Do you dawdle or do you linger?

When I was about seven years old, I remember sitting at the kitchen table in the morning, eating oatmeal. It was a school day, and I do believe I was dawdling.  My grandmother spoke sternly, 

“Hurry up.  You’re going to be late.”

I was raised by my grandparents and most likely they had little patience for a youngster who was challenging, somewhat lazy, and stubborn.  I continued to dawdle.  

Grandma had a wooden paddle that hung on the wall next to the pencil sharpener behind the kitchen door.  It had a few cracks in it, and I can assure you, I was never hit with it.  There were only moments of threats that often worked with intended purpose.  However, that morning I remained steadfast in my dawdling until the paddle came off the hook, and slammed down  about 2 inches from my elbow which was leaning on the kitchen table.  A more emphatic stern voice repeated, 

“Hurry up!  You’re going to be late!”  

At that point my dawdling stopped. I quickly finished my breakfast and hightailed out of the house and off to school.  

This memory leads me to think that if I could have made the argument I was not dawdling but merely lingering, perhaps to savor the wonderful oatmeal my grandmother had made for me—you know, the kind with brown sugar and warm milk—I might have avoided the dreaded paddle threat.  But I was not clever at age seven.  And in fact, under the circumstances, I was rather dutiful.

This dawdling versus lingering seems a conundrum to me.  Physically, both are exhibited in the same way— “to move slowly and idly,” or “to spend a long time over something.”  I’m guessing it’s the intent behind the action that defines which word best describes what I was doing that morning before school.  And it does seem that dawdling has a more negative connotation than lingering.  

The older I get, the more I seem to dawdle AND to linger.  In some cases, it’s either my knees or my memory that causes me to dawdle.  And in other cases, it’s my sentimentality or perhaps my sense of spirituality that leads me to linger upon those things I find worthy and meaningful.  

Learning to dawdle and to linger is a lifetime achievement.  Most of us in our younger days were discouraged from such behavior, but now, if you happen to be in my generation of Baby Boomers, you might find advantages to dawdling and lingering.  After all, are we not now in charge of our own paddles?

Can I Beg God for Spring?

Photographer Unknown

If you’re one of the lucky ones who lives in Western New York, or even along the northeast corridor in the US, you’ve had a winter that started in late October and is still lingering along the doorsteps of April.  That’s nearly half a year!  I know there are people who live in Antarctica or in places that have winter all the time and even live in darkness half of the year.  And I guess the reason for being able to cope with that kind of climate is that it’s the normal.  Six months of cold and snow is not normal for my “neck of the woods”.

I know there are some of you out there who have lived many years and will say something like… “Well, when I was a kid…”.  I’ve said that too.  I remember snow up to my knees in early April while I was all dressed up in my Easter best!  I even remember it snowing on the first day of May during an annual CROP Walk for Hunger back in the 90’s.  People were wearing winter coats and carrying big umbrellas to keep the huge wet flakes off their heads.  Right now, in Anchorage, Alaska it’s 46 degrees… twenty degrees warmer than here in Rochester, NY.  Heck!  It’s 39 degrees in Nuuk, Greenland, and 36 degrees in Reykjavik, Iceland!  All that being said, it is 40 below zero in Antarctica at this moment and the average temperature during the month of April is somewhere between -54 and -61 degrees.

It isn’t my intent to wax-on about the weather.  No.  What I want to discern is weather…  oops, whether it’s appropriate to beg God for sunshine and flowers, or for that matter—anything! 

I think this is an important and sensitive question for those of us who believe in God.  When I was a child just learning about God, I was taught to say my prayers at night and ask God to watch over me and my loved ones.  In my child-thinking I knew that if God could take care of us, then surely God would know I really wanted a bicycle.  So, I expanded my asking categories.  As I got older I asked for all sorts of things, including losing weight, passing exams, finding a good running car, an end to the war in Vietnam, and existentially, for me to be a good person and to be able to make a difference in the lives of people.    This way of thinking changed as I got older.

I was recently asked by my spiritual counselor, “what do you desire from God?”  Such a simple question, and yet I could not come up with a simple answer.  If I had been asked the question and omitted “God,” then perhaps I could have quickly come up with all kinds of desires.  But to infer that the wants and desires I have should come from God left me feeling greedy and selfish.  Perhaps it was the Ego taking a blow to my sense of worthiness or just my adult reasoning that God is not responsible for fulfilling my desires.

I sat with this conundrum for a long time. It began to haunt me.  Why would I not want to share my desires with God?  There certainly was a big difference between asking and begging.  And of course, God already knew what I desired.  The question hinged on the expectation that God just might fulfill a desire or two. 

We take for granted what people teach us as children and when we become adults, we either don’t think about these things anymore, or we begin to form our own ideas.  Perhaps some of us still cling to the knowledge that God will provide, but in God’s own way, not always in the way we desire. The wider question becomes pantheistic—is God in all things and in all aspects of life?

Someone once asked me not IF I believed, but WHY I believed in God.  The answer for me was simple. I just feel better believing in God.  It brings me comfort.  It is where the center of my hope and serenity lies.  Deep down in my psyche I want to believe that God will reach into the hearts of humans and one day we will all live in peace and harmony.  I should not even have to ask or beg!  Am I audacious?

Further thinking about God and our desires, Neil deGrasse Tyson writes in his book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry:  “We do not simply live in this universe.  The universe lives within us.” (page 203)

This expands the idea of God as Universe and living within us which should then give us the ability to attain our own wants and desires.

Norman Vincent Peale writes: “No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities… Always see them for they are always there.”

I desire so much for the welfare of this planet and its peoples. I have to believe that we will overcome one day.  I certainly believe that in the very near future, springtime will overcome!

Forest Bathing

Recently, while reading the newspaper, I came across an article called “Finding A Balance,” by Meredith Newman, from the Delaware News Journal, reprinted in our local Democrat and Chronicle. The bi-line read, “Try gratitude journals, meal prep and forest bathing.”

I know about gratitude journals and prepping for meals. (I love to make soup, and it seems to sooth the soul as well as warm the heart.)  However, I had never heard of the term forest bathing. 

What came to my mind, was sitting in a tub in the middle of a forest, bathing.  I could not resist illustrating this in the form of a bookmark—something I have recently begun to do as a means of art journaling—for me, an optional meditation technique.  The bookmarks are quick to make, and handy in using in the various books and journals which were the impetus in sparking my creative muse—the one you see here.

Now what about this thing called Forest Bathing?

“Forest bathing,” says Meredith Newman, “is a Japanese practice in which one immerses themselves in nature, [and] has become a common stress-relief activity.” She continues saying that when people go on hikes they remove themselves from the noise and traffic of urban life.  Often people will do forest bathing midweek, so as to get themselves through the work-week with less accumulated stress.

Studies show shinrin-yoku, also known as forest bathing or time spent in green spaces, can reduce the stress hormone cortisol and increase your immune defense system.  (Your Brain on Nature, By Eva Selhub and Alan Logan).  https://www.motherearthnews.com/natural-health/herbal-remedies/forest-bathing-ze0z1301zgar

As someone who has forest bathed many times in the spring, summer and fall, I am not fond of cold, freezing weather, and I am not especially drawn to forest bathing in the winter months.  Instead, you will find me bathing at home in a warmer-than-it-should-be soaker tub with bath oils of eucalyptus and arnica.   And, as we are about to experience our third nor’easter winter storm, I am about to forest bathe once again, in my own little neck of the woods.  I highly recommend to you this optional form of meditation.  One of which a bookmark, as of yet, has not been created.