Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Getting It Done

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“What? Love.

Who? Everyone.
When? Now.”
―Glennon Doyle Melton
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“No, Charles Wallace said. “I have to go on. We have to make decisions and we can’t make them if they’re based on fear.”
―Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
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“Live not for Battles Won.
Live not for The-End-of-the-Song.
Live in the along.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, Report from Part One
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“We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole…. ” ― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
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“Some people have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy.”
― Abraham H. Maslow
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“I don’t try to understand everything in nature. I just look at it. And enjoy it.” –Bob Ross

Gratitude List:
1. Snugglesome cat
2. Lots of tea
3. Stretching sore muscles
4. Reading, reading, reading
5. Planning ahead

May we walk in Beauty!

I Just Love that Kid

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I wonder if my students sometimes find themselves filled with a warm feeling out of nowhere, as if someone has just whispered, “I just love that kid,” and they can feel the vibe like a gentle breeze across their souls. I always feel a little frustrated with myself at the end of a semester when I still have a stack of grading to finish, and I wish I could have handed the papers directly to the students for the feedback; still, I also love to have these final moments of quiet, thoughtful contemplation of each one of them, bringing them back into my mind as I read their last words of the school season. Often, I catch myself whispering, “I just love that kid.”

Gratitude List:
1. My own schedule. Sleeping when I want. Working and taking breaks when I want.
2. Planning for next year. While I am doing this last bit of grading, I am thinking about how to make next year’s classes even better. How to define my assignments more clearly. How to ask more effective questions. How to get them interacting with each other more. How to elicit critical thinking. How to stimulate curiosity and creativity. How to challenge them without creating frustration.
3. Indigo bunting
4. Nettle/mint/dandelion/wild chamomile/catnip/plantain tonic. Good for what ails you.
5. Solitude

May we walk in Beauty!

Mulberries

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Another version of the moth.

Erf. I got kind of grouchy this evening, trying to give an extremely thick-haired kiddo a haircut. He was twitching his head all around, the mosquitoes were whirring all about our heads, younger brother kept dancing past mashing blueberries all over his own face and trying to get attention, the cat kept pawing at us and crying to be picked up, and it was getting dark. I really want to let my kids get messy and filthy, but I wasn’t very pleasant with the mulberry-faced youngster.

Gratitude List:
1. Mulberry-Picking with my boys. Delightful, though not perhaps the gently quiet experience you might be imagining:
“Hey! That’s MY branch!”
“Mom! He’s shaking mulberries onto my head!”
“Hey Dad! We’re picking mulberries!” (Dad’s about two full acres away.)
Addressed to a mulberry: “I am going to call you Daryl. Stay with me now, Daryl!”
“Daryl–this is your cousin Bob.” Etc., etc., etc.
2. Knowing we’ll have bags of frozen mulberries for smoothies.
3. Robin’s rain-song
4. Serious talks with the kids. I was paging through some Facebook pages while Ellis was looking over my shoulder. He wanted me to stop and look at the article about raising feminist boys with him. It led to some great discussions.
5. In some ways, tonight is actually the real beginning of summer vacation. While I do still have to clean my room and grade my papers, I don’t have to wake up tomorrow morning and go anywhere right away. I am on my own schedule now. No Sunday afternoon panic. The weight is lifted.  And, I have more energy right now than I remember having at this point in previous years. Even though this year’s grading was more stressful for me than ever, I still feel much more motivated to do the work I need to do.

May we walk in Beauty!

A Blessing in Blue

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Gratitude List:
1. Around a corner down the ridge, I caught a flash of blue in the road, and an indigo bunting burst into flight. A blessing in blue.
2. The summer’s first monarch.
3. Graduation. Beautiful, earnest young folk.
4. Huge bales of hay in a green meadow, and the evening sun casting their shadows across the grass.
5. My dear friend Marie gave me lots of sea glass that she collected over years on trips to Maine. During the last two days of school, when the seniors had gone, my one Creative Writing class was down to a handful of students. They spread out my sea glass and picked out their favorite pieces–I told them they could take lots. Then they placed what was left in the glass jar in colored layers. This treasure, given to me by a friend, is a treasure I can share with my students. We talked about how appreciating sea glass is about finding beauty in the brokenness. The glass has to be tumbled in sand and waves before the sharp edges are worn down and the surface is worn to softness. Like us, of course.

May we walk in Beauty!

River Has Her Pathways

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River has her many pathways.

Dear Shining Girl,

You stand poised in the limbo of doorway, and the light nearly shines through you, prisming the water in your eyes.

The hallways have emptied, but for that cluster of your friends who can’t quite say goodbye.

And you, like a forest doe, still pause on the threshold, ready to bolt at hint of danger.

It has been a season of words, and I the purveyor, the pusher, the cataloguer, the demagogue of vocabulary.

But I have no words for this transparent glimmer of invisibility you wear, for the way this grief has caught you by the shoulders, the way your words suddenly lock themselves into that golden cage of your throat.

Your giddy group of comrades bounces down the hallway and you take a step out of the shadows. Their joy is a distorted mirror of your misery.

When you go from this woodland of words and the solace of chums, who will See you? Who will know who you are?

Take heart, Shining Girl. Let those words that have caught in your chest like a trapped bird beating against the windowpane–let them fill the hollow spaces until there is no more space to fill, and then they will burst forth, radiant as your name.

I will be listening for that moment.

