Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Gained in Translation

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

oct-words
Mockingbird Words: This is a word cloud of the words on this blog from the first week of October.

I am playing around with Google translate this Saturday morning. I translated a short poem of mine into Bengali and back again. The basic poem was pretty similar, but when we got back to English, giant feather had become hairy giants.  That’s extremely promising for a little bit of fun.  The sentence structure of the original poem was pretty straightforward, so the algorithms brought most of the poem back to at least a sense of the original, even when I sent it through several languages before coming back to English.

This is addicting.  I am going to try a poem that begins with a somewhat fractured sentence structure already, send it through several translations, and see what comes back.  Here is my original tanka, titled “Riddle”:

Down halls of dream, through
tattered veils of old stories
no fury, no fear
only the question of where
the next riddle will appear.

Zulu * Burmese * Haitian Creole * Portuguese * Maori * Japanese * and back to English again:

And, the bedroom
It covers the history of his face
Anger do not be afraid
Question
It displays the following password.

“It covers the history of his face” is a fascinating line. I still like my original line, but I wonder how it would go to say:

tattered veils of old stories
cover the history of her face

There’s some possibility there. As goofy as this exercise is, there’s a point here: I sometimes (often?) get caught in certain ways of saying things, stuck in linguistic and imagistic patterns. I worry that my poems sometimes begin to sound all the same. In Song of the Toad and the Mockingbird, I published several poems that were an attempt to break out of my own boxes. The results were several rather surreal poems that I am rather in love with, but which–in hindsight–I think might be somewhat unrelatable to anyone outside my own head.

Here, after some more play with translator, and re-crafting, is “Riddle,” no longer a tanka, and perhaps a little more layered, perhaps a little too clunky:

Down halls of dream,
through tattered curtains of old fairy tales
which cover the history of her face
without eyes, without fear–
only the question of where
the next riddle (this mystery)
will appear.

I was going to stop here, but then I took that last form and translated it into Cebuano and back again, and this marvel appeared:

Dream Hall,
By Tttered Krtens Old fairy tale
He covered his face HISTORY
Vithut Mata, Vithut Fiyr–
Questions included Ware
Next Ridley (Mystery)
The Makita.

Perhaps my next experiments should be to break down even the structure of the words, and play with invented spellings. Vithut for without has captured my imagination. And Mata. Is that eyes? Or matter? I need to simply force myself to stop now, or I’ll be doing this until noon.

Gratitude List:
1. Wordplay. Layers of meanings in words that shift and change color, dash away, and return with whole new meanings. Connections between words and meanings and languages.
2. Imagination. This boy, who is doing his spelling homework here on the floor beside me, suddenly yelled out, “Narwhal!” He had stuck his pencil between his toes (because that’s what you do) and caught the shadow of it on the floor. It did indeed look exactly like a narwhal.
3. Yesterday’s Service of Thanksgiving at my school. Music, speech and story, visuals. Generations. The Moment, for me, was when the choir was coming off the stage. I was one of the first ones off, so I got to watch as members of a composite choir of people of all ages filed into their rows. We all felt a sense of belonging to the choir because we had all been in some form of LMS choir throughout the years. It brought 75 years of time together into one moment.  Deeply moving.
4. Saturday morning sleeping in. I feel so rested and ready for the day.
5. Thermally satisfying weather.

May we walk in Beauty!

Poem: A Minute

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

beach
A few years ago I was working on a project about my younger self, and I wanted to take a photograph of this framed photo that my father took of me when I was six, standing on the shore of Rusinga Island. I just couldn’t seem to get the photo without the glare and the reflection in the glass of myself taking the photo. Suddenly I realized that I needed to put my current self into the photo, too, and set it up to intentionally gt my shadow on the glass.

Here is a poem from October 16, 2013. The form is called a minute, using three 20-syllable stanzas (60 syllables, like 60 seconds, equals one minute):

Out in the dawn, a misty sea
in walnut tree
a silent crow
will dream of snow

will ruffle feathers in the chill
will wait until
the first bright ray
begins the day

then with a final shake will rise
from branch to skies
and this will be
a memory

Gratitude List:
1. My School. Today Lancaster Mennonite School launches its 75th year celebrations.
2. I can’t get over the wreaths and draperies of mist on the fields on the way to school. Even yesterday afternoon on the way home, there was a snake of mist winding down the River along the western shore by Accomac.
3. I made it through the week. I have been having terrible sinus headaches in the last few days, and I kept thinking it might turn into something worse, but it hasn’t. If I am going to have allergy issues in the fall, I would rather have silent sinus headaches than the wild sneezing and sniffling and burning eyes that I sometimes get.
4. The color purple. (You know what Sug says in the book of that name.) Rich, inviting, heart-opening.
5. The poetry of Langston Hughes. One of my students asked me last week if I knew anything about Langston Hughes, so this week has been Langston Hughes week in my class.  This morning will be “I, to, Sing America.”

