairy story collections where i spent many hours. But now you've got me thinking about why TPL doesn't have a poetry reading room though it does have lots of nice spaces. One bright note is that our mayor elect Olivia Chow included in her campaign a promise to increase public library hours and including Sundays. Here's hoping.
Yes, I agree on the joy and burden of owning books, Richard! Your comment reminds me that these small acts of letting go are in some ways a preparation for the final letting go. It also helps me to remember that someone else will grow to appreciate the things that I let go of.
Lisa, for sure, the little letting go such a practice for the bigger one! For my collection I just have to figure out how to find the right "someones" to receive the books!
Letting go of the cherished books can feel like letting go of friends. Sometimes I manage to let go by reminding myself that the joy they brought me will never disappear, and their journey into someone else's hands will make that joy even bigger. (Other times, the books I have stacked up to send on their way have to sit there for quite awhile before I can pry them from my fingers).
Is there not an independent cafe nearby that could take them? I'd love to walk into a cafe and see rows of poetry books to sit near and browse. They would have my custom for life!
I used to have a collection of books, and I would carry them with me everywhere I went. This involved, at many airports, checking in suitcases full of books--as a a digital nomad, I do not have many possessions, but I did have books. Gradually I started giving them all away. I felt guided to give a specific book to a specific person, and those small acts of letting go were very powerful. What I found is that the books that I needed to read found their way to me anyway. A friend would give me a book, or lend me a book. To be in the receiving end of this giving circle further compelled me to keep giving my books away...Right now, I have very few of my own, but more and more keep making their way through me. I read them, and pass them on to the next right person, and it feels great.
"Parsonage library," is a delicious phrase. I can relate to your carrying of books from home to home. I look at my several thousand volumes (not counting comics) and marvel that i've been lucky enough to keep them together for so long - even as their number increases (though digital books would plump that number significantly - though no substitute for the weight and heft of a volume of actual paper pages). My library, which snakes through three floors of our house is both labyrinth and memory palace. And I am constantly mining the shelved riches for the education, research, and storytelling that fills my days. And I treat with great respect the over 11 million strong collection of our Toronto Public Library which i treat, perhaps immodestly, as an extension of my own. I hope your first sermon this morning went well and was well-received.
It’s a Sunday morning here in NY. I am visiting my parents, which I try to do most Saturdays into Sundays. This morning, I awoke on the familiar sleeper sofa in the living room that I sleep on when I’m her. I did what has become my new favorite Sunday morning ritual - I read your / Pádraig’s substack! When circumstances allow, which they did this morning, as I heard my brother tending to our father, asking if he is comfortable, and making him breakfast of bone broth with just a little bit of lemon and toasted sourdough bread with butter, and I heard my dad tell my brother “your mom was up throughout the night so please close the door so she can get some sleep,” so I knew I was not needed, so I stayed cozy in bed and read Pádraig’s substack. After that nourishment, I got up and greeted my dad - “Good morning, Dad,” trying not to allow the grief, and helplessness, I feel when I see how many struggles he faces with his body - a body that has been through and lived through so much - from fleeing home as a refugee at seven, learning an entirely new language, a new script, learning to write from right to left, then left to right... attending school in tents where cutting class meant literally cutting (with a knife) the tent to sneak out... to running his own company, receiving honors and accolades for his contributions to his profession.... a profession which was not his true love (which was literature, but his father said “hell no”), but a profession he somewhat fell into, and then fell in love with, or gave himself to, so completely.... to the Parkinson’s diagnosis nearly a decade ago, the sx that were there long prior to any label, the most recent third degree heart block in which electrical dysfunction led to scary life threatening bradycardia (but his heart ♥️ strong, he made it through, now with a pacemaker).... to fainting spells and falling, more times than I care to dwell upon .. So I greeted him, my father, fellow Scorp, myself full of grief, and also, also true, full of gratitude. I felt his soft skin and tender voice ask me, “Did you sleep enough? Why don’t you rest more?” This is the familiar that marks my being here. I come to take care and yet am taken care of in more ways than I can count, or explain.
Pádraig, I so enjoyed both poems and so appreciate being introduced to so many new poets! The interview with Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe was delightful. I found her so unassuming, even as she writes with such wisdom and heart. (And I too tried not blue but purple, as a teen, left with a purple stained bathtub and my same very very dark brown that everyone called black hair).
Hi Mona, my father suffered from Parkinson's, and living far away, I visited him as often as I could. I was blessed to be able to arrive just in time for the final goodbye. I felt quite helpless before the challenge and its aftermath. I have connected with https://www.michaeljfox.org and signed up for a study that aims to identify early signs of PD in patients' next of kin. It is already making significant strides towards treatment and perhaps prevention in others. Peace to you and your dad. The road is tough but you are not alone.
