Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Boiling Down

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Brewer suggests a simmer down poem today.  This may be more of an extended prose metaphor written in poetic form.

These are not the words she used,
but when you boil it down, it all came down
to: “Are you good enough, faithful enough,
like-me enough to be allowed here?”

And boil down it did.  Or up.
It boiled.  It takes a day at least
to bring that pot
to galloping roil.

And then the steam rises,
wraiths of steam,
curtains of steam
to shift the appearance of things.

***

I can’t seem to get to the simmer down part.  It seems to want to stay at a boil, and I want to get on with my day for now.  I have an itch to start it over, but there’s a small person here who wants me to read to him, and that takes precedence.

DSCN8682
If you look closely, you will see a shiny CD
that someone placed around a seedpod.
The mirror gives it a surreal look.

Gratitude List:
1. Long sleep
2. Cool November morning
3. Leaf-fall
4. Seed-fall
5. The cycle: That which dies will rise again.

May we walk in Beauty!

Whose Eyes?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

 

DSCN8741

 

Robert Brewer suggests a “We’re Being Watched” Poem today:

When you walk in the fields,
when you wander in the woods–
sometimes you will feel it.

When you are looking closely
at the way the fern curls or
at the obscure twittering bird
hopping just out of sight
in a leafy bower or
at the way the ladybug
race-waddles around the tabletop,

when you are in the act of noticing
the way the minnows dart
in seemingly random chaos
before they form up
into an ordered school or
the way the sun illuminates
the golden of an autumn afternoon,
or the way one piece of quartz–
just one of thousands–
suddenly sparkles from the field row

Have you also noticed
that you are being noticed, too?
How the looking goes out
while drawing other looking in?
How the inner knowing eye
of all that is
is bent upon observing
the awe-inspiring creature
that is you?

 

Gratitude List:
1. The shining faces of those students last night after the play, thoughtfully and fervently discussing race and change, personal accountability, and the power of a good story to make us more deeply, compassionately human.  I am so proud to know them.
2. Story.  The power of story to bring us all to the table.
3. Grace.  Restoration.  Redemption.
4. Rose hips
5. Systems

May we walk in Beauty.

Once Upon a Time

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I needed a little inspiration today, so I went to Robert Brewer’s Poetic Asides blog.  He suggests a Once Upon a Time poem.  As with so many of these speedy morning poems, I am not sure quite what is happening here, but I think this one may bear some revision.

Once upon a time, Child,
when you were caught in the fog–
remember how it held you, how it
caught at your arms and legs like brambles,
until you saw the rose bush
beside the path in the woods–

remember how the roses
dropped their tender petals on the ground,
how the center swelled
into those ripe red berries,
a little sharp, a little sweet,
and fed you, healed you–

remember how the bees
swarmed around you,
how you cried out in fear,
how the sun broke through the buzzing cloud
and all was golden,
all was sweetness–

remember how you heard the howling
off in the distance and closing in,
how the beast emerged from the wood,
all teeth and claw,
how you quelled the urge to run,
how you looked it in the eye
and said, “What is your name?”

I remember now,
how you walked that day
out of the mists,
a rose in your hair
and honey dripping
from your fingers.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Parent/Teacher Conferences this afternoon.  It is a change of pace, and a chance to talk about these wonderful people with others who understand just how much I like them.  I admit that there is some stress involved.  It’s a long time to be “on,” and I never know how the conversations will flow, and I don’t think I have enough time to get my room as tidy as I would like before they start coming–but I still look forward to this little chance to interact with the parents of my people.
2. Dawn
3. Breath
4. Kale
5. Poetry–especially that John O’Donohue poem that I am reading to myself every morning.

May we walk in Beauty!

How Do You Know?

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How do you know,

when the River has told you
the stories of the ancestors,

that you will remember the tale
to tell to the wind,
after the snow has fallen,
after the grey fog has settled
deep into the valleys,

that you will remember the cadence
when the the small animals gather
to listen to you sing the River’s song,

that you will recall the bright watery threads
that weave through every story the River has told
since the beginning of time,
since the dawn of remembering?

