My wish for the new year

Wishing all my readers a very happy and healthy new year! Hopefully these words from Peggy Toney Horton will inspire you.......

The obsession with evaluating and rating things

A very apt commentary on the state of affairs in society right now. Thank you again, Pearls Before Swine and Stephan Pastis. It's true that no matter what we do or buy, someone is waiting in the wings to ask us 'how'd we do?' The silliest is when I've bought trivial items and the companies that sell them want to know what I think of them. Why? Is it important in the general scheme of things? How did we manage before? I'm not necessarily opposed to rating a hotel stay or customer service at a restaurant, but I refuse to be pressured into it. And often it feels like we're being pressured into it when companies send email after email to remind you to rate them. Sometimes I really don't want to rate anything at all. So if I don't want to do it, I don't. 

Winter darkness

I probably write a post about winter darkness each year, and each year I end up feeling the same way about winter darkness as I did the year before, so I put pen to paper to say that I don't like it. The winter days are too short, the nights are too long. It gets dark between 3:30 and 4 pm, and stays dark until around 8 am when light starts to filter through the clouds. The sun doesn't formally rise however until after 9 am. This morning sunrise was at 9:19 am and sunset was at 3:19 pm. That amounts to six hours of daylight and eighteen hours of darkness. 

Sometimes I wake up (unwillingly) in the middle of the night, turn on the light, and look at the clock. I did that this morning; the clock showed 6:30 am and it was still pitch black outside. I thought to myself, I can get through December and January, but after that, I'm ready for the light and warmth of spring. Imagine a world without the sun. Imagine our planet trying to survive without the warming sun. I wouldn't want to live in that world. It's no wonder our ancestors feared the dark and worshipped the sun. I would have done the same. 

You never know what's lurking in the dark, and even if it's not a real danger or threat, there is a tendency when I wake up in the middle of the night for my thoughts to veer in a pensive direction. Normally I wouldn't mind that, but in the middle of the night, I do. Because my mind races with all sorts of thoughts, blown out of proportion, that seem almost trivial and silly in the light of day. One thing I've learned--don't make any important life decisions at 3 am in pitch darkness. That's never a good idea. 

Darkness evokes feelings of emptiness, sadness, fear, loneliness and depression. Fear of the unknown, the void, the emptiness. Fear of not mattering to a soul, fear of being alone in the universe. Darkness feels all-encompassing, as though it will envelope and swallow you. Summer darkness is less intense than winter darkness, but I still don't like it. Daylight and sunlight bring feelings of contentment, happiness, safety, togetherness and joy. Daylight ushers in a lightness of spirit. In the daylight, in the warmth of the sun, I feel the sense of possibility--that anything can be tackled as long as there is light. 

Rat and the modern lifestyle

My laugh for the day, thanks to Stephan Pastis and Pearls Before Swine......I always get a kick out of Rat. 

Meeting my little robin friend again

I try to visit my garden every other day or so to ensure that the bird feeders are filled. When I went there today, the feeders were nearly empty. I refilled them all, and then sat on the bench and watched as the little birds flew to the feeder to eat. I was surprised by a visit from a larger bird--a black thrush. He made his presence known and kept the small birds at bay as he ate. Such is the way of nature. After he left, I made sure there was still plenty of seeds. 

The nicest part of my visits is meeting my little robin friend again. When I first arrived in the garden today, he was the first one to greet me. Of course I can't rule out that he views me as 'matmor' (literally translated = food mother), but nevertheless, I find him to be just adorable. Today he hovered around me and let me take a few videos and photos of him at the feeding station. When I walked away from it to go sit down on the bench, which is a bit of a distance from the station, he followed me and perched himself in the ninebark bush next to the greenhouse, all the while watching me. He is curious and quite friendly. How attached you can become to such little creatures. God's creatures. It would break my heart if anything ever happened to him, so I hope and pray that it won't, and that he'll survive the winter and make it into spring. Hopefully he'll reunite with his mate (if he has one). I haven't seen her, whereas I've seen him, usually solo, hanging around my garden for the past two years or so. 

Here is a video from today's visit so you can get to see him. He seems to be a contented little bird. 

Loneliness and longing

At Christmas mass last night, the priest gave a short sermon about God's longing for us. He meant that God did not want to be alone, he wants to be with man whom he has created. He seeks us. He wants us to accept him into our lives. Somehow, when he said this in just this way, I felt a certain empathy for God. I thought--was it possible for the divine to feel loneliness? Or is loneliness just a human emotion? I don't think so, but how can we ever know? The only thing I know is that when I feel lonely, it has more to do with my spirit and less to do with the corporeal. When I feel lonely, I also long for fellowship but mostly for understanding. In this context, loneliness is associated with the longing to be understood by those around me but also by the divine. It's possible to feel alienated from both at times, thus creating a feeling of loneliness (longing). God also wants man to understand him as much as is humanly possible. So that makes me wonder if our feelings are (a small) part of what defines the 'divine'. Lots of questions, but no answers, as always when it comes to faith and spirituality. We accept a lot on trust, and that's fine. But I like the idea that God can feel loneliness; after all, if he created all things, then he understands loneliness, and he understands that loneliness is part of the human condition. 

