Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Tweaking

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Gratitude List:
1. Yesterday morning’s mist.  As I reached the crest of the ridge, the sun was driving down through the heavy mist, illuminating a bright summer goldfinch on a fence.  Mist and sun both.  And golden bird.
2. The compassionate heart of a boy I know, who is finding ways to help a friend.
3. Riot of color.
4. Friday Faculty hymn sing.  No matter how tired or busy I am, this is one moment that always carries me through a week.
5. Assessing.  This is the time of year when I find myself looking through my work of the year, saying, “This I did pretty well.  This could have been done better.  This was okay, but if I tweak it in this and this way, it will be so much better.”  Even before this semester is finished, I look forward to the tabula rasa of fall.  I love being part of a school rhythm–everything is geared toward improving one’s work, semester by semester.  What is frustrating to me now is what drives me forward to grow and develop my skills and organization.

May we walk in Beauty!

Listing

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I am planning my end-of-year mini course for seniors, a Writer’s Contemplative Retreat.  I am thinking that I will begin each day with a gratitude list.  I have been reviewing Mary Oliver’s questions, and also trying to watch my mind as I make my own morning list.  I don’t necessarily think conscious questions into the open space of my brain, but there are trails down which I wander when I am thinking up my morning list.  Here are some questions I might ask my students to get them thinking:

* What is beautiful?  What fills me with wonder?  What images have slowed me down and caused me to pause in the past day?  What slows me down?
* What people do I appreciate?  In the past day, what people have I noticed being extra shiny?  Who does things to make the world a better place?  Who helps me?
* What satisfies me?  What makes me say, “Yes, that’s right”?
* What has surprised me in the past day?
* What helps me make it through?  What helps me to cope?  Life can feel downright difficult and wearisome sometimes.  In those moments, what helps me to hold on and face the challenges?

This last is the one that compelled me to write that list this this morning.  I realized that sometimes when I get to the last point or two–especially during times of high stress–I struggle to finish the list.  My mind begins to drag and complain and remind me that I’m tired and exhausted and crotchety.  But the discipline of the list kicks in–I have to finish the blasted thing, even if I’m grumpy.  So my mind goes to the question of what will help me to get through the challenge and the stress.

It makes me think of the fairy tale archetype of the mentor who tells the lost child what to look for: “There will be a signpost that will show you the way.  When you see the road passing between two hills, you know you are nearing your journey’s end.  Ask the old woman who stands at the crossroads for a crust of bread, and she will feed you.”  If I am feeling stressed, spending a moment in the morning to imagine the signposts that will help me to make it through the next portion of my journey helps me to find my way through without becoming overwhelmed.

Gratitude List:
1. Synchronous connections.  As I plan my mini-course, I contacted a local church with an outdoor labyrinth, and I discovered that the deacon who works with the labyrinth is someone I have met and deeply admired.
2. The music teachers at Wrightsville Elementary.  On Tuesday, The strings teacher couldn’t be there for the concert, and the music department head just leapt in and led the orchestras.
3. Blue herons flying above the highway.
4. Raccoon and deer in the hollow.
5. Making lists.

May we walk in Beauty!

Birdy

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Gratitude List:
1. Red-winged Blackbird
2. Oriole
3. Goldfinch
4. Bluebird
5. Hawk on the wing

May we walk in Beauty!

Gardens and Islands

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Season of the ferns.

Gratitude List:
1. Goethite, those small brown-black cubes we find in the fields.  Remineralized pyrite.  Philosopher’s stone.
2. The Curious Garden.  A small boy came home from school yesterday, inspired by a book/video his teacher had shown him in class.  He wanted me to help him to create a place behind the house where he would put plants he likes.  Then he took me inside to show me the book on the computer.  As we were finding this, he said, “I think you’re really going to like this one.”  I love that, that he is sharing literature with me, thinking about whether I would like it.  And he was right.  I really did.
3. Meeting the challenges.  I’m really living into The Odyssey right now, looking at the islands of Odysseus’s journey, thinking about the things that derail me, that challenge me, that keep from becoming my truest self, and the challenges that help me to become my truest self.
4. Planning my contemplative retreat.  I’ve chosen dates for my monastery trip.  Today I will call and reserve my little room.  I cannot express how deeply satisfying this is.
5. I also heard orioles on campus yesterday–even one in the tree outside my window!

May we walk in Beauty!

Dropping Keys

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Gratitude List:
1. This poem by Hafiz, from yesterday morning:

The small woman
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck her head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.

