Time

 It is good to pay attention to what is happening at this very moment.  Actually,, it is all we have.  But living in the present moment makes time a big puzzle to me.  In my perceptions, time is not linear like it is on a calendar or a watch.  Every year, back when I was teaching, the month of September seemed very long, as long as the whole rest of the year combined.  How could that be?  How could one month seem as long as eight months?   I don’t know.  I only know that this was how it seemed to me every year.   Perceptions aren’t real or are they?   Physicists say time is an illusion, yet I change and grow older each calendar year. If time is the same, how come I change?  How can that be?

Now in my retirement,  I am not as busy as I was when I worked.  Now I have the luxury to do what I want in my days.  I have the perception that each day is a long time.  There is spaciousness in each day.  Time to take a nap, if I feel like it.  I delight in slowing down and noticing nature, especially.  Just this morning I took a leisurely stroll in the Botanical Garden just enjoying the sights and sounds of nature.  I am very sensitive to the changes in light seasonally and am affected by it.  When angled light lands on my grandchildren’s heads, it makes them glow like they have a halo.  Maybe they do really have halos.  And yet, the weeks and months seem to speed by.  Long days and short months.  How can that be?  

It is now the season of autumn.  Yesterday was the autumnal equinox.  I notice the light is more angled, the days are getting shorter and shorter.  Today sunrise was at 6:57 AM.  Soon my Michigan granddaughters will the walking to school in the dark.  Back in Michigan, the trees are changing colors to beautiful reds, oranges and yellows.  In Michigan, the temperatures are cooling.  Here in California, September and October are our hottest months. All the land is very very dry and we fear wildfire.  The seasons change, one to another.  Over and over.  We call one cycle, a year.  Yet, as I look back and remember my years, they blur together.  It’s hard for me to realize that 2022 is almost over.  How can that be?

 I feel I am in the autumn season of my life.  I still have lots of vitality and warmth.  I still enjoy preaching and writing sermons.  I still enjoy working at the Botanical Garden, growing and nurturing plants to sell.  I still enjoy going on long walks with whomever will walk with me.  I still enjoy going out to lunch with friends.   I still enjoy life.  Yet, the mysterious thing called time seems to be moving along.  I know I am vulnerable.  I know I will die, but I just don’t know how or when.  The years I’ve been alive grow more and more and I get older and older.  How can that be?

So many questions.  And I thought I’d gain wisdom as I grew older.  

                

Making Cookies

Making cookies was a family tradition when I was growing up.  Today I made cookies and thought about all the cookies I have made.  My cookie section of my recipe box is stuffed full.  I remember as a young girl making lots of different kinds of cookies to make plates of fancy cookies to give away to my mother’s friends and our family at Christmastime.  I still treasure a collection of cookie cutters and cookie tins.  Later when my sister was old enough, she and I used to make cookies together.  I especially remember making rolled cut out sugar cookies with Tillie our beagle under our feet hoping for a morsel to drop on the floor.  She knew where the action was.  Our cookies were so beautiful and delicious.

I have enjoyed watching our granddaughters find pleasure in making cookies.  Early on, Erika and I would make cookies together.  I remember her climbing on the counters to reach the sugar that had to be hidden on the highest shelf, because she liked to take a spoon and eat sugar out of the bag of sugar.  As Sonja grew, she helped too, but it worked well, only when they each had a tray of rolled cookies to decorate.  Erika now makes the most beautifully decorated cookies, more beautiful than I ever made.  She likes to find recipes on-line and try them out.  I remember making chocolate chip cookies with Sonja for her to sell to the MSU college students partying in the neighborhood before football games.  She’d load up all the cookies in her little red wagon and go from yard to yard selling her cookies for $1 each.  Ever the entrepreneur, she’d make lots of money.  Elsa likes to experiment and makes her cookies without a recipe.  She takes all the ingredients she likes—-butter, brown sugar, cream, more butter, more brown sugar and I suppose flour—-and mixes them together.  She says they’re good.