May we walk in Beauty!

It Matters

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

imag1865

Yesterday I used the word Matrix as one of my names for that great Force we so often call God. I realize that the associations of meaning for the word Matrix in our culture have been taken over by the movie that bears that name. So matrix has come to be associated with a sort of world-dominating, mind-controlling enslavement.

The true definition, however, is the environment in which something grows, the source or mold from which new forms are cast.  When you hold an amethyst cluster, the base rock–that milky, gravelly bit from which the crystals spring–is matrix, the mother-source of the crystal. The root of matrix is the Latin word mater, which is mother, which is womb, which is source.

In English, we have matter, which is a verb denoting something’s significance and a noun meaning something with a physical nature. The sentence “You matter to me” means that you are significant to me. With an awareness of its connections to its Latin roots, it seems to speak more deeply to the ways in which relationships mold and shape us. Suddenly your significance in that sentence is about shaping and molding who I am. If a particular cause matters  to you, it is not simply important, perhaps, but it also helps to define and give shape to who you are.

In its meaning of “substance,” matter or material takes on new significance. Substance is source, is the basis, the form-holder for everything, that from which all else springs. Once, someone in a conversation was referring to a difficult physical task, to pushing through the exhaustion, saying, “Mind over Matter!” One of my friends responded that perhaps we ought to think more in terms of matter over mind, that for too many centuries, religion–ancient Greek religion and later, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam–separated body and mind and categorized mind and spirit as superior to body. Body became inferior, became shameful, became sinful.  Religion became a way of escaping or mortifying the inferior physical matter.

Can we take matter back into our spiritual story? Instead of placing mind over matter, can we see ourselves as situated within this source material, this body, as a blessing, as our purpose? We are embodied, enmattered, in order to experience the sensations of the material, to know flavor and scent and touch, to learn how to see and to See, to listen, to sense. If we call the One who made us Matrix, then we see ourselves as springing from that Source, molded by the mother-womb. Religion becomes something which brings us into our full selves rather than dividing us into separate pieces that war with each other for dominance, flesh against spirit.

Gratitude List:
1. Matter, stuff, substance
2. Dream
3. Words and their meanings and their deeper meanings
4. Yesterday’s bluebird, flying with the sun on his back
5. How mist rises from the fields in these early morning trips to school

May you See and Feel and Taste and Hear and Smell.

The Wildest One

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

imag1826

Lately, I have been calling her The Wildest One.

We say God, we say Goddess. Great Mother or Holy Father. Some of us say gods instead, and why shouldn’t that be appropriate for a concept that is beyond the ability of our brains to comprehend? Like Madeline L’Engle’s conceptualization of a seraphim, so incomprehensibly complex that it’s a being of many-in-one. Why shouldn’t the One be also Many?

I am not even sure that the category of Being is quite apt, quite complete. Being. Force. Abstract Idea. Conceptual Framework.

We say God is Love. But is Love God?

I like the names Source, Matrix, Creator, Web of all Being. Beauty. Magnum Mysterium–the Greatest Mystery. Impersonal forces and ideas, yet oh-so-personal, because there’s a reflection of it inside me. I think it’s there inside everyone, a spark just waiting to be kindled, waiting to flash out.  (But am I spiritually colonizing others, when I say that I think that there’s a god-thing in everyone? A Goodness?)

The Wildest One. Because the wild will not be wholly known, will not be conquered, nor tamed. Because something wild within me longs for connection with the Wildest One.  We think of wild as predatory, ferocious, dangerous, red in tooth and claw. I suppose there are aspects of ferocity and danger here, but wild is also untamability, growth outside boundaries, that which will not be kept in a house. Wild is the curious faces of bat-eared fox kits that my brother and I watched popping up out of their burrows. Wild is the quiet hippopotamus grazing on the bank of the river. Wild is the wren who makes her home in human habitations, but ever on her own terms. Wild is the geese and the monarchs and the hummingbirds and the dragonflies winging south for winter.  Wild is the green that covers everything, the moment the clippers and trimmers have been put away.

Gratitude List:
1. Holding on to each other.
2. Listening across distances.
3. Wise ones.
4. Wildness.
5. Wilderness.

May we walk in Beauty, in Wildness.

Feast Day of St. Francis

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

francis
Saint Francis of Assisi. (I couldn’t find an artist note for this one.)

Today is the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals–some say patron of all ecology. He chose the way of poverty that he might better help those who were poor.

