Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Don’t Be Afraid

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“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
― Frederick Buechner

Running

Gratitude List:
1. A clean house.  Top to bottom.
2. Tabula rasa.  Starting fresh.
3. Sleeping until 6:30.  I had forgotten that my body could do that.
4. The owl out there, booming in the oak grove. (And in the time it has taken me to ponder and write this morning, dawn has arrived, the owl has settled into silence, and the wren has begun the first notes of the dawn chorus.)
5. The way light is emerging through the mist this morning.

May we walk in Beauty!

The Whole World is on the Wing

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Joss and Cedar
Yesterday we went on a walk to look for beautiful things to photograph.  When I raised my camera to take a picture of this cedar tree that I love, he slipped right in there: “You take a picture of me with the tree, and then I will take one of you.”

You know how sometimes you see one of those huge flocks of birds wheeling over a field–crows or gulls or geese–and then you notice, in the distance, another flock behind it somewhere in the sky?  One of the dreams last night was of a sky full of birds: flocks and flocks and flocks.  My dream-vision was wide-angle.  There were birds above the River, close-up and way off in the distance, in the fields and over the town, high in the sky, between and above and behind the clouds.  And this phrase came to me in the dreaming: “The whole world is on the wing.”

Gratitude List:
1. The Magnificat: “My soul is filled with joy.”
2. Repeated references, everywhere I turn, to “the beloved community.”
3. Wings.
4. Yesterday’s Nap (worthy of an initial capital)
5. Walking in Beauty.

May we walk in Beauty!

Going Away, Coming Home

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When I wake in the night, I usually catalog the dreams I have just been having, so that they stick around a little longer in the morning.  It’s sort of like the process that grade-schoolers do in language arts: What’s the main idea?  What is the controlling image?  Then usually, I can sort of grab it in the morning before it floats away.  It didn’t work this morning.  Back in my own bed after several nights away–and my bones are aching lots these day–there was quite a bit of waking up.  I know that I was telling myself many interesting stories in the night, but they have all dissipated in the fresh morning.  I feel as though I already know the word that I will be gleaning from my dreams for the coming year, but I don’t yet want to close the door to possibility.  Not until Epiphany.

One of my new Facebook friends also chooses a yearly word or image to frame her meditations for the coming year.  She crowd-sourced a list to choose from on Facebook.  It was exciting to read people’s choices.  Some of my favorites: threshold, rise, growth, renew, phoenix, explore, ground, roots, claim, rebirth, reestablish, blossom, exuberance, adapt, fear not, voyage, blessed, hospitality. . .  Perhaps I ought to just write the whole list in my notebook for daily meditations.

***

I am realizing again how easy it is to get out of the practice of poetry.  I need to re-figure in these days how I can once again step into the stream.  I will be starting to teach a Creative Writing class at school in a couple weeks (I feel a little as though I have been living my whole writer’s life for this), and I may try to hang some of my own writing disciplines on this course.  It would be good modeling for the students, if I am writing as well.

Gratitude List:
1. Going away to celebrate with family, but also coming home again.
2. Making plans for new ways to stay organized and on top of things.
3. This week coming.  Like time out of time.
4. Texture and textile.
5. I am still living with the residual lessons of that movie, Inside Out.  I am grateful that a cute little movie can reach inside and and pull out my guts.  (Sorry. That was a little graphic.  But it hit me pretty hard.)

May we walk in Beauty, with Wisdom and Awareness.

Inside Out

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2014 April 119

Thoughts from watching Inside Out:
Fear and anger and disgust can be really unhelpful in the decision-making process, but they’re there to help protect us.
Sometimes you need to sit awhile with sadness before you can go chasing after joy.

Gratitude List:
1. Inside Out.  The movie.  I thought the title meant that it was about seeing a person from the inside out.  I didn’t realize that it might also mean that it would turn me inside out.  I was a whimpering mess by the end.  Sigh.  But I came out hyper-aware of the emotional state of my children.  This will be good for my parenting.  I love this movie.
2. The long black fingers at the ends of the wings of the crows.  I have been flexing my hands like crows’ wings all day yesterday.
3. Rice and curry dinner, figgy pudding, and singing.
4. Most of the family sitting on that big wrap-around couch.  Perhaps the world ends here, when we are lounging and snuggling and giggling and sleeping all together. (Reference to Joy Harjo’s kitchen table.)
5. Talking it through.  Wise counsel.  Wise women.