Thank you so much Manuel! I’m sorry to hear your father also had PD. The MJF foundation does such important work. I wish there were better tx options... alas. I’m also so grateful for what does exist (l-dopa). Thank you for sharing and your words of support!
Ohh, Amy - thank you. Well, not 20 mins after I wrote this reflection, the family dynamics that drive me bonkers - that make me wonder how I’m “normal” at all (presumptions, know!), that I often think would be a psychoanalyst’s field day, that I am, of course, surely, a part of co-creating, but typically feel a “victim” of - it all kicked back in! Soo - I am very very glad to have written proof that things were otherwise, just a few hours ago! Familia!!! Love is there. As too is the weight of history, wounds, gates opened or closed, armors, the many many layers …
I am glad you have your "otherwise" for this day. You remind me of similar moments and circumstances with my parents. My dad, as i think i've mentioned, also had Parkinson's and witnessing his struggles was its own, if not comparable, anguish. And so so complicated given our history which was troubled (to say the least). My sister's did the heavy lifting of care that he needed once our mother passed. But i was tasked occasionally with assisting as he went through various surgeries. It is such a scourge of a disease. I hope you get more "otherwise" out of this day.
Familia!! Oh Familia! And you say it all when you say 'Love is there. As too the weight of history, wounds, gated opened or closed, armors, the many many layers"....more than many lifetimes of stories waiting to redeem the layers. I love reading your stories Mona because they dont just come from the heart they go right to the heart.
The depth of your love and admiration for your father are so loud here, and of your sadness and caring. May today be a day full of such love and beauty.
Oh dear, looking after elderly parents is so right and so vulnerable. I have been looking after my 87 year old mom this week and I still haven’t got the time to put down the deeper lessons I am learning! All the grandchildren and great grand children have come to visit and it is love! Some of the living young have appeared in her dreams and invited her to climb a mountain and she feels the worst is over since she overcame the steep climb in her sleep. Ohh and how she thanks her creator!
Wow, what incredible dreams your mama is having! And it sounds like a home full of so much love. To bring the young and the elderly together - this is gold. In our family there is one grandchild, 11, who brings so much sunshine - i tear up when I think of what a sunflower she is for the entire family, and pray she never feels she has to be the ☀️ for us. All best wishes to you and your mama and all your folks.
It's so hard watching parents in their fragility. I have walked that path with my dad, who died just as the Covid lockdowns began, and am walking it now with my mom. Strength to you and thank you for the beautiful picture of family love you have painted.
This morning, I am visiting Boston, staying in a stranger's AirBnb just a few steps from the harbor and hill where this nation began in spilled tea and spilled blood. It is quiet, the light thin. I brew a cup of coffee, as I always do, and place my hand on the familiar, warm back of my sleeping wife.
It’s still morning, and I am still sitting on the south-facing porch in my slippers, with my coffee in the big “bladder-buster” mug thrown by my potter friend, with my dogs, to read Richard Rohr and my favorite Substack writers, including Padraig, do WORDLE, watch the bees in the flowers, listen to the birds, and meditate. Every night, I go to bed looking forward to the morning. Good morning everyone! Blessings on your being home wherever you are Padraig and your time at home now. I’m glad you see your friend on the bridge ❤️.
Thank you for this sweet reminder to celebrate mornings, Emily! I'm learning to love them again after years of struggling to get out of bed. Mornings were filled with brain fog and feeling like I'd been hit by a truck thanks to adrenal fatigue and a thyroid condition. I'm much clearer and more rested these days... and very grateful for this. Your morning routine sounds lovely!
I look forward to the mornings too Emily. Our rituals are very similar, down to the bladder-buster mug (I’m so stealing that) also thrown by a friend. Good morning to you!
My heart is with you. I am not sure one ever re-locates from that dislocation, but I am finding after 10 years that something new comes and it is richer and more beautiful and somehow threaded through with the loss.
It’s so hard, isn’t it? I wish I could tell you that it will get easier, but I find it just gets different. That morning cup of tea takes me back to our time together.
Two things today ground me in different ways. I'm refinishing two old wooden end tables for a guest bedroom. Old, splintered, darkened varnish is replaced by clean whitewashed wood. Things which might be considered old and broken become renewed and remain anchored within my household.
The second thing is working in my garden. Vines trimmed, weeds pulled, plants moved. This grounds me in the physicality my home of 25 years in which I am now alone. Children are grown and gone and my wife's ashes interred in the far-away city of her youth. While, on the surface, that might seem to be a story of change, in a larger sense it locates and grounds me in the timeline of my ancestors who tended the soil of their various European countries for generations. The sun rises, the seasons change and the Earth - despite all of our mistreatment of her - still brings forth beauty, bounty and healing.
