Month: March 2020

The Color of My Joy

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Perhaps I have said this before: I don’t get very sick very often. I often live with feeling tired and run-down, but I think my general immunity is pretty strong. I am not particularly worried about the virus for myself or my family. But my parents and many of my Beloveds are in the age range where the danger rises. And many of my students have immune issues of their own. I have committed myself to wash my hands as frequently as possible, to use hand sanitizer, to greet people without touching, to minimizing the possibilities that I could pass the virus on unawares. You too? Let’s do our part to stop the spread.

Gratitude List:
1. Parent Teacher Conferences. It breaks the rhythm, and enlivens the two days, and I love to talk to the parents of my kids about my kids. Over the years, I have had my share of really difficult and challenging conferences, but mostly it’s just a really nice chance for two groups of people to talk about someone they mutually love.
2. Because of conferences, I have a couple extra hours in my classroom today during which I will begin to tidy and organize for The Big Move (we’re moving out of our rooms at the end of the year for summertime renovations).
3. I’m feeling satisfied right now. It might be that deep river of joy, or it might be resting in the inevitability of seasons and changes and things staying the same, but it feels like satisfaction. Simple and comfortable satisfaction. Let’s call it the current color of my joy. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have flare-ups of rage and anxiety about politics and coronavirus and getting the work done. It’s something deeper than the flares, though.
4. I’ve gone back to fat in my morning coffee: butter, cream, and coconut oil. I think it revs me up a bit in the morning, and I feel more ready to get into the day, less in a fog. Plus, it tastes like a gourmet treat.
5. Health care workers. Place of honor on my gratitude list today. And also a plea for blessing their health as they stand on the front lines of a world crisis. A thousand blessings on all who are caring for those who are sick.

May we walk in Beauty!

“Until you can discover and delight in the souls of other things, even trees and animals, I doubt you can discover your own soul.” —Richard Rohr

“Magic is a relationship forged in the ordinary. It is our endurance through the unknown, unyielding times. It is faith in the as yet unmanifest. It is the invocation of the large, but while praising the small. Magic is the redoubling of our vow when disappointment befalls us, a shoulder to the wheel of our intent.” —Toko-pa Turner

Quotidian Mysteries:
“Change the burned-out lightbulb. Water the plants. Take your vitamins. Wash the dishes. Bow down to the Great Mystery. Take out the garbage.”
—Rob Brezsny

“It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.”
―Terry Pratchett

“A Word that Breathes Distinctly
Has not the Power to Die”
―Emily Dickinson

“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: Know more about the world than I knew yesterday, and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.” —Neil DeGrasse Tyson

So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God,

one of which was you.
―Mary Oliver

The Unflappables

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Gratitude List:
1. Yesterday’s dawn: How the sky was a living breathing indigo until the horizon cracked open in magenta, a tangerine orange glow slowly seeping through.
2. Persephone’s footsteps, the crocus and anemone popping up everywhere. We have a large clump of white crocus in a patch of green chickweed by the porch. We usually only have one or two white ones.
3. Crows
4. Puzzles
5. The steady, unflappable people. If you’re feeling anxious about politics or viruses or the economy or whatever, find one of the Unflappables and bask in their settledness.

May we walk in Beauty!

Reiterating

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PSA for the day: Don’t let the Russian bots and trolls make you mean. Don’t let them cause you to turn a less-than-ideal choice into a non-choice: A non-choice is actually a terrible choice here. Too much is at stake. If the thought of voting in November for a candidate other than your top primary choice makes you consider staying home, consider whether that might be a position of privilege. Consider all that has been consciously and wilfully eroded by this government. Consider all the people harmed. Consider the brutal tearing apart of children from their families. Consider the wanton destruction of environmental protections. Consider the attacks on the school system. Consider the equating of Nazis and anti-racism protesters. Consider the erosion of women’s rights, of LGBTQ+ rights, of safety nets for anyone who is not wealthy, white, straight, and male. When the time arrives that a candidate has been chosen to run against this monstrous administration, think about those more vulnerable than you, and vote, no matter who wins this primary.

And in the meantime, prepare the conversation for that moment. If your candidate might lose, and you want to end this march toward fascism, then tearing down the potential nominee is counterproductive. Press for the goals and ideals of your candidate. Speak hopefully of the future they promise. Grieve when they’re out. But put everything you have into protecting those who are becoming daily more vulnerable to the predations and depradations of the current administration.