I like the priest who celebrated mass last night because he seems to be a peaceful, non-combative soul, not aggressive in speech or manner. He does not attack his congregation with fire-and-brimstone sermons, but engages them in a kind way with sermons that speak of the power of love (agape). I found myself thinking of Pope Francis, who seems to be made of the same cloth. Francis recently exhorted priests to shorten their sermons, which is wonderful advice, especially for priests who insist on just repeating the words of the gospels and not offering any reflections on the relevance of the gospel words. We don't need the gospel words reiterated verbatim; we're perfectly capable of understanding the words. I want a reflective approach to sermons, or you can mostly skip them in my opinion. In the world we live in now, we need more priests who are willing to truly reflect on the words of the gospels and offer advice on how to live with faith in a world such as ours. 

I wrote to a friend of mine recently who is going through a tough time that having hope for change, hope that things can get better, is the essence of our faith. A message of redemption--that it's never too late to change the path we're on or to ask for forgiveness or to make amends. That is the message of Easter but also of Christmas. We wait during Advent for the birth of a being who was sent to us by God. We open our hearts to this baby in the hope that we will be blessed and transformed. Babies and small children can do that to you--open your heart and transform your spirit. No wonder that God decided that Christ would start life as a baby. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. But in order to be transformed, we need to accept ourselves for who we are with all our faults and peccadilloes and to ask God to enter our lives. Sounds easy, but for many people, it's not. But by accepting him into our lives, the loneliness associated with the longing to be understood can lessen. 

Merry Christmas from our house to yours

 

Reflections on his life from Camus

Here's to hope, faith, persistence and resilience at Christmastime and in the new year......

Reflections on life from Albert Camus. 

“My dear, 

In the midst of hate, 

I found there was, within me, 

an invincible love. 

In the midst of tears, 

I found there was, within me, 

an invincible smile. 

In the midst of chaos, 

I found there was, within me, 

an invincible calm. 

I realized, through it all, that; 

In the midst of winter,

I found there was, within me, 

an invincible summer. 

And that makes me happy. 

For it says that no matter 

how hard the world pushes 

against me, within me, 

there’s something stronger,

something better, 

pushing right back. 

Truly yours, 

Albert Camus,” Summer in Algiers

The Spinners--It's a Shame

I saw the movie The Holiday again recently, and one of the main characters had this song as his cell phone ringtone. I grew up with this music and hearing the song again brought me right back to that time. It's a great song by a great group--The Spinners. They don't make music like this anymore. Enjoy.......

Making friends with a little robin

One of the best things that ever happened in my life so far was being gifted an allotment garden in 2016. It changed and enhanced my life in so many ways that I never thought possible. I always had an appreciation for nature, for plants and flowers, and for birds and the wildlife around us, but I never had daily contact with them in the way that I do now. As many of my readers know, I have a soft spot in my heart for honeybees, bumblebees and birds of all kinds. One of the images that will forever stand out in my mind is the memory of the honeybees and sparrows side by side on the birdbath rim, drinking water together during a particularly dry Oslo summer (2018 if I remember correctly). I have captured those incredible moments in photos that I treasure.

Fast forward to the present. I have written about the new bird feeding station that I bought for my garden so that I can feed the birds during the winter months. I go to the garden every couple of days now to fill the different feeders. It didn't take long for the small birds to discover the feeding station; after a couple of days, they are waiting in the tree branches for me to fill the empty feeders, that's how fast they eat the seeds. The little birds that frequent the feeders are the sparrows, the blue tits, and a singular robin. The robins that you see here in Norway (European robins) are much smaller versions of their American counterparts, and they are amazingly cute. I read online that it's usually the male robin who stays put during the winter months at the location where he and his mate hang out during the summer months. So I'm assuming this little guy that I see each day is the male; I don't know if he has a mate and where she may be if he does have one. In any case, I'm becoming friends with him little by little. He is not afraid of me at all. Today, when I arrived to fill the feeders, he landed on one of them right in front of me and proceeded to start eating. He looked at me, then at the food, then at me, and then at the food again. He is the first one there when I arrive, and if I move away from the feeder to another part of the garden, he follows me. He is just so freaking cute. When I was in the greenhouse today, he was in the ninebark tree to the left of the greenhouse, just sitting in the branches. When I started to talk to him, he started to warble. I have heard his song before in previous springs, and I have seen this little guy before because he has been hanging around my garden for a couple of years. I'm glad that he chose my garden in which to hang around. 

