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Articles from Nina Frost

Saturday, August 28, 2010

What Time Is It For You?
By webmaster @ 11:00 AM :: 111 Views :: 0 Comments :: Nina Frost

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to reap..."

As summer winds down, these deeply familiar words from Ecclesiastes stir in my mind and heart. Like many excerpts of Scripture, it has layers that only reveal themselves over time. I had always loved the slightly lulling, reassuring implications: a natural order prevails, like the seasons.

And yet... There are so many times we have to grapple with not a predictable end to one of life's seasons, but a sudden and unwelcome one...

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Who "Gets" You?
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 307 Views :: 6 Comments :: Nina Frost

I remember the weekend board meeting I was attending years ago when we broke for the day after working hard and gathered to relax. I was feeling warm and fuzzy about my fellow board members, feeling a part of the team, feeling safe and productive.

Then one of the head folk looked at me and another person and said, “You know, I just don’t get you. I don’t get you at all.”

Saturday, August 07, 2010

Any Formation Lately?
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 358 Views :: 1 Comments :: Nina Frost

I write this at Chautauqua, the adult ed heaven in upstate NY (http://www.ciweb.org/) dedicated to things spiritual and artistic and thoughtful. It’s also a week I have been working on the adult ed classes for Marble starting in the fall. Both place and task pivot on what I would call “spiritual formation,” as in… what helps people grow spiritually? What literally forms them, stretches them, surprises them on the path of their lives?

Yes, formation comes from books, a good sermon, a compelling class. But I remember the quivering unformed blob I was when I stumbled into a church in my mid-30s, sad, vulnerable, basically clueless. Formation happened there in spades, thanks to fiercely caring and wise clergy, and a community of folk eager to journey together into what it means to live an awakened life in the Christian faith. The spark got lit there, and the flame still burns. Thanks be to God.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Let Summer Tilt You
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 389 Views :: 0 Comments :: Nina Frost

In my last blog I wrote about the summer imperative to stop what you are doing, to pause, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

My husband and I recently paused in a special way by taking a cruise to Alaska, and both words were brand-new to us...both "cruise" and "Alaska."

A book I started on the trip is a memoir about traveling 25 years ago in rural China, and the author, a young college grad, writes about the chaos and impotence she feels upon being in a place where she can't understand a letter, much less a word of what is whirling around her. She muses about how "all power is contextual," in that confident, even cocky, Americans are reduced to pointing, jabbering, scared folk when suddenly unable to navigate life around them.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

No Can Do: In Praise of Stopping
By webmaster @ 7:59 AM :: 322 Views :: 1 Comments :: Nina Frost

The other day I was trying to do some emails, and both Firefox, the web browser, and AOL, my email provider, posted strange and wonderful messages that I have not seen before or since.

Neither would allow me to get online, an unusual confluence, but instead of some brief and clipped techno reason, something very human appeared. I can’t remember the exact words, but both companies said, in effect:

“We are overwhelmed right now, and can’t possibly do what we are supposed to do. There is too much going on. Please try back again later.”

OK, so there is a little editorial license here, but not much. Each message was replete with the sense of hands thrown up, limits reached, and the ensuing time out: mandatory.

Saturday, July 03, 2010

Container Store Confessional
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 245 Views :: 0 Comments :: Nina Frost

I confess I was in one of my favorite secular temples earlier this week: The Container Store, that paragon of order, organization, and the astounding possibility that everything can be in its place.

One definition of “temple” is “a place where something holy or divine is thought to dwell” and, no joke, that definition is one of the reasons why I sometimes go into The Container Store, just to wander around and pick up what feels like an essential message: Yes, it is possible to give color-coded, serene order to all that you love and cling to and that surrounds you in overlapping waves of disorder and piles and exciting potential.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

What Comes "Through" You?
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 363 Views :: 1 Comments :: Nina Frost

I was recently in Washington, DC for one of those life events that are singularly glorious… a big decade birthday for my husband, surrounded by family and friends who have known him for years, and who spoke with sheer love, humor and celebration about him. Liturgy at its finest.

One of the speakers, a Lutheran pastor who has known Robert for years (and who is a fierce rival of his in certain sports), lingered till the end. He looked Robert straight in the eye, and speaking to everyone still left, he said: “You know, Robert, we are here at this party because of you. But it’s not about you.”

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Menopause Prayer (Applies to Men, Too. Really.)
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 436 Views :: 0 Comments :: Nina Frost

So yes, I’m at that age when sleep can be elusive, in ways that were foreign just a few months ago. Something makes me swiftly surface from what used to be a nice, quiet, unconscious night and I lie...awake. For a while. Sometimes a long while.

It is unbidden time, aka, time I wish were spent in another way. But instead of triggering my inner control freak and sheet plucker, sometimes, just sometimes, I find myself treating these gaps in rest as prayer. I, who too seldom make time for prayer, make the space to think about God...well, here is space handed to me. It’s a gap -- and it invites conscious prayers of awareness, of attunement, even of gratitude, if I can just be in the space and listen. Sometimes I find myself reveling in the silence.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

What Are You Leaving Behind?
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 500 Views :: 0 Comments :: Nina Frost

I very recently replaced my beloved, ancient, very simple cell phone with, yes, a Blackberry, mostly to have an easier way to check email.

I am in that early blush of the relationship here, mostly looking at it with wonder, as I figure out how it does what.

So far my favorite, and most useful, button is one that looks like a U-turn, and lets you go back to the page, or function, you were on previously. And then go back to where you were before that. And the one before that. Deeply reassuring, this. Quick re-orientation and un-doing. Also very un-Biblical.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Where Is Truth Leading You?
By webmaster @ 4:15 PM :: 438 Views :: 0 Comments :: Nina Frost

It's just before Pentecost, a Sunday thought of as the birthday of the church, when the Holy Spirit -- the very presence of God -- came into the church and gave it life.

As a part of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is mysterious indeed, but also very promising, inviting, and challenging. (This Sunday, May 23, at Marble I will attempt to wade into the mystery with a class that looks at what this part of our faith means, and how is it perhaps rattling our cage. Please come at 1:30 or tune in at that time through live streaming.) The class is followed at 2:30 by a live Gospel Choir concert, "Breathe on Me."

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