Blessings on the rescuers.
Blessings on the keepers of wild spaces.
Blessings on the ones who talk to the animals.
Blessings on the wild ones.
Blessings on the tree planters.
Blessings on the Water Protectors.
Blessings on those who protest against the greed that destroys the earth.
Blessings on the ones who  care for those without resources.
Blessings on the bridges and the bridge-builders.

Gratitude List:
1. Moments of silence
2. Moments of stretching
3. Moments of creative frenzy
4. Moments of connection
5. Moments of Aha!

May we walk in Beauty!

Time to Re-Envision and Revise

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

bridemusic
Another picture of my brother and me, singing yesterday at a celebration for Bridge of Hope National. 

I really like to work with extremely short poetry. There’s an imagist within me, I suppose, wanting to capture an image like a photograph, to hold it in words, to take the thing that I see and recreate it in such as way that you will see it, too. But I can never seem to leave it only at the image, because everything means something to me. It’s all messages.  Here is one from 2014:

yellow walnut leaves
twist and twirl silently earthward
lavishly giving themselves to breeze, to breath
prodigal as love

I wonder how it would affect the poem were I to change “breath” to “death”?  I’d lose the “r” sound that follows “earth” so nicely, for one thing.  And I like that repeated initial “br.” Maybe I will keep it. I am in revisions mode now, so every word is on the table for possible change and transformation. (Like that “twist.” I like the alliteration “twist and twirl,” but that seems a little bit of an obvious one.  Hmm.)

Gratitude List:
1. The people who do good work in the world, not because of some sense of wanting to feel better about themselves because they do charity, but because they know their future is bound up in the future of all, that we’re all one people, and we must survive together.
2. Organizations like Bridge of Hope and Samara, that work to support families in crisis, to give children a safer and healthier childhood.
3. I didn’t get it all done, but I got a lot of it done, and that feels at least a little satisfying.
4. In the midst of all the daily work, I managed to get my next poetry manuscript onto a single document in the betweeny moments. This week I will print it out, and I’ll start the revising and editing in the next raft of betweeny moments. A friend once told me the story of a wizard who never got wet in the rain because he just walked between the raindrops.  That’s going to be me and this manuscript, working between the raindrops of the daily.
5. Waking up the spine. Stretching. Breathing. The long, slow uncurling into the day’s work.

May we walk in Beauty!

Pigeon and Dawn

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

pigeon
Shirati, Tanzania: a long-ago dawn with African green pigeon. (1969?)

From a photo of a distant place of my childhood to a poem of my River, just down the ridge from where I am typing in the newborn morning. I wrote this one of April of 2014:

Susquehanna Dawning
by Elizabeth Weaver-Kreider

Stand just there on the sandy bank of the river.
There, where the water laps over the roots
of the ancient sycamore. There, where the bridge
and the memory of a bridge run over the water.

Listen for the rustle and murmur of dawning,
the whisper of wavelets, the groan of the trees,
the sudden wild call of robin: thrush of the morning,
leading the dawn chorus, unwrapping the day.

What will you discover this daybreak, this borning?
What stories will otter bring you? And heron?
What are the words that the river will utter,
there, where the sun spreads the golden road before you?

Gratitude List:
1. Phoebe, sitting out in the misty, dripping trees, calling his name into the dawn.
2. The mist, the rainy season
3. The trees: sycamore, poplar, oak, walnut, dogwood, maple, willow
4. Those two crows, winging purposefully across the hollow
5. All the ways in which we hold each other, carry each other, listen for the sound of each other’s tears and laughter, even from great distances.

May we walk in Beauty!

The Number Four

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

flower

Instead of my typical 4:44, I woke up this morning at 5:34, fell asleep again, and woke up at 7:04. My friend Anna tells me that 4 is associated both with the Metal element and with Autumn in Chinese Medicine. Fall is a time of letting go. I think that I am being asked right now to let go of some of my expectations of myself, to realize that I can’t systematize and organize the stress away.

I have to step into the river and start moving the rocks around. Get my feet wet, get my hands muddy.

The number four seems to be my wake-up number. What shall I wake up to in these days when the winds are pulling me to make and create something new, in these days when the weight of work is heavy on me?

Four is also about stability. The square is more static than the triangle. I can rest in the comfort of the four corners of the square, but eventually, I am going to let my balance shift and move into the more dynamic space of the five, which pulses like a star, disrupts the patterns and flow that have been set in the cozy household of the four, and brings a new awareness.

Every step is about waking up, eh?

Gratitude List:
Have you ever noticed
1. How sometimes three or four different leaves will be floating downward through the air, far from the trees, as though they have materialized from some other dimension?
2. How the autumn wind calls, begs for attention, wants you to wander, to go adventuring?
3. How understanding dawns somewhere behind the eyes, how it shifts the eyebrows and the temples upward, how it straightens the spine?
4. How heavier blankets often bring deeper sleep?
5. How new thoughts and ideas flow like streams, little tributaries meandering toward the Big Thought, the new concept, the river of knowing?

