Month: May 2013

Let’s Get Down To Business

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

First, some mulling drawn from today’s Facebook conversations.  Then a poem.  Then a Gratitude List.

Sometimes I don’t know if I can bear the weight of the problems of the world. I get so furious, not just at the military-industrial complex, but at the way corporations have become the ruling classes, the way Monsanto has taken over the USDA, the way our consumer culture is balanced on the backs of slaves and oppressed people elsewhere in the world. I don’t know if we can turn things back. But I know that there are lots of like-minded people out there who want to turn things back. I’m not sure how we do that, but I want to start by putting as much love out there as possible in the meantime.

I don’t mean for that to sound childish or like I am ignoring the problem. I bring it back to the metaphor of the bowl for the heart. I used to think that I could only have one thing in there at a time, either the joyful things full of wonder, or the angry and despairing things. But recently I have pledged to just sit with the bowl open and let it all fall in together. And the whole crazy mix belongs there. The love I have for butterflies and songbirds is precisely why I hate Monsanto so. The delight I take in my children is precisely why the military-industrial complex terrifies me.

How can I maintain the balance in my head when I get so furious and despairing and tired and sad about so much that is happening in the world? Sometimes it feels so schizophrenic to speak of beauty and wonder and delight when something in my heart is cringing in fear of what the future holds for my children. I know that remembering what I love, remembering what holds my heart, reminding myself why I fight, all this helps me to keep doing my work.

If we who care deeply enough to walk the cliffs of despair, if we let ourselves get frozen or lost or broken on those cliffs, then whatever it is that we’re fighting against has begun to win. Maybe that’s it. Instead of just using my rage and despair to fight this thing, I want to find ways to use my love and wonder to overcome it.

Perhaps my work of late has been too passive, too much in the realm of prayer and contemplation. What is the next step, I wonder?

These Are the Words
These are the things that I tell myself, over and over again.
These are the words I use to remember.

Don’t forget to do your soul-work.
Don’t stop because it seems like no one is watching,
because it seems like no one else is doing their work.
They are working.
Ask around. Tell your own story.
Suddenly they pop up like mushrooms,
all over the yard,
like fairy rings that fairly sparkle in the moonlight.

I always say, Be the web. Throw the lines from one to one to one.
Today I say, Be mycelium.
All those underground signals racing through the soil,
through the roots, through the fine hairs so tiny,
so tiny they are more energy than matter.

But that’s what matters.
That’s the heart of the matter.

We’re all doing our work, sending messages to each other,
invisible like energy,
like the sermons of the fungi
traveling those invisible underground highways.

Something is going to pop up.
I say, Something is going to pop up!

One morning you will wake up
and they’ll be there,
not just hiding underneath the leaves
with the shy toads and salamanders,
but spiced throughout the lawn
throughout the lawns
all over the world,
saying

We are here!
We are doing our work!

In the meantime, keep hoping,
keep praying,
keep making magic spells,
like the one my son made today
from dandelions and Virginia Creeper
to bring peace among the chickens,
and from them to their eggs and to us
and then to the whole world.

In the meantime,
keeping speaking the names of the captives.
Your words will set them free.

Keep singing and dancing,
praying and hoping.

Be the Underground Laureate of The Poetry of Waiting.
Be the One who Sings to the Dark Moon.
Be the Dancer in the Sullen Crowd.
Be the Painter of Speckled Eggs.

Oh, I have to say it, though the activists have said it a thousand times,
like Gandhi said it:

Be the change you wish to see.

Until the twining vines of the sacred squash
grow from your heaving heart,
until the song of the whale echoes through your deserts,
until the world is born afresh.
Until the world is born afresh.

This is the song. This is the poem.
This is the story that will heal the world.

Now.
Let’s get down to business.