Today I made chocolate chip cookies using my sister’s favorite recipe and my new cookie scooper (it’s like an ice cream scooper only smaller).  I make cookies with about 12 other people from church for a homeless shelter lunch.  We make 60 cookies, package them in special wax paper bags, folded over just so and deliver them to a coordinator.  I like to think it brings the recipients a small measure of joy to eat a homemade cookie, made with love.  

Cookies have a place in all of our hearts.  Cookies represent love to many of us.  I remember a member of the first church I served describing God as a woman who makes chocolate chip cookies.  He said whenever he smells cookies baking, he thinks of God.  So much love.  Cookies are more than just a mixture of yummy ingredients.  I like the idea of a cookie making gramma God.  

                            

Friendship

Last week I walked with a new friend..  We were both excited to get to know each other.  As we walked, in step together at a comfortable pace on the Fire Trail, we talked.  She talked about the various groups she’s a part of and how very nurturing and important they are to her.  I talked about some of my spiritual journey.  We seem to have so much in common, it is astounding.   I call her a friend not lightly.

We met several weeks ago as Bob and I were out for a walk.  We paused in front of her gate because I’d noticed it early in the pandemic and identified it as one  of the prettiest gates I’d seen.  After I took a photo of it, so beautiful with sunshine streaming through the open Japanese gate, we noticed a woman gardening.  She’d been hidden from view.  We began chatting and one thing led to another and pretty soon we were inside their yard looking at her garden.  Her husband appeared and Bob knew him from the Neighbor’s Block Party a couple of weeks before.  Soon the men disappeared inside his shop.  Ruth and I seemed to find one thing after another that we had in common.  We’re both on spiritual journeys.  We both walked a lot in the pandemic and took photos with our IPhones of things we found beautiful (mostly flowers for both of us).  We both love getting our hands in the dirt, in our own gardens and at places where we volunteer.  We both have offices full of books.  Twice now she’s brought us a bag of organic tomatoes from the organic farm where she volunteers.

I’ve been thinking about friendship recently.  It is such a gift.  My friend Sharona talks about concentric circles of friendship, from the close ones we see often, to others we might see once a quarter, to others we rarely see but still consider friends, to those people we see regularly and share a friendly word, at the gym or the pool or the garden.  I think of my bi-monthly phone calls with my dear friend Doris.  All are important because it is in our genes to have friends.  

Now my granddaughters are teenagers, friends have become extremely important to them.  So much so, we sometimes feel we’ve lost the closeness we had with them when they were younger.  But as I’ve thought about the girls, I see we have a very special place in their hearts.  I am thrilled when one of them texts me or I text them and they answer me.  Friendship is based on shared experiences and a common affection.  I am so very grateful for connection with friends from many different parts of my life.  Each friendship is a treasure, each of beautiful jewel.  And I am grateful to make a new friend at my age.  

                                    

Music in our Living Room

 Late yesterday afternoon, we had live music in our living room!  Arne asked his friend Ilana, with whom he went to Middle School, to bring her “Fearless String Quartet” to come and play a concert at Christmastime.  The timing didn’t work out.  Various other times since haven’t worked out either.   Finally, yesterday was the day they came.  It was a surprise program the musicians had planned.  Arne said we were “a fearless audience” because we didn’t know what the program would be.  Bob and I invited special friends we thought would appreciate the live string quartet.  We were eight listening to the four musicians in our living room.  It was an intimate gathering listening to chamber music as it was meant to be heard.

We all liked the music the quartet played.  The first piece was the Corelli variations, then they played a lyrical piece by an English composer Frank Bridge, and then a piece by Erich Korngold finished out the first part.   Each of the pieces was  inspired by a folk song giving a nice theme to disparate pieces..  I especially liked the harmonies and the fluidity of the Korngold piece.  It was beautiful.  Arne said he especially liked best the second piece by Frank Bridge.  It seemed to me the quartet got better as they played together.  They ended with a wonderful Mozart String Quartet!  (K. 387)  The instruments played off each other in so many different ways as the melody flowed around the group.  I remember the fourth movement began with the viola playing a line, then the cello repeated it and then the first violin playing the same refrain and grew and grew.  It was a fugue. We all loved the program that lasted an hour and a half.  They were generous with their time.