This morning I went outside with a mug of coffee, and my cat, Jack. It is a morning ritual we do together at sunrise to greet the day. This particular morning is grey so there was no color in the horizon but I got to experience the transition all the same. I like to get a feel of the weather, listen to the birds, some regulars, some just passing through. This morning I also had the treat of listening to the wind through the tall trees and having raindrops from last night's rain fall on me. I am grateful this morning to be in the midst of all these auditory delights.
I am baking 2 of these today in New Hampshire for the rabbi I worked with in my first pulpit for 6 years starting in 1981. They were the starter dough and bread breaking for every meeting with our great working team. This rabbi and I worked together in a south Chicago suburb. I covered him for the month of July since he had already started coming to northern Vermont every summer where he and his wife built their summer cabin in their early 20s on a remote lake with their own hands. Later they built a second cabin with their children. We never knew, after moves from St Louis to New York to finally northern New Hampshire where we have lived for 26 years, how important they both would become to our family; grandparents substitutes for our extraordinarily challenged twin sons. They too have lived other places other seasons including Baltimore and recently Asheville NC to be near their daughter and family. Yet we have visited them every summer in Vermont, watched eagles and loons from their rowboat, shared meals and hikes in their woods. This is most likely their last summer in what they consider their primary home because of health issues and age.
That's something I don't hear much about: a Rabbi and his wife building a cabin with their hands. Then building a second one for their children. Amazing. Most of the Rabbis I have known don't even own a hammer. Their hands are so soft. Making Chicago deep-dish pizza takes the same skills as building a cabin but far less time.
His adventure with building this home with his wife and kids in both the physical and emotional sense is very moving.
Certainly his cabins and our shared Pizza have survived time because of the evolving relationships they represent, but his cabins definitely took far more skill and hopefully are built for future generations. If they're lucky maybe new generations will make Deep Dish pie in the honor of the generations present!
Walking in natural settings grounds me. I just returned from a walk in a small urban park that is new to me; walking on the ground grounds me.
While walking, I heard birds whose song is new to me and also robins, whose chirp is familiar. I picked a small bit of fennel, sweet and piquant, from a community herb garden and chewed while walking. I encountered a cardinal! And also a rat! And kept striding.
Yes to "walking on the ground grounds me"... Told I must take up cycling or swimming (to alleviate pressure on my deteriorating knees), I keep on striding... Thank you for the words to affirm that.
Good morning from Nashville, Tennessee, where I woke up in my house, which went on the market yesterday afternoon. It is a bittersweet morning. I've owned this house for twenty-two years and have many memories. My partner, who died in 2017, and I raised our children here. We celebrated many events, the good and not-so-good ones, all of which brought me here today. A peaceful place full of good energy, with a backyard full of birds feeding on bird feeders, playing with each other, and hiding in the nearby crepe myrtle trees. They call out to me when their feeders are empty, reminding me that new baby bluebirds sitting in a stick and grass nest inside the gable on the east side are hungry. I cannot take this house with me when I move to New York, but I will take all the memories it has blessed me with.
This morning I'm in an Airbnb in the mountains of North Carolina - my fourth Airbnb in 3 three weeks after a wonderful two weeks in the London area traveling w/a friend, a brief few days home w/my family, followed by this family mountain getaway. I have just made myself a cup of tea & climbed into the loft to greet the new day w/gratitude. I got to see the glory of an unpolluted starscape w/my teenaged son before going to sleep last night!
Happy fir your Airbnb host! I recently listed our guest space on the network. No visitors yet but I am trusting to get some natures lovers to enjoy the Weaver bird colony in our garden.
Hi Dawn, thank you for your response to my comment! I am oceans apart in Uganda and our home is in Mbale City the Eastern part of country! Sure when you happen to travel this way if you travel, you can surely get in touch!
I’m overthinking so I will choose a little knitting as the thing that grounds me right now. :) When I’m busy I knit a row or two in the evening. When I have the luxury of time I may knit in the middle of the day!
I love that it is just sticks and string (and good directions, and my hands) that can become so many different things. It helps me to be patient and hopeful to watch stitches come together to make something new.
A lovely description of knitting! I do knit in winter. I mostly knit simple scarves so there is no complicated pattern, and I can sneak in some time as you do!
Always have more than one project going. A Swedish mittens set for a Swedish friend. I love working with many colors and sometimes its calming to use one color with lots of texture. A poncho for a friend. A cowl for me. I'm addicted to making and wearing cowls. What about you?
