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

started with number 16, “Brush Without Running,” which advised me to turn off the spigot while brushing my teeth. At first it seemed like no big deal. I mean, even if everyone did it, how much water would be saved? Then the book told me: “Daily savings in the US alone could add up to 1.5 billion gallons.”

Years later, I still turn off the water when I brush my teeth. It reminds me that I care. And it’s through small acts of caring that we learn to love.

STAY CLOSE TO NATURE

Staying close to nature is simple: Get outside and be there. Walk by the river, sit in the park, and watch and listen.

When I lived in Manhattan, I felt impelled now and then to leave the city and head for the country, where I could hear the birds, smell fresh air, and see the stars that city lights hide.

We need time spent in nature just as surely as we need food and shelter. It soothes our soul, calms our mind, and can even heal our pain.

A lifetime ago, when my first marriage fell apart, I received this message in a fortune cookie: There are three great healers: Time, Love, and Nature. Being a strong believer in fortune cookies, I taped it to the fridge, and then I waited for it to prove true.

I remember days when, frozen with anxiety, I sat outside all morning to feel the sun’s warmth. I remember nights when I cried to the moon and felt only the sky could hold my sorrow. I remember walks through the woods, breathing in the smell of pine trees and feeling my spirit slowly lift.

Over time, with the love of friends and my children and the power of nature, I began to heal.

The fortune cookie was right.

And so was Frank:

Study nature,

Love nature,

Stay close to nature.

It will never fail you.

Part Seven

SACRED SPACE.

SACRED TIME.

You want the whole world to be

your sacred space, and it is.

But we forget, so our sacred space

is a reminder.

THE MAGIC HOUR

Dawn and dusk, some believe, are the best times to pray. They do seem to have a holy aura. Especially dawn, when birds are singing their hearts out and the day smells fresh and clean. And dawn announces something else: the Magic Hour.

The Magic Hour earned its name from photographers, who love to shoot at this time. It’s the first and last half hour of sunlight, starting just before the sun rises and just before it sets. Sometimes it lasts longer, sometimes it’s shorter, and sometimes, on cloudy days, it doesn’t happen at all. The truth is, you can’t pin down magic. But what is certain is that when the sun is close to the horizon, it casts a soft golden light on everything you see, causing the Magic Hour to also be known as the Golden Hour.

The first time I saw it I was in college. It was a late afternoon in autumn, and I was walking across campus, kicking leaves with my friend Karen, who suddenly said, “Look!”

I turned to look back at the Gothic towers of our dorm, and everything was suffused with a warm golden glow. The old stone buildings and clusters of fir trees looked clearer yet softer, like a picture in perfect focus but shot through gauze.

“Wow,” I said. “Is this what the world’s really like? Or is it just an illusion?”

Karen muttered something about how the subjective mind can never know objective reality. We were both “phil” majors, and that’s how we talked.

I don’t remember what we decided, but I do know this: The effect at its fullest only lasts a few minutes, yet it’s always worth seeking. For the Magic Hour is not only the best time to pray or take photos; it’s a time to step out, bask in the light, and be a witness. On most days, what you’ll see is a world lit up and resplendent, its glory and magic revealed.

And all you have to do is be there.

ZEN VIEW

It was a long, hot day in a long, hot summer. I noticed without surprise that all the flowers in our garden had died, and the only color besides brown was the green of their drooping leaves. It was also the day that our friend Sarah was being operated on for brain cancer. And that morning, in some worrisome synchronicity, my mom found a lump on her breast and I found a hard, suspect lump in my cheek.

My goal was to stay positive: to hold Sarah in the light, have faith in her healing, and believe that Mom and I would also be fine. I had come to the garden to feel uplifted, but it looked so dreary I only felt worse.

Perhaps some deep watering will help, I thought, this being a chore I enjoy. It instantly connects me to each plant and allows me to notice how they’ve changed. So I grabbed the hose and began. And as I started watering all those drab, flowerless plants, a curious thing happened. First, I spotted some wild daisies. Then I found tiny yellow asters hiding behind some dusty leaves, while off to the side, the first pink blooms on the Rose of Sharon had just opened, so soft and lovely they made me sigh. Why, it’s a lovely garden, I thought, but subtle. You have to move around to see it. You have to find the zen view.

I first heard about the zen view when John and I were building our house (a time of dreams and nightmares, as anyone crazy enough to do this knows). Someone lent us a tome entitled A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, written by a group of architects and urban planners. The authors had studied design and building in cultures throughout the world, searching for the underlying principles, the archetypes that work and endure. Then they distilled these into patterns to help others create the ideal town, city, or home.

In that crazy, intense time, John