2. Hearing oriole’s voice added to the dawn chorus.
3. Becoming more familiar with that inner labyrinth.  Learning to recognize the turnings.
4. Vision.  I complain a lot lately about my glasses, about my shifting vision, but really, I am so glad for my sight: for the ability to read, to see a blue heron in the distance flying across the River, for the way eyes let light in.
5. The rabbits of Palmyra.  They have such personality.  Last night, on the way home from my mother-in-law’s house we saw (again) a game of leap rabbit, where two rabbits square off in a yard: one makes a sudden rush toward the other, who leaps into the air while the rushing rabbit dashes beneath.  They do this repeatedly–I assume it’s a dominance thing, but it’s really entertaining to watch.  But the most engaging story is this: Yesterday morning, my mother-in-law went to open her living room blinds, and there was a rabbit standing with its back feet on her porch couch and its front feet on her windowsill, looking in at her!  It crouched back down on the couch for a moment and then stood up and looked in again.  Then it jumped up on the windowsill and looked in for a few moments before hopping down and away.  I think it was thanking her for all the flowers she has planted for it to eat.

May we walk in Beauty!

Fire Bird is Back!

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(Not  my photo–from Wikipedia, labeled for reuse.)

Gratitude List:
1. Fire Bird is back in the hollow. The oriole has returned.  I have been watching and listening for weeks now.  Yesterday, as I was getting out of the shower, I heard his whistle.  I opened the window, and he flew in to sit on the branch of sycamore right in front of me, whistling and whistling.  I felt as though my longing had drawn him here. Later in the afternoon, his lady came, too, timid and whispery, yellow-green like the leaves on the poplar.  And he is such an impossible orange.  Satisfying orange.
2. A bright and shining bird of a boy who is ten years old today.  He is driven by his curiosity, compelled to explore and tweak and consider, to question and create and figure things out.  I can’t imagine anymore what life was like before he was part of it.
3. Drawing to ourselves what we love.
4. My mother.  Mentor and model, thoughtful and contemplative, she has done so much to make the world a better and more just place.
5. Mother Earth

May we walk in Beauty!

Walking in Grace

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monastery
I’m beginning to think about planning a late-June trip to the monastery.  I should get that set up soon.

Gratitude List:
1. The amazing music teachers at my school–they draw such music out of the students.
2. The view of the River from my Mountain.  In every season, I am in awe.
3. Saturday morning
4. Family movie night: “The Wizard of Oz.”  At parts, it was even more bizarre than I remembered.  Fun, though, and fun to hear Joss think it through this morning: “Do you think it might have been only a dream?”
5. I’ve been thinking about the process of walking, how each step is an unbalance–a necessary shift in the weight–and a trust that the next foot will restore the balance.  Life can be that way, too–the next thing comes along to throw you a little off-balance, but it’s part of keeping you in the forward motion, and you have to trust that the work and the energy and the determination of the moment will catch you on the next step, so you’ll be ready for the next unbalancing motion.

May we walk in Grace and Beauty.

You Are the Dragon, You Are the Cave

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The thing you learn, of course,
before you strap your sword belt on,
is that the princess you pledged to save
is only yourself in another guise,
that the dragon you swore to smite
is simply your own roaring ego
belching flame in the mouth of the cave.

You are the villagers rioting in the streets,
and calling for the dragon’s blood.
You are the bells that pealed from the towers
when the dragon circled above the town.
You are the sword,
the shield, the very cave,
the small frightened mouse
trampled in the fray.
You are the village.
You are the mountain.
You are the day itself,
quiet witness to the story.

Gratitude List:
1. Compassion
2. Nettles
3. The color orange
4. Routine.  Breaking routine.
5. Clear vision

May we walk in Beauty!

Walking in the Big Story

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Another dancing fire picture from last week.  This one is a little dragony. 

Gratitude List:
1. Homemade pizza.  With onions and fresh basil on top.
2. Inner exploration.  I am finishing this semester with my Creative Writers with an autobiographical piece, using lots and lots of writing prompts to explore their identity, to really look at what makes them who they are.  I think that self-reflection can help us to develop into more mature and healthy people.
3. Good Ethiopian Coffee to start my morning
4. Waking up, and then waking up, and then waking up.  There are always new rooms to awaken within.
5. How the stories that we read and listen to intertwine themselves with our own.  Sometimes this process is more intense than others.  I can remember the beautiful language and imagery of certain books with pleasure, but it’s when I am working a book–not just reading it–that I really thoroughly absorb it and take it in.  It happened to me at a young age with the Narnia books, and much later with the Lord of the Rings.  The Odyssey.  Perhaps it’s epics and journey stories that do it mostly.  We ourselves become part of the meta-myth.

May we walk in Beauty!

May the Fourth Be With You!

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I want to figure out how to get some good, crisp, detailed photos of my collages.

I’m sorry, I just had to use that title.  There are certain days that simply must be given their due.  March Fourth is one of them, and today.

My Gratitude List today is a reprise of the one I wrote on this day three years ago:
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.