May we walk in Beauty!

Seeking the Stairway to the Second Story

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

golden

In the dream, I need to get to the second floor of the house. I know I have been there before, but the only way to get up there is through a little cupboard space high up off the floor. There are no steps or ladder. I need to climb up on the back of a bench or chair, balance myself, and scramble up and through. I have physical memories of having done it before, but every time I dream this, it seems that the distance has increased, or I have gotten smaller. There is just no way I can make the scramble. (Years ago, the dreams had me scrambling through claustrophobic spaces. Now I cannot even reach the portal.)

In last night’s version of the story, the cupboard/passage was slightly to the right above the chair back where I was standing, hoping to get the courage to leap up to the opening–my arms couldn’t even reach this time. I think that is how it is in every version of this dream, above my head and to the right.

Last night’s dream included an incredibly gorgeous cat named Angel (pronounced Ahn-Jel, emphasis on second syllable). Angel kept her claws sheathed, and her toes were long and agile, almost like fingers. She had dark, knowing eyes.  The woman she lived with was named Jessica, and Jessica was terribly conflicted because she was a Trump supporter and none of the rest of us in the circle were. We were trying to figure out a way to help Jessica to feel welcome and comfortable. I said a prayer, but everyone stopped paying attention and started talking after the first couple sentences.

I am struck by the challenge of trying to get to the second floor. As much as I am working on getting my inner spaces in order, something seems to be a little off-kilter, a little too hard to negotiate.  Or perhaps I am longing for the ease with which I could access my deepest self when I was younger, and the older I get, the smaller I am, and the less able to make the leap into that space.

I am glad to have the magnificent Angel in my head, and Jessica reminds me to love and welcome all people, not to simply spiritualize the conflicts of the current political story, but to make the human connection.

I think that there is a purpose to my nighttime wakefulness–there are ideas that the Dream-maker would have me explore right now. Perhaps I can meditate on the way to enter the second story. (Wow. Now I am caught by the double meaning of that: second story.  Here I am, poised in the liminal space of midlife, and I am seeking the stairway to the second story. What will that story be?)

Gratitude List:
1. Friday. Hymn sing and a weekend coming.
2. I know those hidden rooms within me do exist, and I know that I can find them.
3. Cats and angels
4. Crossing the River these mornings in the dawn
5. Nighttime wakefulness, when it brings messages

May we walk in Beauty!

Strain Train Rain

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

IMG0168A
“The courageous don’t lose their fear. They simply transform it.” –Climbing Poetry

Here’s a poetic form I found on Robert Lee Brewer’s “Poetic Asides” blog. It’s called diminishing verse. The poem is in three-line stanzas with no rules about syllables or metric feet. You choose an ending word that is able to be diminished from the front, one letter or sound at a time. I am going to try strain-train-rain and see what happens:

For ten long weeks, we have felt the strain,
each thirsty day arriving like a dry and dusty train,
but finally–this dawning brings us rain.

There are some interesting possibilities here. I would like to try some with line endings where the thought continues on to the next line.  Strip-trip-rip might be an interesting one to play with. (The str- word-opening is a good one to use because of the series of three initial consonants.)  Cram-ram-am. It’s a fun little game just to make up the word series. I might enlist my children to help me with that part.

Gratitude List:
1. Kate Dicamillo, writer of short-chapter easy-read children’s books. My boys and I have been reading them this week. We have always liked her Mercy Watson books, but she has taken three characters from Mercy Watson’s stories and given them stories of their own. Leroy Ninker Saddles Up, Francine Poulet Meets the Ghost Raccoon,  and my favorite, Where Are You Going, Baby Lincoln? They are lovely parables for adults as well as for children.
2. Someone once suggested politely that I should not put coffee on my gratitude lists because it is a drug, an artificial stimulant. But of course, I will put on my list whatever I please, and while I recognize its addictive effects on my body and brain, I am really grateful this morning for coffee because of a tossandturn night. For three mornings running, I woke up at 4:44 on the dot. I took my body in hand last night and told it that it had to wait until after 5 to wake up. It could even have a four if it wanted to and wake up at 5:24. Perhaps it panicked–I woke up repeatedly throughout the night, and I am supremely grateful for coffee this morning to set me on the path to wakefulness.
3. Deep breaths. Another good waker-upper.
4. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. It could rain for days now, and I would be happy. My classroom is a pleasant temperature. The air feels clear and fresh. The gentle sounds of rain are soothing. The land is sighing in relief.
5. The open-heartedness of young people.

May we walk in Beauty!