I’ve only tried color work a few times. Cowls are great! Usually fast!
Right now I am working on an assigned pooling shawl. I’ll make a little floret every time I get to the contrast color (orange and yellow) in the yarn. The main color (denim blue) is stockinette stitch. It looks like a starry night. It’s so much fun! First time trying a pattern like this.
Wow I'd love to see a pic of that! A pooling shawl? a starry night. It sounds spectacular. I'll have to look that up. The poncho I'm making is actually crochet but at the bottom are lace florets I've never tried. I love the challenge of new stitches. Total meditation laser focus..happy knitting Tricia!
Knitting for me also Centers me and I have been knitting blanketts for the Last 12 years always from scratches someone of my family couldn'nt use anymore, were leftovers from their knitting socks.
Whether home or on the road for work or play, the day starts—and I know that I am alive—by making a cup of tea, sitting upright in a chair to take in whatever view there is to take in, making my gratitude list to send to some beloved friends, and writing in my journal. Home has always been moveable and temporary for me, as I have no “permanent” family home, but this ritual ensures that home is wherever I am. Have a rich and beautiful Sunday, everyone.
Hallo to you, Padraig, and to other fellow readers, writers and thinkers. Padraig, your greeting finds me up early helping get breakfast to come together for some sailors who will be in a regatta later today. At this point in the journey of gathering to enjoy what will be eaten and shared together, I am solitary at my home, washing some dishes that will be needed again today. The warm water and suds feel soothing, like your words, a stolen moment to stop and read them and write back while in the middle of my task. I’d better get back to it, but I will carry them with me, like slippers for my soul.
Today I sat inside by my warm fire and watched the wind whip across the garden.
Being close to nature is deeply grounding and necessary for my well-being .
There is something that centres me .. no matter which country I am in .. if I can see trees or flowers , or walk amongst them .. my system regulates and I can take full breaths .
I so relate to what you say, centering, grounding through the presence of our other-than-human kin.
I am newly moved to a new city, to a new job, and I preach my first sermon this morning for my new congregation. And I am spending the early hours before my family awakens to have a cup of coffee on the new (to me) couch in the parsonage library. Because I carry my books with me when I move to a new home, so that the stories that have carried me from place to place to place can hold me in this new place, too.
Best wishes for your first sermon for your new congregation, Kathy. I love that the stories in your books are what hold you.
I also love the word "parsonage" as it has such a lovely sound. I had dinner last night with friends in the parsonage of a small church, with a friend who landed in this new home with many books that she's carried from place to place. I believe that they hold her (a former librarian) and her stories, too.
As I contemplate culling and packing my own books, consolidating for another move, I'm glad to know that I'm not alone in toting these heavy objects that I so love – filled with the words and ideas that have shaped me – from place to place again in a new place.
Thank you for the reminder that there is a good reason to carry the next heavy box of bound stories and collected artworks into my next home.
Oh the joy and burden of books. I too face a downsizing soon. What to do with a poetry collection of more than 5,000 books? These objects, new and second hand, I have collected with care. But now at 72 the real awareness of the small acts of letting go within the shadow of the once in a lifetime letting go!
oh my. And here am i fretting about moving my 1000 volumes of poetry from one room to another to convert what has been my poetry study and guest room into my teen son's new bedroom. What treasures you must have in that abundance. I know that "letting go" is somewhere in my future though hopefully some time away. I wish you well in your "letting go" which, perhaps, might be like a dandelion seed head releasing its wee parachutes to the winds of the world.
Thanks Chris. Trouble these days is very few people or places, like libraries, want the dandelion seeds! I would love to find a poetry house here in Canada like Hugo House in Seattle that could take them all! So many memories shelved alongside the books of where I bot them , when I bot them at second hand stores all over Canada, the US and the UK.
Sadly, i know what you mean. Our beloved Toronto Public Library receives thousands upon thousands of donations a year only to pass them on through various sales (which i've mined well over the years). I'm with ya on a Canadian version of Hugo House. Alas. I know of many small writing groups that have started over the years but it seems the norm that all that can be afforded are very small quarters. And spaces are so important. I love our TPL but the accessibility exigencies of serving a vast and diverse population militates against specialty reading rooms. Once there were a few, one of which was a simply enchanting room of folk and fairy story collections where i spent many hours. But now you've got me thinking about why TPL doesn't have a poetry reading room though it does have lots of nice spaces. One bright note is that our mayor elect Olivia Chow included in her campaign a promise to increase public library hours and including Sundays. Here's hoping.
Perhaps Poets House in NYC?