Gratitude List:
1.  A pair of indigo buntings feeding in the dandelions before the rain.  (Perhaps some day I will write a gratitude list without the wing-folk.  Or perhaps not.)
2.  Ferns.  The ones I transplanted today from the barn wall to the house and walkway were taller than my children.  I think I may just keep adding and adding until the lawn is gone and the children can walk beneath their waving fronds like hobbits.
3.  The feeling of something being released in my spirit as the air pressure changes before rain.
4.  The way people care for your spirit when you ask for help.  That’s what I mean by asking around.  All that good work is being done, all that hopeful energy, all that intentionality, all that tremendous love waiting to spring into action, springing into action even before it is called upon.  Oh, I believe in angels, and some of them take human form.
5.  Conversations about the grandmothers that bring them into the present moment.

May we walk in beauty.  May we walk in love.

Where is the Moon?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

This is pure play, loosely based on a game we made up during supper tonight.  I think I might want to come back to it at some point and re-work the idea.  It reminds me a little of Ted Hughes’ “Amulet.”

Where is the moon?
I think it is in the pond.
Where is the pond?
I think it is under the mountain.
Where is the mountain?
Inside the eye of the dragon.
Where is the dragon?
In the dreams of the fox.
Where is the fox?
In the egg of the hummingbird.
And the hummingbird?
In the shimmering colors of the sunset.
And the sunset?
In the spider’s web.
And the spider?
Oh, the spider is on the moon.

Lura Lauver Slabaugh and a baby
This is a photo of my grandmother Lura Slabaugh.  I wonder how old she was in this picture?

Gratitude List:
1.  All the birdie love in the air today.  A bluebird feeding his sweetheart.  Grackles mating–he did such an elaborate dance with his wings in fans while he sang her a sweet song, and watched her so intently with his bright white eyes.
2.  The way the sun suddenly shone through the clouds when my boy and I were out checking the chickens this morning.
3.  The way the big carpenter bee at the barn swims through the air to check me out–eye to eye–whenever I pass, and then zzzzez away.
4.  Words, resplendent words, audacious, precious, unique, absurd, fetching, delightful, breathtaking words.
5.  The way the Earth feeds us, even beyond what we can plant.  There’s food out there, in the dandelions, the poke, the soon-to-ripen Juneberries, the dock and thistle and plantain.  I use most of these mostly for tea at this point in my learning.  Still, they nourish me.

May we walk in beauty.

Culture and Wild-Culture

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Gratitude List:
1.  Carla Christopher, the poet laureate priestess of Culture and Main.  I am a little star-struck, spending time with all those good vibes today.  Good, thoughtful interviews.  Singer/songwriter Soji.  Riverkeeper and Councilman and singer/songwriter Michael Helfrich.  Poet and model Jess Angel.  And Miles Coltrane, the cutest puppy ever.  I’m still kind of high on this energy.  Get the farmer off the farm. . .
2.  The beautiful interchange between Maya Angelou and Diane Rehm after Angelou finished telling her personal story of horror.  Such open hearts.
3.  Those stacked-up clouds over the fields tonight while oriole sang in the hollow.  The way the kale has bloomed bright yellow like wildfire spreading across the northern hillside.  And Crimson Clover.  And Purple Passion Asparagus.  And those petulant pink Dogwoods.
4.  This boy, who is seven years and not yet twelve hours old.  I am so grateful for these children, for all they are learning, how and whom they are becoming.
5.  Playing Wildcraft with my kids this evening, a cooperative plant-learning game that friends gave us for Ellis’s birthday today.

May we walk in beauty.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Ellis and his Great-Grandma Marian Weaver.

The Soul Purpose Is to Love

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

This morning, I spent some time writing about how my rages and my fears and my sadness are the things that help me to discover my Work in the world, my Soul Purpose.  I’ve been thinking about how to better integrate those uncomfortable emotions rather than to sweep them under the rug, where the tend to either burn things or start to mildew and rot.

I was raging and tearful after reading about the recent slaughter of the last 15 surviving white rhinos of Mozambique.  I was going into the red tunnel of fury.  And then it hit me that this was a message.  This is one of the clues to my Work.  And I don’t just mean my vocation, I mean the work I do in the world.  It may be activism, it may be writing letters or poems, it may be prayers and magic spells.  But the things which I love so deeply that  to lose them drives me into that red tunnel, those are the things which are my Soul Purpose.

