family

The spiritual practice of making mistakes

/ njmyers / 1 Comment

police

I am beginning to get the idea that making mistakes, being wrong, is an important spiritual discipline. I picked up on this when I was traveling to Congo and making a lot of mistakes, some cultural, some quite blatantly personal. I learned to expect to be wrong quite often. I cheerfully let my ego take a backseat and realized that the education you get from errors is so valuable that you shouldn’t try too hard to avoid them. Nothing ventured–no embarrassment risked–nothing gained. Continue reading →

These things happen

/ njmyers / Leave a comment

I spent Mother’s Day afternoon at a funeral home. The visit stretched into several hours because of two things. The person who had passed away was well known and much loved and so the reception line to offer condolences to his widow was long and moved slowly. And then, after my husband and I had greeted the widow, we had extended conversations with the deceased’s father, mother, and aunt. We were, in fact, at the visitation because of the parents and aunt, who have been dear to us for a long time. Continue reading →

Green

/ njmyers / Leave a comment

I’m looking at green so intense it almost hurts the eyes. It is so green you can hear it. The frog and toad chorus has begun today. Spring woods after rainstorm is exactly the time and place to send out mating calls. I could sit here all day, taking it in.
IMG_1771 Continue reading →

It’s all baby, baby

/ njmyers / 4 Comments

FullSizeRenderThere are grandmother hormones. They have not been named yet but one day, for sure, we will know that there are actual chemical connections that make our arms itch to hold newborns and drive us to the floor to play pretend with preschoolers when we ourselves are well past childbearing age. Continue reading →

Meditation on a cupcake

/ njmyers / Leave a comment

IMG_1518I don’t eat cake. Even in the dream I had yesterday, in which a whole banquet of desserts was offered to me, my thought was, “I don’t eat cake.” Nevertheless, in the dream, I headed straight for the cake. A rainbow ice cream cake and a chocolate cake. I chose both. I woke up before I was able to taste them. Continue reading →

Joy to the fishes

/ njmyers / 1 Comment

IMG_1492A few days ago I started writing something more about the word I have adopted for the year: “Joy.” I didn’t publish it because I wasn’t satisfied. It was too picky and subtle, not quite joyful. I was saying that big Joy is really rare and you have to learn to get along with the little joys, like daffodils for $2.50 a bunch in the supermarket when real spring is still waiting to come out from under the snow and mud.

But right about then I was hit by a big Joy. Continue reading →

Natural Woman

/ njmyers / Leave a comment

Sometimes I feel like retirement has allowed me to become appallingly lazy. But really, it is just revealing to me what life might have been like all along if I had been able to obey the preferences and rhythms of my human self.

Most people can’t afford to live like natural human beings but, instead, we have to be superhuman. We have to do more than we are built to do, exceed our capacity, and live with the consequent stress. Continue reading →

Memory lapse

/ njmyers / Leave a comment

I was proud of myself for getting my year-in-review letter out to friends and family on January 1. My goal in the past has been to send it sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I almost never succeed in doing that. So I have cut myself some slack and now just call it a New Year letter. But I try to touch on the highlights of the past year, along with a verbal snapshot of my family’s current state of mind and activity.

Although I love to blog, this kind of letter always feels like a chore because I hate to summarize. I hate to summarize, in turn, because I have a terrible memory, and I mean terrible. Continue reading →