Yes, I agree on the joy and burden of owning books, Richard! Your comment reminds me that these small acts of letting go are in some ways a preparation for the final letting go. It also helps me to remember that someone else will grow to appreciate the things that I let go of.
I hope your upcoming downsizing goes smoothly!
Lisa, for sure, the little letting go such a practice for the bigger one! For my collection I just have to figure out how to find the right "someones" to receive the books!
Letting go of the cherished books can feel like letting go of friends. Sometimes I manage to let go by reminding myself that the joy they brought me will never disappear, and their journey into someone else's hands will make that joy even bigger. (Other times, the books I have stacked up to send on their way have to sit there for quite awhile before I can pry them from my fingers).
I did get some of my most treasured books second Hand and Think once I let them go they will find a new good home😊
Is there not an independent cafe nearby that could take them? I'd love to walk into a cafe and see rows of poetry books to sit near and browse. They would have my custom for life!
I used to have a collection of books, and I would carry them with me everywhere I went. This involved, at many airports, checking in suitcases full of books--as a a digital nomad, I do not have many possessions, but I did have books. Gradually I started giving them all away. I felt guided to give a specific book to a specific person, and those small acts of letting go were very powerful. What I found is that the books that I needed to read found their way to me anyway. A friend would give me a book, or lend me a book. To be in the receiving end of this giving circle further compelled me to keep giving my books away...Right now, I have very few of my own, but more and more keep making their way through me. I read them, and pass them on to the next right person, and it feels great.
Yes! My books are like companions, friends.
I bid you a deep centering as you deliver your first (of very many) sermons in your new church home.
I love the idea of stories carrying and and holding you from one place to the next. Good luck today!
Best to you! Hope all was well!!
"Parsonage library," is a delicious phrase. I can relate to your carrying of books from home to home. I look at my several thousand volumes (not counting comics) and marvel that i've been lucky enough to keep them together for so long - even as their number increases (though digital books would plump that number significantly - though no substitute for the weight and heft of a volume of actual paper pages). My library, which snakes through three floors of our house is both labyrinth and memory palace. And I am constantly mining the shelved riches for the education, research, and storytelling that fills my days. And I treat with great respect the over 11 million strong collection of our Toronto Public Library which i treat, perhaps immodestly, as an extension of my own. I hope your first sermon this morning went well and was well-received.
May you find a home in your new parsonage Kathy. May the Lord’s light sip through you🙏
It’s a Sunday morning here in NY. I am visiting my parents, which I try to do most Saturdays into Sundays. This morning, I awoke on the familiar sleeper sofa in the living room that I sleep on when I’m her. I did what has become my new favorite Sunday morning ritual - I read your / Pádraig’s substack! When circumstances allow, which they did this morning, as I heard my brother tending to our father, asking if he is comfortable, and making him breakfast of bone broth with just a little bit of lemon and toasted sourdough bread with butter, and I heard my dad tell my brother “your mom was up throughout the night so please close the door so she can get some sleep,” so I knew I was not needed, so I stayed cozy in bed and read Pádraig’s substack. After that nourishment, I got up and greeted my dad - “Good morning, Dad,” trying not to allow the grief, and helplessness, I feel when I see how many struggles he faces with his body - a body that has been through and lived through so much - from fleeing home as a refugee at seven, learning an entirely new language, a new script, learning to write from right to left, then left to right... attending school in tents where cutting class meant literally cutting (with a knife) the tent to sneak out... to running his own company, receiving honors and accolades for his contributions to his profession.... a profession which was not his true love (which was literature, but his father said “hell no”), but a profession he somewhat fell into, and then fell in love with, or gave himself to, so completely.... to the Parkinson’s diagnosis nearly a decade ago, the sx that were there long prior to any label, the most recent third degree heart block in which electrical dysfunction led to scary life threatening bradycardia (but his heart ♥️ strong, he made it through, now with a pacemaker).... to fainting spells and falling, more times than I care to dwell upon .. So I greeted him, my father, fellow Scorp, myself full of grief, and also, also true, full of gratitude. I felt his soft skin and tender voice ask me, “Did you sleep enough? Why don’t you rest more?” This is the familiar that marks my being here. I come to take care and yet am taken care of in more ways than I can count, or explain.
Pádraig, I so enjoyed both poems and so appreciate being introduced to so many new poets! The interview with Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe was delightful. I found her so unassuming, even as she writes with such wisdom and heart. (And I too tried not blue but purple, as a teen, left with a purple stained bathtub and my same very very dark brown that everyone called black hair).
“ This is the familiar that marks my being here. I come to take care and yet am taken care of in more ways than I can count, or explain.”
