Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

A Long Weekend

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stones-or-eggs Eggs or stones?

Gratitude List:
1. Hooray! Pippi Prius can be fixed. It took a while to get the details worked out with the insurance company, and the damage was apparently almost equal to her value, but they’ve agreed to go ahead and do it.
2. My colleagues. Yesterday was an in-service day, and much as I always wish I could just have those days to decompress or catch up on work, I always come away feeling energized and inspired for the work ahead–also, grateful for the earnest, positive, playful energy of my colleagues.
3. Our school superintendent, Richard Thomas. Since he announced his coming retirement last winter, it’s been disconcerting to think of the future of the school without him. He has helped this school system to shape a vision of itself as a community, as a place where students and teachers and staff work to become our best selves, to create a place of shalom. Yesterday we had a chance to try to tell him a little bit about what he means to us.
4. The Search Committee, who had a huge task in a short time. They listened well, heard our concerns and our hopes for the future, and found someone who seems to have vision and determination and savvy enough to step into the superintendent’s role.  They have been careful to be confidential when confidentiality has been necessary, while staying as transparent as possible. Yesterday they carefully led us through their process of the past six months and shared the ways in which our new superintendent fits the values and ideals that we gave them.
5. Today. I can work all day to catch up. I didn’t get as much done last weekend as I wanted. I plan to go to school on Monday with no late grading hanging over my head.

Shalom.

A Little Confession

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Yesterday’s dollie as interpreted by the Dreamscope app.

Here’s a little confession: I haven’t been such a good monk-in-the-world lately. I keep letting my equilibrium get thrown. I tell myself and others that it’s the election. I tell us that it is because I am so terribly busy. I tell us that it is the season for a different sort of looking at the world.

I still write my gratitude lists, and I still try to pay attention, but I have let myself sharpen up the edges. I know, I know. No one is perfect. No one can be balanced and thoughtful all the time. Monks get angry, too. Sure, I will give myself a break. Still, I think the whole point of living this examined life is to examine–non-judgmentally–how we have been living and responding to the world.

Perhaps it was making that little corn dollie that reminded me. I have walked quietly away from my intuitive self. Finding a moment to make some art, to let my hands and heart lead the way into a process, has given me a chance to bring myself back into reflection.

Here’s to St. Benedict and beginning again. Always. Every day. Every morning.

Gratitude List:
1. One of my former teachers was walking the halls yesterday–Janet Gehman, who lit the literature fires for me. It was a treasure to see her and to invite her into my classroom, to tell my students that this was MY teacher.
2. Macaroni and cheese. Comfort food.
3. Warm layers on a blustery day.
4. Long weekend coming.
5. Small person on my lap.

May we walk in Beauty!

Wild

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corn-dollie
It has been a long time since I have made a corn dollie. I think it’s because the preparation process is a lot of work–saving the best of the husks and drying them without letting them mold, then soaking them. Yesterday while Josiah and I were out walking, I started picking up corn husks and flowers, and I made myself a wild little dollie. It was a lot harder to work with the brittle husks that I picked up in the field, but it was extremely satisfying, and I like the wild look of her–my “proper” dollies look really tame and domesticated in comparison. We got back from our walk at dusk, so the photo is a little dark.

Gratitude List:
1. Wildness
2. Wind
3. Warmth
4. Wisdom
5. Watchfulness

May we walk in Beauty!

The Healing Power of Story

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I am overwhelmed by too much to do, but if I can find a spare twenty minutes today, I am going to write a letter to the president to ask him to intervene on behalf of the civil rights of the nonviolent protesters who are trying to block the Dakota Access Pipeline. In early September, the Obama Administration did step in with a temporary injunction which seems to have been completely ignored. Will you join me?

*

You know how sometimes when you wake up in the morning, there’s a fragment of something from your dreamworld swimming around in your brain? A piece of a song, an image of a snake with wise eyes, a voice calling your name. . .  A couple days ago, I woke up with a voice that seemed to be calling me: “Sister!” That was all.  Still, it sits in my consciousness days later. Who is calling, and why?

Gratitude List:
1. The color orange. Spring time is about all the shades of greens and violets. Autumn is the whole range of gold through orange to red.
2. The words of Rumi. This one: “Let yourself become living poetry.”
3. Sleep. I don’t get enough of it, and I don’t want to jinx this long insomnia-free run, but I have been sleeping deeply and well in recent weeks. One of my great pleasures is the moment I can let myself fall into sleep each evening.
4. Circles of friendship and support. The way love flows across invisible lines, holding those who watch and hold the space.
5. The healing and integrating power of stories.

May we walk in Beauty!

The Makers and the Artists

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mailbox
We met this earnest fellow in Columbia yesterday.

Gratitude List:
1. The artists and makers. People who create things because they have an internal need to do so. They often get labeled folk artists, and I like that as long as it isn’t a dismissal of their talent and their drive.  In Columbia, there’s the mailbox man, and south of town, by the River, a man built a boat in his yard–a huge boat with masts and rigging.
2. Sermons that call me to be my better self. Yesterday’s was a reminder to love those who hate. How easily I dismiss the hateful. What will be the next steps that you and I can take to lovingly engage those who put forth hateful rhetoric in these days?
3. A new week, a fresh page.
4. The way leaves dance down the wind.
5. The Water Protectors. People are putting themselves on the line to protect their lands and waters and burial grounds. I am easily discouraged when I watch the harsh and violent response to their protests, but I am heartened by their continued work.

