Recipes for a Sacred Life: True Stories and a Few Miracles Rivvy Neshama (best short books to read .TXT) 📖

a group, with one cow in charge to watch over them. And the mother cows take turns being the caretaker. Look sometime when you see all the babies together.”

I could picture her telling her nine-year-old students this and how they’d go, “Ohhh, that’s nice!”

Well, I said it too: “Ohhh, Sarah, that’s nice!”

It helped put me in a good mood for the hospital. Of course, what really helped was sharing the ride with Paul and Sarah, our dear buddies, who kept us laughing and talking all the way there.

By the time we arrived, I felt calm, even jolly. As we walked through the corridors, I asked directions to this or that and smiled and thanked everyone in my best possible way. And each nurse who helped John was so helpful and friendly that I believed what Sarah says: Most nurses are angels.

“I feel so relaxed,” I said to John.

“I’m glad you’re relaxed,” John the patient said. But he was too. Enough to sing me a song as he lay on the table before being wheeled into surgery. It was a Nat King Cole song. About oysters:

Let there be you,

Let there be me.

Let there be oysters

Under the sea.

Let there be cuckoos,

A lark and a dove,

But first of all, please . . .

Let there be love.

Part Six

A NATURE RECIPE

FROM FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Study nature,

Love nature,

Stay close to nature,

It will never fail you.

—FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

STUDY NATURE

In one of many midlife transitions, I decided to become a teacher for inner-city kids. So I enrolled at Bank Street College, where we were taught to study nature the way we’d teach our students: not by reading, but by observing and reflecting. Watch something as it grows or changes, my professor said, like a plant or the moon. I chose the moon. Journal in hand, off I went, moon hunting.

It’s not always easy to find the moon in Manhattan, but for one month, from the same location, I drew where it was at noon and at different hours in the day and night. I sketched its rise and fall and changing shape, and though I never really fathomed what it all meant, I began to suspect that the earth is indeed moving.

Then, one night, I woke up from a dream with a visceral sense of our spinning earth, the circling moon, and their amazing, enduring connection. For one moment, I got it, and it was a moment of joy.

I later saw that joy reflected in my third-grade students when they, too, were led to observe and discover. “Look, Miss Rivvy!” Kalima shouted. “Our bean seed is sprouting!”

And at the end of the term, they created an album of notes to help me make my next transition: moving to Boulder to live with John. (“Thank you Miss Rivvy for all the good times. I hope you have a nice time with your new life. Love, Willy.”)

Once ensconced in Boulder, I entered that expansive space you sometimes enter when you’re somewhere new. This led me to attend events I would normally ignore and to join groups I would normally not join—such as the Bioregional Study Group, whose goal was to study our hometown’s ecology and learn how to live sustainably within it. We talked about things like compost, which to me seemed exotic, and I soon made two friends, Alison and Milan, who inspired me with their projects. The one I liked best was this:

Milan cut out a huge circle of white poster board and taped it to their kitchen wall. They divided the wheel into twelve months, and as the year progressed, they wrote down under each month all the changes they observed: which star was brightest and where it appeared, when they heard the first mourning dove or found violets in spring. They were creating their own almanac, and like the Native Americans, they named each month’s full moon to track the seasons, with names like Wet Snow Moon or Moon of the Ripe Tomatoes.

But sometimes, the changes we observe can be disturbing. One summer I noted the absence of honeybees and read that pesticides were decimating their species. I missed seeing them and worried what would happen to the flowers and the honey. Then I noticed something I hadn’t before: A backup crew of butterflies, wasps, and smaller bees were busy flitting from flower to flower, drinking nectar, spreading pollen, and keeping the whole thing going. And when I think of that—or the dance between our earth and moon—I think, Whoa, it’s all connected, and it all works out.

Which makes me sense a perfect wisdom, just watching it unfold.

My religion consists of a humble admiration

of the illimitable superior spirit

who reveals himself in the slight details

we are able to perceive with

our frail and feeble mind.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN

LOVE NATURE

I’ve always loved nature—trees and such—but I grew up in an urban family that was scared of spiders and considered a good outing to be a trip to the diner. It wasn’t until later that my love for nature bloomed.

There are two ways to love nature. The first is with all your senses. Earth and sun, wind and water—each has an energy we can connect with.

To feel my connection to the earth, I like to touch it with my hands, or walk barefoot, or lie down on the silky grass, breathe in its smell, and watch the clouds, the way I did when I was seven.

In summer months, I look for chances to swim in the sea, the warm sun on my face as I flow with the water. And on dark summer nights, I walk out naked on our balcony to feel the cool breeze against my skin.

A second way to love nature is to protect it. You pick one part you truly care about—the ocean, our wildlife, the bees—and do what you can to save it. With that intention, our Bioregional Group read the booklet 50 Ways to Help the Planet and began to practice the many ways. I