This is soul beautiful and so relatable, loving, and encouraging in its own way. Wishing you and your family well today.
Thank you Juju 🙏🏾.
Hi Mona, my father suffered from Parkinson's, and living far away, I visited him as often as I could. I was blessed to be able to arrive just in time for the final goodbye. I felt quite helpless before the challenge and its aftermath. I have connected with https://www.michaeljfox.org and signed up for a study that aims to identify early signs of PD in patients' next of kin. It is already making significant strides towards treatment and perhaps prevention in others. Peace to you and your dad. The road is tough but you are not alone.
Thank you so much Manuel! I’m sorry to hear your father also had PD. The MJF foundation does such important work. I wish there were better tx options... alas. I’m also so grateful for what does exist (l-dopa). Thank you for sharing and your words of support!
The loving relationships of your family absolutely touch me right into my gut Mona
Ohh, Amy - thank you. Well, not 20 mins after I wrote this reflection, the family dynamics that drive me bonkers - that make me wonder how I’m “normal” at all (presumptions, know!), that I often think would be a psychoanalyst’s field day, that I am, of course, surely, a part of co-creating, but typically feel a “victim” of - it all kicked back in! Soo - I am very very glad to have written proof that things were otherwise, just a few hours ago! Familia!!! Love is there. As too is the weight of history, wounds, gates opened or closed, armors, the many many layers …
I am glad you have your "otherwise" for this day. You remind me of similar moments and circumstances with my parents. My dad, as i think i've mentioned, also had Parkinson's and witnessing his struggles was its own, if not comparable, anguish. And so so complicated given our history which was troubled (to say the least). My sister's did the heavy lifting of care that he needed once our mother passed. But i was tasked occasionally with assisting as he went through various surgeries. It is such a scourge of a disease. I hope you get more "otherwise" out of this day.
Thank you so much, Chris. I remember you sharing about your dad having PD too. :/ And here is to all the otherwises!!
Familia!! Oh Familia! And you say it all when you say 'Love is there. As too the weight of history, wounds, gated opened or closed, armors, the many many layers"....more than many lifetimes of stories waiting to redeem the layers. I love reading your stories Mona because they dont just come from the heart they go right to the heart.
Oh Amy, such kind and generous words. 🙏🏾 Thank you!
Sending you gentle, healing energies
Thank you Anne!
Keep strong and focus on the light of the torch you are carrying in the hand.
Thank you Kituyi!
The depth of your love and admiration for your father are so loud here, and of your sadness and caring. May today be a day full of such love and beauty.
Thank you so much, Nancy. 🙏🏾. The piece you shared here a few weeks ago has stayed with me....
Oh dear, looking after elderly parents is so right and so vulnerable. I have been looking after my 87 year old mom this week and I still haven’t got the time to put down the deeper lessons I am learning! All the grandchildren and great grand children have come to visit and it is love! Some of the living young have appeared in her dreams and invited her to climb a mountain and she feels the worst is over since she overcame the steep climb in her sleep. Ohh and how she thanks her creator!
May your dad climb into good health Mona🙏
Wow, what incredible dreams your mama is having! And it sounds like a home full of so much love. To bring the young and the elderly together - this is gold. In our family there is one grandchild, 11, who brings so much sunshine - i tear up when I think of what a sunflower she is for the entire family, and pray she never feels she has to be the ☀️ for us. All best wishes to you and your mama and all your folks.
It's so hard watching parents in their fragility. I have walked that path with my dad, who died just as the Covid lockdowns began, and am walking it now with my mom. Strength to you and thank you for the beautiful picture of family love you have painted.
This morning, I am visiting Boston, staying in a stranger's AirBnb just a few steps from the harbor and hill where this nation began in spilled tea and spilled blood. It is quiet, the light thin. I brew a cup of coffee, as I always do, and place my hand on the familiar, warm back of my sleeping wife.
Is Boston where the Europeans first landed?
Jack - That would be the Jamestown settlement (named after James I) in Virginia. Europeans arrived there in 1607. All 104 of them!
It’s still morning, and I am still sitting on the south-facing porch in my slippers, with my coffee in the big “bladder-buster” mug thrown by my potter friend, with my dogs, to read Richard Rohr and my favorite Substack writers, including Padraig, do WORDLE, watch the bees in the flowers, listen to the birds, and meditate. Every night, I go to bed looking forward to the morning. Good morning everyone! Blessings on your being home wherever you are Padraig and your time at home now. I’m glad you see your friend on the bridge ❤️.
Richard Rohr -- now there's a good, grounding morning companion!