May we walk in Wisdom.

Grace and Balance and Beauty

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DSCN8800
Christmas morning dewdrops on a birch tree.

My dreams have been disturbed the last two nights, sleeping in other rooms, other beds.  Last night, I was living by myself in an apartment, and I was moving out, turning over the lease to someone else.  I realized that I was going to have nowhere to live, nowhere to sleep.  I thought of all the many people in the town that I knew, and tried to think of who to call to ask for a place to stay, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  Even when I was talking to people I knew, I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Hey!  Could I stay at your house for a couple days?”  I told myself it was because I am an introvert, but I knew that it is because I couldn’t find the humility.  One of my fatal flaws, I think, is the inability to ask for help when I really need it.

Gratitude List:
1. Grace and balance.  (I have been watching my 9-year-old learn to ride his new ripstick.)
2. Beauty all around.  (I have been taking walks with my 6-year-old, looking for interesting things to photograph.)
3. A misty Christmas Day.
4. Fun playing games with the family.  (3-person chess is exhilarating!  And Ticket to Ride is stressful.)
5. You.  Your stories.  The music you make.  The powerful thoughts you put into the world.  The beauty and grace that you notice and share.  The way you are real.

So much love!

Bold Counsel

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labyrinth

Last night’s sleep was broken and convoluted.  Fredthecat started yowling at 3:30 (he has been much better lately so we had started letting him stay inside), so I went down and helped him out.  That disturbed a somewhat distressing dream: I was in school, in my classroom, and I heard a woman and a young child coming down the hall.  The child was in full tantrum and the woman was yelling.  Just outside my room, I heard the sound of the woman slapping the child.  I rushed to the door to try to intervene.  When I opened it, the child was standing quietly watching the mother, who was incredibly distraught in her abject shame and mortification at what she had done.  That’s when the yowling woke me up.  <Perhaps, the work is to help each other learn to live beyond our shame, so we become less bound to our reactive instincts.>

At 5:30, I was awakened by the sound of a trombone playing the Star Wars theme (we had told them not to come into our room and wake us up before 7:00, but we hadn’t specified that no one should play the trombone downstairs).  The dream that shattered was much sweeter and more tender.  We had gotten a new kitten, bright orange with black stripes, like a tiger.  I remember thinking that this was not an actual tiger cub, but in my waking space, I now re-call the image, and it was a very stocky kitten, and very tiger-like.  I was in the process of thinking of its name when I woke up.

*******

Because the comforting character of my dreams in previous nights had told me zir* name was Conrad, I looked that up this morning.  How incredibly appropriate!  Conrad comes from old German, and means “bold counselor.”  This week, I have been the recipient of such good and wise counsel from people I respect.  I love when the pieces fit together so seamlessly.

*zir: one of options for a non-gendered third person possessive pronoun.  While Conrad’s name is usually used for males, the Conrad presence in my dreams seems to need to not be attached to a gender.

Gratitude List:
1. Sleeping until 7 (sort of) and waking up to the children
2. Bold counsel
3. The Festival of 9 Lessons and Carols, and the new refugee carol
4. More dreams, more images, more stories.
5. The time of rest begins.

May we walk in Peace, in Hope, in Love–and always–in Beauty!

Keep Waiting, Keep Listening

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I took this last summer with a mirror filter with my son’s camera.  Angels everywhere.

Last night’s dreams don’t feel like any place to gather large and thoughtful ideas for the year, but here goes:

  • I got a ticket for parking my dune buggy in a handicapped space.
  • I spent a lot of time waiting for something to happen, in a bar, with someone named Conrad, a quiet and comfortable presence.
  • What looked like a dauntingly enormous tankard of beer was suddenly a quiet cup of steaming coffee in my hand.

Perhaps it was all a reminder to keep waiting, keep listening (like Conrad), accept responsibility for myself even when I don’t realize that I have broken the rules, remain temperate and awake.

Gratitude List:
1. The long Sabbath of Christmas Break, impending.
2. Answering well, then disengaging.
3. The way One Small Boy loves to make Christmas.
4. A life free of boredom.
5. All the creative ways in which people birth their dreams.