Here's a very short video of him:

Living life with a sense of humor

I read a good article in the New York Times this morning, where Pope Francis talks about the importance of having a sense of humor to get through life: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/opinion/pope-francis-humor.html?unlocked_article_code=1.iE4.W_bC.eFqE4vYNgQR-&smid=url-share

In another article that talked about his sense of humor, he mentioned the Prayer for Good Humor that has been attributed to St. Thomas More. He said that he prays it every day. I'm including it here. One thing I do know, and that is that a good laugh is the cure for a lot of aches, pains, and grumbles. When we pray for grace, perhaps we should pray for the gift of being able to laugh at ourselves and others via jokes and amusing anecdotes. I do not defend mocking others or making cruel fun of others as humor, just so that is clear; that is bullying behavior. The Pope talks about irony, which is my preferred form for humor. Irony, whether self-irony or irony directed at others, implies seeing the contradictions in different situations and being able to point them out in a humorous, sometimes sarcastic way. An ironical situation is one that is wryly amusing. We should be able to laugh at ourselves first, to see the comedy in what we do. That encourages others to do the same. 

Prayer for Good Humor

by St. Thomas More

Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest.

Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humor to maintain it.

Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good

and that doesn’t frighten easily at the sight of evil,

but rather finds the means to put things back in their place.

Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumblings, sighs and laments,

nor excess of stress, because of that obstructing thing called “I.”

Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humor.

Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke to discover in life a bit of joy,

and to be able to share it with others.

This morning's beautiful 'mother of pearl' clouds (perlemorskyer)

I awoke early this morning, and I'm glad I did, because otherwise I would have missed these incredibly rare clouds of many colors! These clouds are called 'perlemorskyer' in Norwegian, and that translates to 'mother of pearl' clouds in English. The scientific name for them is polar stratospheric clouds; they are a very rare sight to see. That is because they occur in the stratosphere layer of the atmosphere (very high up, between 49,000 and 82,000 feet up according to Wikipedia). You can read more about their formation here: Nacreous clouds | International Cloud Atlas

I managed to get some good photos before the light from the sunrise dissipated the colors. Enjoy!

December fun in Oslo

A week ago this past Sunday, I was out walking during the early afternoon, and came across these two very different activities. Both looked like fun! The weather so far this December has been wonderfully mild and sunny, so it was possible to do both these things because there was no ice or snow. I took these videos--enjoy!

Life is a one-way street

Our lives are often referred to as the 'roads' or 'paths' we're on. Moving through life does feel like being on a road, albeit with detours that can track us off or lead us back eventually to the main road. The main road should include a sign that reads 'destination unknown'. Because although we're moving straight ahead, it's not always clear what our destination is. Some would say heaven or the afterlife, some would say a void if they don't believe in an afterlife, and others don't give it much thought at all. All of us keep plodding forward, although the word plodding implies heaviness and grimness. Life can weigh us down at times with its problems, so it's not always easy to have a light step. 

Whether we walk lightly or doggedly, one thing is certain. There is no reverse, no going back. We can't walk backward, can't reclaim past years, can't go back to living in the past, as much as we might like to sometimes when life gets difficult. Sometimes, the desire is strong to return to a time when life seemed less burdened, less weighed-down with societal and personal issues. But the reality is that they were there too in the past; we just tackled them differently because we were younger and the whole of life was still ahead of us. We were naïve in a good way; we didn't have the life experience that we do now. Perhaps we reacted more impulsively to certain situations on which we would use more careful consideration now. It's hard to know for sure. 

Although we can't walk backward into the past, we can walk more lightly when we forgive ourselves and others on the road with us. Forgiveness of others lightens our burdens; it unencumbers us. It clears the path ahead for new experiences, new adventures, kinder lives, and gentler spirits. We don't walk alone on our one-way street of life; we walk together with those we love and care about. 

Keeping the birds happy in winter

I recently purchased a bird feeding station from Amazon UK that arrived this past week. I love it already, since it was easy to assemble and came with different accessories, among them a suet ball cage, two pans (one for seeds and one for water), and a vertical hanging feeder. I am using both pans for seeds and/or bread cubes since there are freezing temperatures now and the water would just freeze in the pan. I had no problem assembling and installing it in my garden; it's placed under the krossved tree. The small birds have already discovered it and are making good use of it. I'm surprised I haven't thought of doing this before; we already feed the pigeons and magpies that show up outside our kitchen window in the morning--year-round. Sometimes the little birds show up as well, but they can't compete with the larger birds. Now they have their own feeding station that will hopefully keep them happy (and alive) during the cold winter months. Here is a photo of the bird feeder; I've already posted a link to it on Amazon UK for those who might want to buy the same feeder.