Thank you for this sweet reminder to celebrate mornings, Emily! I'm learning to love them again after years of struggling to get out of bed. Mornings were filled with brain fog and feeling like I'd been hit by a truck thanks to adrenal fatigue and a thyroid condition. I'm much clearer and more rested these days... and very grateful for this. Your morning routine sounds lovely!
I relate to your conditions and isn’t it great when you feel better!
Yes, it is, Jan! These conditions can be debilitating at times. I hope you're feeling better these days, too.
Bambi. Lisa. Bless you
I love that you look forward to the mornings, that's beautiful.
Thanks Jack!
I look forward to the mornings too Emily. Our rituals are very similar, down to the bladder-buster mug (I’m so stealing that) also thrown by a friend. Good morning to you!
Good Morning Tami!
Good morning Emily!
I cherish quiet mornings too.
Wordle! I love this game for making words come alive!
I've snuck back to bed with my cup of tea, it's gone cold now but I'm still sipping the peace and quiet of it.
With coffee in hand, an every morning must, I greeted my beloved now gone 10 months and still feel dislocated....
My heart is with you. I am not sure one ever re-locates from that dislocation, but I am finding after 10 years that something new comes and it is richer and more beautiful and somehow threaded through with the loss.
Holding you up to the light, friend.
It’s so hard, isn’t it? I wish I could tell you that it will get easier, but I find it just gets different. That morning cup of tea takes me back to our time together.
Sending peace, John.
oh mercy, friend.
Peace & hugs to you, John.
I am sorry for your loss. May time make the hole in your world feel smaller.
Two things today ground me in different ways. I'm refinishing two old wooden end tables for a guest bedroom. Old, splintered, darkened varnish is replaced by clean whitewashed wood. Things which might be considered old and broken become renewed and remain anchored within my household.
The second thing is working in my garden. Vines trimmed, weeds pulled, plants moved. This grounds me in the physicality my home of 25 years in which I am now alone. Children are grown and gone and my wife's ashes interred in the far-away city of her youth. While, on the surface, that might seem to be a story of change, in a larger sense it locates and grounds me in the timeline of my ancestors who tended the soil of their various European countries for generations. The sun rises, the seasons change and the Earth - despite all of our mistreatment of her - still brings forth beauty, bounty and healing.
Ah yes, grounding in soil...I guess that may be a reason for the term, “grounded”?
This morning I went outside with a mug of coffee, and my cat, Jack. It is a morning ritual we do together at sunrise to greet the day. This particular morning is grey so there was no color in the horizon but I got to experience the transition all the same. I like to get a feel of the weather, listen to the birds, some regulars, some just passing through. This morning I also had the treat of listening to the wind through the tall trees and having raindrops from last night's rain fall on me. I am grateful this morning to be in the midst of all these auditory delights.
We have a cat called Jack too, and also love the sounds of my garden. Thank you for sharing the beautiful sounds of yours.
Sounds calming .... & lovely
Sounds lovely!
I also like to get a feel of the weather.
Chicago Deep Dish Pizza.
I am baking 2 of these today in New Hampshire for the rabbi I worked with in my first pulpit for 6 years starting in 1981. They were the starter dough and bread breaking for every meeting with our great working team. This rabbi and I worked together in a south Chicago suburb. I covered him for the month of July since he had already started coming to northern Vermont every summer where he and his wife built their summer cabin in their early 20s on a remote lake with their own hands. Later they built a second cabin with their children. We never knew, after moves from St Louis to New York to finally northern New Hampshire where we have lived for 26 years, how important they both would become to our family; grandparents substitutes for our extraordinarily challenged twin sons. They too have lived other places other seasons including Baltimore and recently Asheville NC to be near their daughter and family. Yet we have visited them every summer in Vermont, watched eagles and loons from their rowboat, shared meals and hikes in their woods. This is most likely their last summer in what they consider their primary home because of health issues and age.
So it's Chicago Deep Dish pizza today. Clearly.
Enjoy the richness of taking bread (Chicago-type) together. Your shared, entertained lives touch mine. Thank you.
❤
That's something I don't hear much about: a Rabbi and his wife building a cabin with their hands. Then building a second one for their children. Amazing. Most of the Rabbis I have known don't even own a hammer. Their hands are so soft. Making Chicago deep-dish pizza takes the same skills as building a cabin but far less time.
His adventure with building this home with his wife and kids in both the physical and emotional sense is very moving.
Certainly his cabins and our shared Pizza have survived time because of the evolving relationships they represent, but his cabins definitely took far more skill and hopefully are built for future generations. If they're lucky maybe new generations will make Deep Dish pie in the honor of the generations present!
❤️
Hello, fellow travelers through this life.
Walking in natural settings grounds me. I just returned from a walk in a small urban park that is new to me; walking on the ground grounds me.