“What are my tasks?” I wrote.  “What is my Work?  I think the place to start is in contemplation and meditation, connecting myself to the Deep Well of Love that makes me want to protect, to heal.  Prayer, magic spells, weaving and shifting energies.  Behind the scenes work.  I don’t think I can stop there.  I think prayer and contemplation need voices, need fingers.”

Later in the morning, a friend shared this Wendell Berry quote that says it more eloquently than I think I can: “What can turn us from this deserted future, back into the sphere of our being, the great dance that joins us to our home, to each other and to other creatures, to the dead and unborn? I think it is love. I am perforce aware how baldly and embarrassingly that word now lies on the page—for we have learned at once to overuse it, abuse it, and hold it in suspicion. But I do not mean any kind of abstract love (adolescent, romantic, or “religious”), which is probably a contradiction in terms, but particular love for particular things, places, creatures, and people, requiring stands, acts, showing its successes and failures in practical or tangible effects. And it implies a responsibility just as particular, not grim or merely dutiful, but rising out of generosity. I think that this sort of love defines the effective range of human intelligence, the range within its works can be dependably beneficent. Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous. Desire for the future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows.” ~Wendell Berry

Frog

Gratitude List:
1.  Much as I loved having babies, and proud as I am of that part of my journey, I am grateful that I am here contemplating and writing tonight instead of walking the labyrinth of labor that I was experiencing this night seven years ago (I was nearing my 24th hour of labor at this point).
2.  I am grateful for that baby, for the boy he has become, for the ways in which he becomes himself more and more every day.
3.  Frogs and creeks and glorious cousins.
4.  8 1/2 hours of healing sleep last night.  I can hardly believe that my children and my cat and my own head let me manage that one.
5.  The Columbia Re-Uzit Shop.  I bought a new dress and summer shoes and some colorful plates.

May we walk in Beauty.  All the days of our lives.

The Great Mother

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This is an older poem, one that I have pulled out again to put into my book.
Great Mother

I am the scent of dawn that rises from the owl’s feather
to awaken the floating moon.
I am the fingers of frost that vanish from the budded
branch, transformed by wren’s song.
I am the child of thunder, sinking into a purple
couch of sky.
I am the seed of the mountain that waits in the
memory of the hummingbird.

I am the tufted ears of the vixen, yearning to the footfall
of the field mouse.
I am the snakes of flame which slither through the dark
doorway of the ring of stones.
I am the lustful sermon of the bees,
earnest and ardent.
I am the wild eye of the star, silently observing
the wayward dance of the planets.

Have you seen me slip between the stones of the grotto?
Have you seen me winking in the coals of your sacred fire?
Have you seen me flash through the electric air of your dreams?

Oh search for me among the brambles and sharp stones on the hillside,
within the bubbling heart of the spring.
Listen for my name in the bluebird’s chortle,
in the whisper of wind through the milkweed.

I will be found.
I will be found.

Open your hands and search
within the wrinkled webs you carry there.
Grasp the shattered ray of light
which passes through the crystal’s heart.
Drink the shadows which surround you
as the day scampers away over the fields.

I am here.
I am here.
I am always here.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Honey Lemon Ginger Tea
2.  The gloaming.  The way the trees come alive in the dusk.
3.  People who care deeply about the Earth and Her creatures.
4.  Freshly vacuumed rugs and freshly mowed lawns.
5.  The fresh faces of dandelions.

May we walk in beauty.

It’s Really That Easy

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“Why are you a Mennonite, Mom?” asked Ellis.
Because, I said, I want to honor my ancestors who died for this path.
Because I like the way we sing.
Because I want to walk this path of building peace.

“This is the way to stop a war,” he told me.
“Tell the people that we were not created to fight.
We were created to love each other.
It’s really that easy.”

I bit my tongue and did not ask
why he still fights with his brother then.
Time enough to absorb the subtleties.
For now, I’ll follow that golden child
and listen to his story.
It’s really that easy.

