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Articles from Nina Frost

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Your Gifts are Waiting
By webmaster @ 11:54 AM :: 221 Views :: 1 Comments :: Nina Frost

In the last two weekends, I was privileged to be in Marble community at times of discovery and surprise and joy and remembrance: One was the Couples retreat that my husband and I led and the other was the Ron Farr “Creating Deep Community” retreat at the church. I am also deeply aware that last Sunday’s service centered on All Saints Day in general, but in particular remembered some vital Marble souls who have recently passed on.

Discovery and surprise and joy and remembrance: All these events centered on the gifts we are to each other… in relationships, in the larger church community, in the world. Discovering and articulating those gifts, as you know, is our theme this year. I think of it as a theme that is about meeting: Meeting each other in new and revealing ways; meeting ourselves in ways both celebratory and challenging.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Listen For The Call in Your Fall
By webmaster @ 10:51 AM :: 389 Views :: 1 Comments :: Nina Frost

I recently visited my beloved oldest friend, who lives in Kansas City, and also got caught up with her three wonderful children. Her daughter Emily had recently moved to Colorado, a place that clearly calls to her soul, and always has. She is starting a new life there, at age 20, and the gift of the place, and of her congruence with it, were palpable even over the Skype transmission.

As she jiggled the computer so we could "tour" her room out there, her mother spied a framed print of a woman and quote that I had given her mom years ago and that had somehow found its way into Emily's box when she packed. The quote is the famous one by poet Mary Oliver from the final lines of her poem "The Summer’s Day":

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Who Needs to Hear from You? (Pentecost, part 3)
By webmaster @ 11:30 AM :: 329 Views :: 0 Comments :: Nina Frost

One of the great gifts the summer has brought me is attendance at some Al-Anon meetings near where I live. As many of you know, it is in these communities that one finds a language and a structure and support to grapple with the difficulties of loving someone who has the disease of addiction.

I am a rank newbie, but early on the power of the Steps (the same as in AA) was apparent. And then some. To wit: I puzzled, initially, over the step about making amends to those we have hurt. Hey: Isn't that step mostly for the people with the addiction? Or so I thought, reasonably.

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Honoring Your Restlessness (Pentecost, part 2)
By webmaster @ 12:30 PM :: 362 Views :: 0 Comments :: Nina Frost

August begins, and summer deepens. We move slowly through the heat. I am nostalgic enough, and hopeful enough, to think of deep summer as that time when we can slow down... maybe take some time off... take a pause from routine.

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Finding Your Wild Goose (Pentecost, Part 1)
By webmaster @ 12:00 PM :: 485 Views :: 2 Comments :: Nina Frost

The church season of Pentecost, which started last month, winds its long and mysterious way through the church calendar, and our psyches, throughout the summer and all the way to late November. It is the longest church season, and is also called "ordinary time"—a phrase I always loved for its openness, seeming lack of pressure, its aura of unfolding.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Have You Seen Easter Lately?
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 495 Views :: 0 Comments :: Nina Frost

We are still deep in the 50 days of the season called Easter, and I invite you to an "Easter" practice, much as we often take on a "Lenten" practice.

If you look around or within, or both, can you sense Easter stirring? Has it rattled your cage, and you missed it? In our collective rushing around, it is easy to think of Easter as being the culmination of Holy Week and then we are on to something else.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Following Your Good Friday
By webmaster @ 1:45 PM :: 598 Views :: 0 Comments :: Nina Frost

Holy Week unfolds each year, its various days stations of wonder, grief and mystery.

Mid-week, the time is especially liminal: Good Friday approaches, a bearer of pain and darkness. Easter seems far off. We are tempted to get on with business as usual, whatever that might hope to be.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

This Bird's For You
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 590 Views :: 1 Comments :: Nina Frost

Speaking of Lenten practices, I just remembered a year-round one, courtesy of Thomas Merton, who wrote:

“A bird calls, announcing the difference between heaven and hell.”

That’s it. Meaning… heaven is when you are available enough, present enough, to actually hear the bird.

Hell is when you never hear the bird, when you miss it, and who knows what else.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Renewing and Remembering: Lenten Invitations
By webmaster @ 4:30 PM :: 673 Views :: 0 Comments :: Nina Frost

At the Ash Wednesday service I went to last week, the music minister sang a very simple and compelling version of Psalm 51... the Psalm traditionally used on this day.

As this verse rang out, what was formerly familiar suddenly became alive with necessity:

"Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me."

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Are You Sitting Down?
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 682 Views :: 1 Comments :: Nina Frost

I write this from a Franciscan retreat center in Northern California, where my husband and I are spending a couple of quiet days. There is one other guest here on a personal retreat, a young woman who is both a middle school art teacher and a fitness trainer. Her days start at 4:30 am and are long and full and frenetic, and she is always on the go.

She came here, just for 24 hours, because she knows that whole months can go by without any breathing room for herself. She admitted to us she knows she really has to learn to slow down occasionally, to catch up with what is inside her.

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