While walking, I heard birds whose song is new to me and also robins, whose chirp is familiar. I picked a small bit of fennel, sweet and piquant, from a community herb garden and chewed while walking. I encountered a cardinal! And also a rat! And kept striding.
Yes to "walking on the ground grounds me"... Told I must take up cycling or swimming (to alleviate pressure on my deteriorating knees), I keep on striding... Thank you for the words to affirm that.
Good morning from Nashville, Tennessee, where I woke up in my house, which went on the market yesterday afternoon. It is a bittersweet morning. I've owned this house for twenty-two years and have many memories. My partner, who died in 2017, and I raised our children here. We celebrated many events, the good and not-so-good ones, all of which brought me here today. A peaceful place full of good energy, with a backyard full of birds feeding on bird feeders, playing with each other, and hiding in the nearby crepe myrtle trees. They call out to me when their feeders are empty, reminding me that new baby bluebirds sitting in a stick and grass nest inside the gable on the east side are hungry. I cannot take this house with me when I move to New York, but I will take all the memories it has blessed me with.
Thinking of you in the bittersweetness of your home's beauty, the memories, and the letting go.
Thank you for your lovely comment. Now that I have moved to my new hometown, I know that I have done the right thing.
This morning I'm in an Airbnb in the mountains of North Carolina - my fourth Airbnb in 3 three weeks after a wonderful two weeks in the London area traveling w/a friend, a brief few days home w/my family, followed by this family mountain getaway. I have just made myself a cup of tea & climbed into the loft to greet the new day w/gratitude. I got to see the glory of an unpolluted starscape w/my teenaged son before going to sleep last night!
Happy fir your Airbnb host! I recently listed our guest space on the network. No visitors yet but I am trusting to get some natures lovers to enjoy the Weaver bird colony in our garden.
Where are you? Maybe I'll have reason to visit there one day!
Hi Dawn, thank you for your response to my comment! I am oceans apart in Uganda and our home is in Mbale City the Eastern part of country! Sure when you happen to travel this way if you travel, you can surely get in touch!
I’m overthinking so I will choose a little knitting as the thing that grounds me right now. :) When I’m busy I knit a row or two in the evening. When I have the luxury of time I may knit in the middle of the day!
I love that it is just sticks and string (and good directions, and my hands) that can become so many different things. It helps me to be patient and hopeful to watch stitches come together to make something new.
A lovely description of knitting! I do knit in winter. I mostly knit simple scarves so there is no complicated pattern, and I can sneak in some time as you do!
I gravitate towards simple patterns too! Hats are my go to!
Oh can I relate to that! And describe it so well!
Thanks. What are you working on? ;)
Always have more than one project going. A Swedish mittens set for a Swedish friend. I love working with many colors and sometimes its calming to use one color with lots of texture. A poncho for a friend. A cowl for me. I'm addicted to making and wearing cowls. What about you?
I’ve only tried color work a few times. Cowls are great! Usually fast!
Right now I am working on an assigned pooling shawl. I’ll make a little floret every time I get to the contrast color (orange and yellow) in the yarn. The main color (denim blue) is stockinette stitch. It looks like a starry night. It’s so much fun! First time trying a pattern like this.
Wow I'd love to see a pic of that! A pooling shawl? a starry night. It sounds spectacular. I'll have to look that up. The poncho I'm making is actually crochet but at the bottom are lace florets I've never tried. I love the challenge of new stitches. Total meditation laser focus..happy knitting Tricia!
Knitting for me also Centers me and I have been knitting blanketts for the Last 12 years always from scratches someone of my family couldn'nt use anymore, were leftovers from their knitting socks.
Whether home or on the road for work or play, the day starts—and I know that I am alive—by making a cup of tea, sitting upright in a chair to take in whatever view there is to take in, making my gratitude list to send to some beloved friends, and writing in my journal. Home has always been moveable and temporary for me, as I have no “permanent” family home, but this ritual ensures that home is wherever I am. Have a rich and beautiful Sunday, everyone.
Hallo to you, Padraig, and to other fellow readers, writers and thinkers. Padraig, your greeting finds me up early helping get breakfast to come together for some sailors who will be in a regatta later today. At this point in the journey of gathering to enjoy what will be eaten and shared together, I am solitary at my home, washing some dishes that will be needed again today. The warm water and suds feel soothing, like your words, a stolen moment to stop and read them and write back while in the middle of my task. I’d better get back to it, but I will carry them with me, like slippers for my soul.
Yes. So true... these words and all the comments are just that, "slippers for my soul." Lovely.
Thanks for sharing your stolen moment!