Gratitude List:
1. Yesterday morning’s moon. Driving to school with the sun rising ahead of us, and the moon setting behind us.
2. One more day away from the time change. I felt it yesterday, in my back, in my fuzzywuzzy head. This morning, I am starting out much more refreshed.
3. All the flowers! Crocus, anemone, daffodil, speedwell, dead nettle. . .
4. At least one of the Little Sisters has been visiting the flowers, gathering pollen for her Lady. She may have been from someone’s hive, but she may have been from a feral hive, which makes me happy to consider.
5. If I put butter in my coffee, and whir that up with a blender, does it mean I just had a protein shake? Whatever, it gives me a morning boost of energy.

May we walk in Beauty!

Shiny

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Gratitude List:
1. The shiny children
2. I finally saw a tiny Priestess gathering pollen for her Lady. And now the crocus and windflowers and daffodils are opening. The tiny narcissus on the neighbors’ bank are open. Lots of pollen for the Little Sisters.
3. A restful weekend
4. Henry and his grandfather flying a kite. It went SO high!
5. The constant murmuring of the bluebirds in the little woods at my parents’ house. I have no doubt that they were telling each other stories about my dad.

May we walk in Beauty!

“Awake my dear, be kind to your sleeping heart; take it out into the vast fields of light and let it breathe.” —Háfiz

“For things to reveal themselves to us,
we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.” —Thích Nhất Hạnh

“Only until all human beings begin to recognize themselves as human beings will prejudice be gone forever.” —Amelia Boynton, Civil Rights leader

“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.” ―Rabindranath Tagore

“It is time for women to stop being politely angry.” ―Leymah Gbowee

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.” ―Franz Kafka

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.” ―Rachel Carson

“Don’t die ’til you’re dead.” —Mississippi John Hurt

Nourishing Those Who Come After

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Someone got to the Heron in the night before I could check it out yesterday—one of the People Who Deal with Death. I wasn’t quite able to bring myself to go get a close look. Perhaps after a while, I’ll go check if there are feathers left which I can photograph. Meanwhile, I will imagine the rich milk of a fox mother nourishing a nestle of kits, who dream at night that they are gliding on great blue wings above the fields and streams of the hollow.

Everything returns. Everything feeds the next thing. Everything is nourished by that which came before. May we be food for the next cycle. May our words, our actions, our fierce determination, our resilience, our abiding joy, our activism and our contemplation be nourishment for those who come after us.

It is International Women’s Day. Let’s remember, as we celebrate the women whose lives and stories have fed us, that we must feed the coming generations of women their rights.

Gratitude List:
1. The courageous activist women who have struggled with their whole beings for equal rights. May we continue their struggle.
2. The quiet women who continued to work and nurture and do what needed to be done behind the scenes. May we be steady and reliable, too.
3. The contemplatives and poets, women who inspired us to be better, more evolved humans. May our words sing, and our meditations deepen.
4. The resilient women, who took their own stories of struggle and pain, and turned them into fierce walking boots, firm ground for striding, protective clothing for the long journey. May we, too, be resilient.
5. The women who are coming behind us. May they reach with hope and determination and calm and fierce resilience toward their own empowered futures, their own empowered nows. May we be a strong foundation upon which they may stand and reach upward.

May we walk in Beauty!

Mostly Rantless

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No rants today. I think that from here on out, today will be rantless for me (I can’t call the whole day rantless because I accidentally ranted a bit on Facebook this morning. Ranting is also good for waking up.)

I have a sadness: Our resident Great Blue Heron has died. We need to go do something to honor the body, at least place it serenely in the woods, so the People Who Deal with Death can do their work. The vultures and worms and their communities of goodfolk. I will take photos of the Beautiful One’s feathers. I just need to steel myself. I am not naturally brave with Death, although I value Her, and trust Her.

I also have a lovely happiness: I have no essays to grade this weekend. My soul is free for two days. I need to make something.

Gratitude List:
1. The birdlife here in the hollow. So sad to lose our Blue Heron friend, but this is part of the Cycle. Others will come in their time. Meanwhile, the small wingfolk are singing Spring.
2. Brunch at 301 Cafe! We haven’t done that yet, but it’s in the plan!
3. No big grading this weekend. I feel so light, I could float away.
4. Reassuring dreams
5. Meditating

May we walk in Beauty!

Persist

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Before I begin the rant, I want to make a point about Vice Presidents, in light of everything I am about to say. The choice of Stacey Abrams or Kamala Harris as a running mate would go a long way toward attracting my vote, if there’s any choice left in this debacle of a primary campaign by the time it reaches Pennsylvania. Elizabeth Warren, too, of course, but the loss of Warren in the race was only the most recent blow in a line of killing the vast diversity of the overwhelming field of candidates. (I’ve never been sure what to do with Gabbard, and I’m not sure she knows herself.) (Also, I know that Sanders, as a Jewish man, still brings a little diversity–it’s not simply two old white men remaining. Just two old men.) (Ugh. And now I sound really ageist. In this context, the default seems to always be old white men, so that’s part of the story.)