May we walk in Beauty!

Living Into the Questions

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stone
Circle of Stones

You there
in the center of the circle
and all of us gathered around

Silence
within the weight of the moment
and stillness in the bowl of time

We breathe
waiting, holding you inside us
and watching for what yet may be

Gratitude List:
1. Blessing each other in our transitions
2. Living into the questions
3. Holding the paradoxes
4. Preparing for winter
5. Listening for the messages

May we walk in Beauty!

Adventuring

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imag2107

Gratitude List:
1. The little zen sandgarden that my mother gave me years ago. I keep it on the desk in the front of my room and students often come up and rake it and talk to me. Some are incredibly careful and thoughtful, making order. Others come up and scrape and scratch with the little rake until I want to grind my teeth, but they’re working something out, too, as much as the order-makers.
2. Yesterday’s restorative circle work. It was painful and hopeful. There’s individual work to be done yet, but they’re moving toward healing. I now feel that this story is linked to my own, and I have a responsibility to keep my eye out for these particular students.
3. Being at a school where the work of restoration is taken so seriously. There was at least one other restorative conference yesterday, and I know that others occur regularly throughout the week. This is a community where I know that all students will be taken seriously and cared for, even when they mess up. Especially when they mess up.
4. I got home yesterday from school to see two pages of comic sketches that Joss had done after we left for school in the morning. I was really hoping that the graphic novels we have been eating up would inspire him, and they did.
5. Windy weather. Adventure weather. We’re going to my friend Marie’s sale today–that will be our adventure.

May we walk in Beauty!

Helpful Friends

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Poor little Pippi encountered a deer in the morning gloaming on Ducktown Road yesterday. She’ll be out of commission for a little while.

Gratitude List:
1. Neither Ellis nor I were hurt in the collision. I am not so sure about the other guy, a large (8-point, perhaps?) buck. I thought he was dead. He just lay there where he had fallen, under the guard rail, but just as I had collected myself enough to think about getting out to check on him, he leaped up and dashed into the woods. Poor guy. I hope he survived.
2. Friends who help in a time of crisis. Julie Flinchbaugh, for comforting us and giving Ellis some apple cider. Erin Darby, who drove the carpool to Lancaster on a moment’s notice. Jon, who was my telephone anchor–I kept calling him because I didn’t know what to do. My parents, who gave us their second car while Pippi Prius is at the Dentist. (This is one of our favorite puns. Not only is she having her dents repaired, but the owner/operator of the garage that takes care of our vehicles is our neighbor, Den.  Den-dent-dentist: get it?)
3. Restorative conversations. This morning I get to help with a restorative conference at school. I went into the Restorative Circle training a couple weeks ago with a little trepidation, worried that my anxieties about conflict would keep me from really being able to do this kind of work. This morning, I feel really ready to participate, to ask questions, to help facilitate this conversation. I am eager to be part of this kind of work.
4. Flaming trees. They say that the color will be sort of “meh” this season, after the summer’s dry weather, but the maples didn’t get the memo. They’re pulling out the stops.
5. Yesterday’s singing in chapel. We sang “Tu Eres Todopoderoso,” a song from Mennonite World Conference. I love that song.

May we walk in Beauty!

The Real World Changers

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imag2117
The maples at school are getting dressed up.

Gratitude List:
1. Doctors Without Borders / Medecin sans Frontieres
2. Mennonite Central Committee
3. The Nobel Women’s Initiative
4. Heifer International
5. You. And all the others who are really working to bring healing and hope to people in dire situations.

May we walk in Beauty.

Prayer and Rage

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imag2090

What can we give besides our prayers and rage?
And what will that avail?
Send out the story on October winds.
Fling it high, where crows are flying.
Send the message echoing into earth
with every pounding step you take.

Listen.
Let the shells of your ears gather the story.
Reel in the gossamer strands of the tale
and weave them into the veil you wear.
Listen for the stories of those who weep,
those who rage, those who only speak
with the shrug of a shoulder,
with a sigh, with a shudder.

Listen, too, to those who walk right in,
who step into your circle without invitation.
Listen to the voices that are hard to hear.
Offer only the bread that is yours to give.
Be like the old gods, with the raven Wisdom
on one shoulder and Memory on the other,
and Reason perched upon your hat.

Offer what is yours:
your rage,
your prayer,
your watchful quiet heart.

Gratitude List:
1. Rage and prayer
2. Memory and Wisdom
3. Reason
4. Listening deeply. Being listened to deeply.
5. Graphic novels. I know this one is rather out of the context of the others, but the boys and I are really into graphic novels these days: the Amulet series, Zita the Spacegirl, Knights of the Lunch Table, and Mouse Guard. We really love Zita and her poor friend Randy who has a case of the squeaks.

May we walk in Beauty!