As salaam aleikum.  Shalom.  Peace to you.

Sunreturn

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2014 January 010
The sun is not up yet today, and I must be off, but this is from a previous, and snowy, year.  Here comes the sun!

Sunreturn is the name I give it.  After the longest nights, we whirl back to face our star.

Last night’s dream images:

  • Riding on top of the bus–terrifying.  I had to tell the others that I needed to find another way to get where I was going.  I was too afraid of sliding off.  There was one person–I don’t know who he was, though he was substantial and comforting–who let me hold on to him while I was up there.
  • Trying to find route 76.  Also called Trout Highway.  (I don’t know a rural Rt. 76 in waking life, nor a Trout Highway.)
  • Vast and glorious vistas–rolling hills and mountains, like Scotland.  I think I needed to be on top of the bus to really get those views.  Sigh.
  • Getting separated from my friends (because I couldn’t handle sitting on top of the bus), but finding my own way anyway.

Gratitude List:
1. Watching Mandela with people from the school community last night.  The turn-out was a little small, but hopefully it will still spark some good discussions about how to respond to unjust situations.  “This is how it begins.”
2. Sunreturn.  This morning.  In a few minutes.  We begin to whirl back toward the sun, begin to turn our face once again sunward.
3. Christmas Break.  Soon.  Soon.  Soon.
4. Kindness.  It gets a little under-rated, and sort of smooshed under the big calls for Change and Justice.  It gets pushed aside sometimes by Righteous Indignation.  But Kindness needs its own time in the center.
5. How these children are growing and changing and becoming themselves.  It’s terrifying (No!  Where’s my little tyke?) but so beautiful to watch.  Just now, a small person came to tell me something, and I didn’t entirely recognize his face as he spoke.  Some new, older child is emerging.  Even the loss of a teeny tiny baby tooth shifts the way he looks, the way he speaks.

Salaam, Shalom, Peace.

Shortest Day

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NASA photo

Today is Solstice.  I like to picture us flinging our way through space, held in our ellipse by the flaming star at the center of our dance.  In these days we are out at one of the further points of the oval, and our northern face is turned away, mostly, from the sun.  We get to gaze, for these few moments a year, into darkest space, to sense the comfort of the darkness that enfolds our tiny galaxy, to really feel the presence of the stars.  I feel these Solstice days as a hush or a pause, a breath, before we begin our inward whirl again, back into light, back into slightly closer proximity with the sun.

The twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany are often spoken of as high holy days, days in the Christian calendar when people reflect on the darkness and the light, on our place in the cosmos, on the past year and the coming year.  I like to begin those days of deep reflection at the Solstice, to watch my dreams, to see what images and visions come to me, what words become important.  Perhaps what comes is purely random flotsam from the unconscious, or perhaps it’s messages from the Spirit.  Either way, what appears provides me with visual and linguistic hooks on which to hang some of my meditative practice for the coming year.

May your dreams comfort and disturb you in this season.

Gratitude List:
1. The quietly enfolding darkness
2. Dreams.  Quiet.  Waiting.
3. Good counsel.  I am not alone.
4. Prayer.  Praying.  Inter-cession: being “yielded between.”
5. Looking backward.  Looking forward.  Looking inward and outward.  Up and down.  How many ways can I examine the space around me?

May we walk in the light of the stars.

Find the Antidote in the Venom

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summer-2009-160

Gratitude List:
1. “Find the antidote in the venom.” –Rumi quote I found yesterday, but echoed in Pema Chodron’s piece about dealing with chaos.  This has been important to me as I consider the balance of nonreactive non-judgmentalism while trying to establish and maintain firm boundaries.
2. The UNICEF club at LMH–they came up with an idea to bake cookies and sell them to the school’s advisory groups for snack for the last meeting before Christmas break.  It is an excellent educational/fundraising experience for the club, the advisory groups get a delicious treat, and the club advisor discovers that baking cookies doesn’t have to be a frustrating experience.  Everybody wins.
3. The lessons keep coming at the moment I need them.
4. That morning sun
5. The comfort of darkness

As salaam aleikum, shalom, paix, peace. . .