I wrote this rant in pieces yesterday between naps as I was resting to fend off the worst edges of a bad cold. That bit was successful, at least, and I am feeling much better today.

Today, I am an enraged middle school girl. I am a third grader stamping her foot at the unfairness. I am a high school girl rolling her eyes at the absolutely stupidity of it, a college girl sighing yet again in defeat. All of these girls in me had their absolutely valid reasons for rage, and I cannot see over my own middle-aged rage to deal with the echoing memories of theirs. Mine. Ours. The layers.

I just have to say it. This has been a triggering experience for me. I find myself flashing back to younger versions of myself, living this fifty-two-year-old experience along with my college self, my high school self, my middle school and elementary school selves. I don’t remember the first time I noticed that a girl could be smart and articulate and shiny and dynamic, but she couldn’t beat out a goofy boy with a sense of entitlement. For anything. She couldn’t be heard above the clamor of an angry boy, no matter how lucid and smart her own ideas.

This is how it’s been my whole life: A brilliant girl tries for something—some honor, some leadership role, some place—and a goofy boy with a sense of kingly entitlement begins to talk about the inevitability of his own winning, and suddenly she has completely disappeared. No matter that she has a plan for EVERYTHING. No matter that she can talk her way around that boy ten times before he has put together a coherent sentence. No matter that she was born for this. And so he wins.

And today the goofy boy and the angry boy win again, beating out the brilliant girl who has been invisibilized and now erased.

I’m just tired.

I can live forward through this. I can “get on board.” Goddess knows, I am experienced at that part of the story. Still, I just get tired of hearing people talk about the inevitability of her disappearance from the story. And when the goofball wins, he gets the brilliant girl to assist him. Or the angry boy gets the nice girl to help him. Because they need her in order to truly succeed. But then everyone says, “Look! She’s got something anyway, doesn’t she? She should be happy now. Satisfied now. Everybody wins.” And she ends up doing his work for him or putting out the fires he starts. And he gets the credit. And the next time a girl is running against a boy, everyone says, “Now don’t be too hasty. She really can’t compete. If we want to keep the bullies at bay, we need a good strong boy to take the reins.”

I will vote for whichever of these boys takes the nomination, but I will do it with the rage of a middle school girl who has repeatedly seen her brilliant girlfriends completely marginalized and ignored for goofy and angry boys who have controlled the process for her whole life. I will be happy if she gets to be a good strong vice or cabinet something. Absolutely. But I will know, with the heart of my 12-year-old self, that she was always the best choice: Elizabeth, Kamala, Amy.

Gratitude List:
1. Feeling better. That first nap–three hours of serious sleep–felt like the most rejuvenating part of the day. Even the tossy-turny nature of last night’s sleep hasn’t thrown me back to the exhausted state of earlier in the week, and I feel like I can fight off this cold.
2. Friday. End of the week. Faculty Hymn Sing before school (every Friday–how lucky am I?), the International Women’s Day chapel planned by students. It should be a pleasant day.
3. Daffodils
4. The crocus are blooming, too, and in some strange and wonderful places, way out of the beds. Crocus always remind me to let myself leak outside the boundaries.
5. Nimbleness. How my child just leapt onto the bench to straighten the curtains. I think that one of my physical goals for the next part of this year will be to develop greater nimbleness. I think I have become more sedentary rather than less, and it is affecting my nimbleness.

May we walk in Beauty!

Resting

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Under the weather today. Taking a day off to rest. Sometimes you just need to listen to your body.

Gratitude List:
1. Rest
2. Cat companions
3. Nourishment
4. Birdsong
5. How the light shines in

May we walk in Beauty!

Rhythms and Seasons

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Gratitude List:
1. Joy runs underneath it all, like an underground river, even when things on the surface are dry and barren.
2. Misty mornings. Sun shining through the mist in the mornings.
3. How last year’s plans inform this year’s work.
4. Rhythms, seasons, cycles.
5. Color, texture, pattern–in the visual field, and in writing and speaking and music.

May we walk in Beauty!

Note to Self

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Note to self: Today, what are three things you have been putting off? Schedule time to begin, or plan, or complete each one. Mark each one with a small celebration of the weight that slides off your back with each task completed. Also, schedule a little time before dark to walk a mile.

Gratitude List:
1. People who actively move to create safe, loving spaces in the world.
2. All the green people peeking up above ground, basking in the sunlight.
3. The way the sun appears in the hollow in stages, first the grey light of dawn, then the glow which fills the bowl, and then the direct rays sliding down into the hollow as the sun clears the ridge.
4. How the kids grow, how they become themselves.
5. Fixing things.

May we walk in Beauty!