Gratitude List:
1. Planning and processing
2. Owls
3. Laughter
4. Good-humored folks
5. Feedback
May we walk in Beauty!
Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider
The Holiness of Desire
(I’m not sure whether this is quite finished, or whether it says exactly what I want it to say. But this is my writing space, whether a piece is finished or in process, and this is where I leave this one this morning.)
Sometimes the body forgets
how desire is holy,
how the craving, the longing–
for a place that recedes
into the mists of memory,
or the comfort of a restful bed,
for touch, for the answer
to the body’s sweet secret yearnings,
for the way the lungs passionately
embrace the air that enters–
all is echo of the larger ache,
the primal urge for re-union
with the Source of all,
Godself urging us inward
to the primal dance
like the dance
at the center of the atom,
whirling particles held
within each other’s orbit.
Gratitude List:
1. The assembly that celebrated Lunar New Year on Monday. Dragons, dancers and tai kwon do demonstrations. I would like to learn to feel that sort of strength and focus in my own body.
2. Two-hour delay. The resultant daily schedule is a little frenzied for me, but I am happy for the extra time here this morning.
3. Good fair-trade coffee
4. All that draws me onward and inward
5. Following through with the intentions
May we walk in Beauty!
Paradox
Gratitude List:
1. The way a good dream infects waking life with its lessons and images and stories
2. That great horned owl calling in the bosque. May you have good healthy eggs and a safe hatching this year, friend!
3. Wonder
4. Good work to do–even when I wake up tired, even when I am not as prepared for the day as I would like, I still like going there and being in that place with those people.
5. Paradox, mystery, contradictions, the open-ended question
May we walk in Beauty!
A-muse-ment
Gratitude List:
1. Muses. I like that word: muse. A source of creative transformation incarnate in human form. I feel transformative shifts happening within me, moving like the waters during thaw. And some of the shift has come as the result of a dream in which someone inspired me with bold counsel and gentle caring. I can’t quite describe it, but it’s like I was reaching for a deeper understanding of certain emotions and ideas in the waking world, and this dream visitor gave me images and language that I can bring with me into waking spaces in order to (hopefully) deepen and mature. (This is not a person I can approach and say, “Thank you for inspiring me in the dream-realm.” It could even be you, for all you know.)
2. It’s the year of the Fire Monkey. I don’t know quite why I like that so much, but I do. Fire monkey!
3. Playing Chutes and Ladders with the family
4. Sitting here at the table in the early morning with my morning buddy. I’m making a gratitude list, and he is cutting pictures of animals out of magazines, and chanting, “Penguin, penguin, penguin. . .”
5. Yesterday morning, good storytelling, a sermon in song, powerful modeling of vulnerability, prophetic words.
May we walk in Beauty!
Home
Josiah’s robin picture from last year. I saw a flock on my way home from the conference yesterday.
Gratitude List:
1. Home, sweet home.
2. Downtime with colleagues this weekend. Laughing together. Good conversations. Eating together.
3. The poetry and art of Jan Richardson
4. Hawks in trees along the highways
5. Dream-stories. That deep hidden part of the brain has so much to teach me.
May we walk in Beauty!
Words
Gratitude List:
1. Words that lead me through the labyrinth
2. Words that open doors and build bridges
3. Words that nudge and tickle and surprise
4. Words that scour and scrub and wake me up
5. Words that wonder and question and probe
6. Words that frame and structure and organize
7. Words that soothe and hold and bless
8. Words that weave people together
May our words be the right ones for each moment.
I Found My Way
Yes, a selfie, a bleary and shaggy morning in my little monk’s cell at the National Conference Center.
I’m at the National Conference Center in Leesburg, VA for the biennial Mennonite Educator’s Conference this weekend. I am giddier about this than I should be, taking it as a little vacation for the routine. I do miss my family, but I also treasure times when I only have to think about getting myownself from place to place. And that actually takes a certain amount of surreal effort in this building. It was designed to be confusing and unsettling in order to force people to talk to each other. It accomplishes all that. I kind of like it. Being in a building with a distinct agenda gives it a certain personality, like it’s an entity in the work of the weekend.
Gratitude List:
1. I finally managed to get the names of all 196 countries of the world in the Countries Quiz I have been playing online
2. I found my room all by myself
3. I slept until the alarm this morning
4. Spending two days among people where the main goal is to talk about how we can be most effective at caring for the young people in our classrooms
5. Moments of quiet
May we walk in Beauty!
Dream Visitors
This is a drawing from last year of a visitor from a dream. Last night’s visitor was Winky the cat with her softest fur, running off over the green grass with a group of children.
Gratitude List:
1. Learning new things. There is so much to learn
2. Dream Visitations
3. Scrambled eggs with hot sauce
4. Stretching: my body, my heart, my perceptions
5. The balances of community and solitude
May we walk in Beauty!
Between
What can I give you this morning,
this day when no words will be enough
to fill the gaping hollow
blasted wide open by yesterday?
Here is a waiting space
between breath and breath–
a quiet room, open and hushed
in the chambers of our lungs.
Here is an open door
in the moment between heartbeats–
a single silent moment in the space
between reality and shuddering reality.
The pause in the moment of blink
the tiny beat between the catch and the yawn
the release in the space between stretch and relax.
May today bring you moments of rest
between the roaring and the numbness
between the words and the silence
between the known and the unknown.
May you find shelter in those quiet rooms.
Gratitude List:
1. Holding
2. Releasing
3. Finding the spaces
4. Re-membering
5. Finding the courage to live the life that I would love. (John O’Donohue quote)
May we walk in Beauty!
Exploring the Shadows
Sun and shadow.
It’s Brigid’s Day. It’s Candlemas. Day of the Groundhog. Day of the Shadow.
The thing about shadows? They appear most clearly on the brightest days. Those cloudy and overcast days, when everything is one singular tone–the shadows are hints and mirages only. But on days when the sun is shining brightly, then the shadows flow and scatter about your feet and down the hill, pooling and puddling like water in the hollows and crevices. On sparkling days, you can look into the shadows and discern the deep indigo and violet. The shadow becomes a mirror, another layer of reality overlaid upon the everyday.
Today, I will light my candle in the dark places and watch for the way the light shifts the darkness around me, how it helps to define and shape the darkness, how it gives meaning to the shapes of things as their shadows find them, mirror them, define them. Today, I will be the groundhog, searching for the shadow that defines and mirrors me, that offers me a new vision of who I am when I am outside the safe burrow of myself and standing in the sunlight.
May your shadow be a reflection of the Truest You.
Gratitude List:
1. Sleep. I seem to need more of it these days. And I am sleeping more deeply.
2. Shadows. Mirrors. Reflections.
3. Indigo. I’ve been meditating on indigo. I want to do more research on human perception of blues, indigo in particular. When people began talking about no longer including it in the rainbow line-up, I was really bothered, and was consequently delighted when my 6yo came home from school and told me about Roy G Biv (the I is still in there).
4. Dinner with the dormies last night.
5. Circling the wagons. Joining hands to hold the net. Casting the lines from person to person to form the web.
May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 