It was truly special to have this concert here just for us.  It brought back so many happy memories from when our boys were growing up and music filled the house.  It was like the walls and the wood came alive once again, vibrating to this beautiful music.  I had tears in my eyes through much of the concert as the cool Berkeley breezes wafted through the room and carried the music outside.  I wondered how many hikers on the public path just next to our fence stopped and listened for a moment and wondered where this beautiful music was coming from?  What  a generous gift Arne gave us!  And then to boot he brought Liam who finished building my special birthday music box, all by himself working at the art table in the next room.  From time to time he’d come into the living room and listen to the music. I spot him and he’d smile at me.  After the musicians left, Bob and I prepared dinner for our friends.  Arne invited Justin, his good friend from Cal and best man from his wedding.  We’ve loved Justin for the twenty five years we’ve known him.  I was happy to have my music buddy here and Bob invited his long time colleague Yuen Dat and his wife Josephine.  It felt so special to share the experience with these long time good friends.  Life’s good memories are made in such special happy times.  This will be always a most special memory thanks to Arne’s generosity and inspiration to bring music to Bob and me at home.

                                                                                       

Embracing Life

 The last words my father spoke to me on his last visit were “It’s all good.”  He turned as he was walking toward his airplane gate and said that.  I’ve thought about that a lot, wondering where the good is in war or child abuse?  I don’t have any answer.  But I know that spiritual teachers tell us to embrace all of life.  It is a gift, the best gift of all.  As far as I know, we didn’t ask for it, we were created hopefully through the love of our parents.  

It is easy to embrace life when everything is going along well, sunshine and flowers and rainbows.  But when the hard times come, it is much harder to find the courage to still embrace our life as a gift.  When pain and suffering raise their ugly shouting heads, it is easy to be overcome by their presence.  When I watch the news, hearing one bad thing after another that has happened and find myself full of fear when I wake in the night, I try to remember to breathe deeply and relax or to say the Jesus prayer (Oh Jesus, fill my mind with your peace, my heart with your love and my body with your light).  I don’t always find the negative things gone, but their impact on me is less as I remember what is truly important.  When I can do that, I am embracing the totality of my life.  

A Day with Elsa

 For grandparents, one on one time with our grandchildren is precious.  We invited Elsa over for a day with us and the day that worked for her was yesterday, her last day before school started.  She rode up with Arne from Palo Alto and we picked her up from him in front of the BART offices.  She had her latest birthday present with her and Arne tipped me off we might want to stop on the way home and get supplies.  She had an electric ice cream maker.  We stopped at Safeway and Elsa and I picked out the cream, the whole milk and a carton of fresh strawberries. As soon as we got home, we got right to it, popping the special metal ice cream bowl in the freezer and crushing the strawberries, mixing up the ingredients and put them in the frig to chill.  Then I suggested we make sugar cookies.  I know Elsa likes them a lot, so I thought it would be fun to make them for our picnic.  She suggested we halve the recipe, which was an exercise in fractions, no problems until we got to the one egg.  “I don’t know how to make half an egg,” I said.  “Oh I do,” said Elsa and she began her process of whisking the egg and then pouring half into a measuring cup.  I thought she was pretty smart.  Later, she confessed she’d never done that and I decided she is even smarter than I thought.  

As the cookies baked, we went outside and I tossed the volleyball to her.  She loves hitting the ball back.  It is good practice for grandma too, catching all those hits.  When we finished this, we checked out my shell collection and my jewelry (she loves to look at those things).  Then it was time to start the ice cream maker.  It is nifty how it is electric so you don’t have to churn it. After 15 minutes or so, it was a thick slurry.   We tasted it and it was creamy and delicious.  I thought it would be good to have dessert before our picnic lunch.  We packed up Bob’s new picnic basket that he won in the church raffle and off we went to the Botanical Garden.  It was a lovely picnic lunch.  Bob remarked how nice it is that Elsa is so chatty.  She told us about her friends, her new schedule for school and pretty much anything we asked got a long involved response.  I am impressed how polite and sensitive Elsa is and she seemed to be really enjoying the day. 