The last day of school is so exciting for so many of us. For some, however, it is a return to uncomfortable places, long stretches of loneliness, days of not being Seen. I need to remember that not everyone is experiencing this riot of joy.

Gratitude List:
1. Dedication for the seniors this evening. Glorious group of young people, about to be unleashed upon the world. They’re a force to be reckoned with.
2. Last day. It’s a big relief for me.
3. Icarus oriole still sings from his treetops, often enough that in my short forays into the pollen-infested world, I can hear him sing.
4. Empanadas–somebody’s mother left us empanadas in the Faculty Lounge. Oy. My.
5. Lunch was Vietnamese food provided by our wonderful principals. Delicious, and a great chance to connect with colleagues before separating for the summer.

May we walk in Beauty!

What the Covfefe is Happening?

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It turns out it was a tulip moth and not a sweetbay moth–those are from further south. Apparently I had correctly identified last year’s visitor, but I’d forgotten.  I’m posting this filtered version to balance today’s rant with a little beauty.

We’ve all had a ton of fun today, laughing at the US president’s cryptic “covfefe” tweet. He’s even joined the joking with a more cogent message during daylight hours: “Who can figure out the true meaning of “covfefe” ??? Enjoy!”  I won’t repeat all the brilliant jokes. You can find them all over the internet, and they are most entertaining. My favorite is that “covfefe” is the Russian word for “resign.”

Still, something has been bothering me today. All the hilarity aside, the implications of the president’s incoherent tweet of last night unsettle me. Sure, accidentally posting a garbled and incoherent midnight social media post isn’t uncommon, and there’s no danger in leaving it up for the night when you get distracted and just want to get to sleep. It’s sort of adorably capricious, something a big old forgetful lummox might do, a forgivable distractability. Except that this is the president of the United States we’re talking about. The US president does not get to be adorably capricious, or forgetful, or distractible. He could have been drunk. He could have been high. He could have been having a stroke, or a psychotic break. A responsible White House staff would be prepared to mop up quickly to make sure that the world wasn’t looking in on the impaired or distractible ramblings of one of the most powerful people on the planet, unsure about whether anyone in the White House is actually holding the reins.

The president is off his covfefe. He’s gone completely around the covfefe. And his handlers and staff are so sloppily covfefe that they don’t even seem to care about the reputation of the office of president anymore.

Gratitude List:
1. This sweet moment in my day: I stepped out of the classroom today during Advisory Group to wash the ice cream scoop (umm, yes, there was ice cream), leaving my first years listening to a Minions video set to Pharrell Williams’s “Happy.” When I came back, the song was over, and a bunch of them were gathered around the Smart Board to choose the next video. I had a moment of feeling anxious at the idea of letting them choose the party music. Several of them started saying things like, “Yes! That one! It’s one of my favorites!” And they’d chosen: “Baba Yetu.” LMH Party Music: The Swahili Lord’s Prayer.
2. Today was the last day for seniors. So happy-sad. Many of them also seemed to get the sad part of that combination, and that made me sort of happy. Sigh. I’m going to miss them. This is a really good batch of young folks we’re sending forth this weekend.
3. A little solitude this evening. Everyone else went to the baseball game, but I am incapacitated by tree pollen, and so I stayed home. By myself. All alone. Such silence in my head, and all around me. Solitude is such a balm.
4. People who just jump in and do the right thing.
5. Afternoon sunlight, how it sparkles.

May we walk in Beauty!

Seymour Dabs

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 This friend on the left appears to be a Sweetbay Silkmoth. We’ve had cecropias visit, and lunas (who always take my breath away). On the right is Seymour. On Saturday after friends visited, we found Seymour dabbing on the piano, looking mighty pleased with himself.


In the classroom zen garden: “Bury me at the bottom of the river, that my soul may flow into the sea and I may travel the world with whales.” Have I said how much I love my students?

Gratitude List:
1. What seemed unimaginable and impossible now seems possible.
2. When both cars break down at once, we have the possibility of a loaner from my parents.
3. The singers, the poets, the artists, the dancers, the dreamers. They’re rising. They’re making. They’re working. They’re resisting.
4. Pleasant weather. May it hold out for the rest of this week, so that the classroom isn’t beastly hot.
5. Turkey Hill Homemade Vanilla ice cream. It’s got five ingredients, and it’s the best ice cream this side of an ice cream freezer that I have ever tasted.

May we walk in Beauty!

Settling

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Gratitude List:
1. Longterm friendships
2. Getting company, and a day to clean house before hand, and the feeling of living in a cleaner house when all is said and done.
3. Taking a break
4. Sleep
5. Sorting and categorizing

May we walk in Beauty!

Dance

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Message in the Zen Garden: “Dance like everyone is watching, and they are all your fans.” I love my students.

Gratitude List:
1. Mountain Laurel blooming on Ducktown Road.
2. A rousing rendition of Happy Birthday in chapel this morning, the footage to be sent to our Little Guy on his birthday in the hospital.
3. Music in chapel this morning: Peniel singing in Amharic, Shadrack singing in French, and Maya and Conner singing a Blessing (was it partly in Italian?) What a gift to have that half hour in the school day that is so often filled with incredible music.
4. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It feels as though there’s a deep chasm between me and the light, but I’ll get there one way or another.
5. Breeze.

May we walk in Beauty!

Three

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Gratitude:
1. Each breath
2. brings a new moment,
3. a new chance
4. to learn
5. how to love.

May we walk in Beauty!