Gratitude List:
1.  Saying Yes.  Weaving my strand into the story.  Being welcomed.
2.  Largesse.  I like that word, and the idea.
3.  A tapestry of excellent conversation and tasty food and wine.
4.  A nap.  I felt as if I had shifted sideways into someone else’s reality.  Last year it would have been an unimagined luxury to lie down for a nap on a Sunday afternoon with a warm purring cat on my lap, but today my children could sort of end for themselves for an hour.
5.  The good quick-read mystery novels of Ellis Peters.  I am reading A Rare Benedictine at the moment.

May we walk in beauty.

Soft

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for Leigh Phillips

Tell me something soft, you said,
and all I can think is the soft bellies of my hens,
the place on the inside of the elbow,
or the tender skin on the head
of the woman of Goose Creek
who has shaved her hair
and walked into her story.

Soft, like the ashes that have cooled
when the burning is done,
when you sift the remnants of the past
between your open fingers.

Even the word loss has a softness to it,
the rounded vowel, the soft hiss at the end.

Are there breezes in your Brooklyn,
soft whispers in the air?
Can you hear how a tree in Pennsylvania
murmurs with your voice
into the soft and tender wind?

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Noticing.  Today I have been thinking about the spiritual practice of noticing, and of all the ways
2.  My parents have taught me to notice.  How noticing keeps me conscious of
3.  The present moment.  How the present moment is
4.  The Exquisite Doorway between past and future.  How that transition from past to future is always taking place, as naturally as
5.  Breathing out and breathing in.

May we walk in Beauty.  Namaste.

Oriole is Home!

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Sun shines through new leaves on the sycamore
then, high in the treetop,
clear, like whistling for a dog,
he calls.  Home again.
A flash of orange,
the truest orange possible,
and oriole has returned to the hollow.

Gratitude List:
1.  Oriole is home!
2.  May day party at the elementary school.
3.  Watching my 7-year-old painting the belly cast made when he was in my belly.
4.  Denise Levertov
5.  Reading A.A. Milne to the kids.

Namaste.  May we walk in beauty.

Through the Cobweb Curtain of Memory

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Some days I’ll find several things that I want to put on my gratitude list, and I’ll keep bringing them back to me throughout the day, but the moment I sit down to write them, they disappear from my brain.  There was one in particular today that I was excited to place on the list, and I can’t seem to pull it out no matter how I dredge the depths.  No Matter.  There are plenty of things to be grateful for.

Gratitude List:
1.  Sleeping in.
2.  The way threads of dreams shimmer through the waking hours and inform the day.
3.  Striving.  Where would I be without striving?  Each next time, I will strive to do better than each last time.
4.  Good news.  In times when news is often challenging, it is so nice to hear that someone you know is making a name for himself as a musician in New York City, that someone you know has discovered that her brain tumor was benign, that a school district somewhere is expanding its art and music programs, that people are noticing the important things.  (I think that’s the one I was trying to dig out of my memory.)
5.  Lilacs are blooming.

Namaste.  May we walk in beauty.

Bowl Full of Winter

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Here in the space between what it means
and what is brightly shining,
in the moment between breathe out
and breathe in again,
in the doorway to May

I have found the key to the door
of my grandmother’s old house.

Here in the thin space
between sun rays,
in the verdant corner
between the wren and the bluebird,
on the threshold between worlds

I place the key,
along with a small white stone
and the small arm bone of a squirrel
into my bowl of winter.

I have been pulling poison ivy
from among the honeysuckle vines,
plotting kindness to my neighbor,
watching how the wisteria twines
around the iron railing,
how it cascades into sunshine
like a purple waterfall.

Gratitude List:
1.  Reiki.  I saw so many colors during my session.  Such colors.
2.  People who support their local farmers.  I am humbled and honored by it every year.  Grateful, so grateful.
3.  The Gnomes of Goldfinch Farm.  They offered Jon the gift of a stunning clear quartz crystal today.  A twin, with double terminations.  Jon would say he found it.
4.  The way the wheel turns so lucidly into May.
5.  Fried Rice.

Namaste.