Home again, we hit some more volleyball.  This time she most tactfully showed me how she wanted me to toss the ball throwing it out from my chest with my elbows sticking out like wings.   I learned the move pretty quickly, I thought.  Then we started on the art project I’d planned.  We moved the art table outside, covered it with newspapers and began our finger painting.  It was interesting how differently each of us did it.  I seemed stuck on swirls and loops while she covered the paper with copious paint and then blotted it with paper towels.  I was impressed with her originality.  We both got deeply involved in the creative process and both of us were surprised how it wasn’t as messy as we thought it would be.  After a while, I needed to stop for a cup of tea.  My energy had run out.  When I got back, I saw Elsa’s had too.  She was sitting on the steps painting her legs with the purple paint.  I asked what she was doing and she answered she wanted to see how it felt to be purple.  I was glad at this point there was she was the only grandchild here.  She covered her legs completely.  She was purple!    It must have felt really good because the finger paint had an amazing thick slimy feel on our hands.  So I suggested she go show grandpa her purpleness which she did and then I squirted her with the hose until all the purple washed off into the garden.  Perhaps that was the hit of the day- becoming purple.  Clean again, we went into the house and played games of Boggle.  All too soon, our time was over and we hugged and I waved goodbye as Bob took her back down to Oakland and Arne.  It was a lovely fun filled day.  I enjoyed every minute and as always I am so very impressed with Elsa and very happy to spend time with her.  

Musaics of the Bay

 Some years ago, I began attending piano concerts of Audrey Vardanega, a former biology student now friend of my long-time friend and former colleague.  Over the years, we began to call ourselves - Audrey’s Groupies.  Whenever Audrey played a concert, we traveled to it.  Her musicality is sublime, her technique flawless and the sound of the piano is incredible.   We love her!  

As we moved into the Pandemic shutdown in March 2020, all concerts were canceled.  There was no more live music, no more live anything.  During this hard time Audrey was inspired to found an organization called Musaics of the Bay.  Her idea was to give young artist a platform to display their creative works.  It started with an original painting or photograph by a visual artist that was used as inspiration for a composer to write an original piece of music which was then performed by a musician.  The three artists communicated with each other as this final piece was created.  Each Monday at 5 PM, I looked forward to getting an email link to UTube video of the final performance with the visual artist explaining their work, the composer describing his/her inspiration and what they tried to do in writing the piece of music and then the musician performing the piece.  The performances came out each week and were always a bright spot in my week.  The artists were mostly all quite young.  Over time, Audrey found artists and musicians from all over the country and even from other countries.  Her dream was for artist collaboration in the creative process. 

This year as things opened up, she has expanded Musaics and created a Residency Program for a small group of musicians and composers to come together for conversation. collaboration and creation of new work as well as outreach to the Bay Area community Sharona is now on the Board of Musaics and offered her home for a group meal, as practice studio during the week of the Residency.  I offered our home too and this last week, we had a workshop here and a group dinner for the ten participants.  The dinner was fun and challenging to cook because I needed to include non-gluten and vegan options.  As the young musicians arrived here, they were drawn immediately to our grand view of the Bay.  It was a gift for me to see our view in a new way through their eyes.   As they sat in the living room in a tight circle, I thought how wonderful is this.  Then at dinner I joined in the conversation.  It was a pleasure to hear what they spoke about.  The ten had formed bonds and clearly enjoyed each others’ company.  I was honored to be able to help them out.

Then Saturday afternoon, all they had been creating all week long came together in a Community Concert.  The level and quality of the music was very high indeed.  They are all trained musicians and three of them are composers!  What pleasure to hear the product of all their creativity and work!  What pleasure to know at least a little bit these amazing young musicians!  What pleasure to support Musaics of the Bay and Audrey and to see her dreams become reality.