Gratitude List:
1. The mist/fog yesterday morning that settled over the valley below Mt. Pisgah and above the River.  The highway skirted the edges of it for a time, and I would travel through patches of sunshine, with open space to one side and dense fog on the other.  At times the fog hovered above the road and pink shone through the layer of mist, so it looked like pink was caught on the underbelly of the fog, and it was difficult to determine the source of its illumination.
2. It happened again yesterday: I don’t often spend much thought on worrying about how I look, but occasionally the old voices pipe up: “Look at the frumpy teacher!”  On the very day that I have had such a thought (and I am very careful not to let personal things like that show in the classroom), there is always some girl who comes up and tells me she loves something about what I am wearing.  I used to think that teenage girls were like sharks–they could smell your discomfort with yourself a mile away, and they would circle in for the kill.  I now think that this was only my personal teenage self projecting my own anxiety onto others.  Still, I now think that they DO have radar.  They sense how and in what way you might need a boost, and they circle in and offer help.
3. I had an anxiety dream last night, and I managed to manipulate it to solve my problem.  So often I wake up from those feeling like I am at the mercy of the fates, but this morning, I feel like I have the tools to make my way through the things I was worried about.
4. The women who fought and protested to make it possible for women to vote.  “As we go marching, marching. . .”
5. I know I go on about this, but GOLDEN.  Everything is golden.
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May we walk in Beauty!

Rhythm of Work and Rest

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Gratitude List:
1. Sleep.  After an intensely busy week/weekend, and before another intensely busy week, I had one L-O-N-G night of sleep.  Joss and I fell asleep while we were reading A Swiftly Tilting Planet up in my bed, and I slept through until morning.
2. Those morning planets hanging out together.
3. The rhythm of work and rest.
4. Grandma Slabaugh’s Apple Cake.  Someone say the recipe I posted on Facebook, made it, and sent me a slice.
5. Restoration.  Redemption.  Making things right.  Always keeping open the possibilities for wholeness.
6. The right to vote.

May we walk in Compassion.

Reading Wisdom

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sumac

Learn to tell the story of the red leaves against water.
Read the alphabet of walnut branches newly bared for winter.
Become literate in the language of cricket and of wren,
of the footsteps of skunk and the changeability of weather.

Interpret the text of the wind in the hollow.
Scan the documents of cloud and constellation.
Enter the tale of rose hip and nettle and sassafras.
Study Wisdom and she will find you.

(Proverbs 3:13-31)

Gratitude List:
1. Firelight
2. Recommitment to purpose
3. Circles
4. Doorways
5. The magic that is all around us.

Bright Blessings!

October Says

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2013 November 210

October says,
Look!
How the light will
enter

you

will bathe you in shimmer.
See how light
caresses each molecule–
each metaphor–

how it holds you
in its shine?

Gratitude List:
1. Rivers of song.  Webs of song.  Bridges of song.  How singing together holds us all.  Friday Faculty Hymn Sing.
2. Last night’s Unicef Trick-or-Treat party at school.  They planned it, prepared it, and pulled it off admirably.  AND they cleaned up.  Thoroughly.  If I had a dime for every time some shining teenager came up to me yesterday and asked what they could do to help, I’d be able to take myself out to dinner.  (I accidentally typed “teeneager” there, and that would have been appropriate, too.)
3. Last night’s dream: a warm, well-lit coffeehouse by the River, and me with plenty of time to go and sit and be there with Jon.
4. Baby cheetah asleep last night when I got home, all stretched out on his napping dad.  Little panther up and in costume first thing in the morning.  This yearly opportunity for the kids to think about their alter egos, to explore these deeper  bits of themselves.  Sometimes they are robots or boxes.  It is nice to have wildcats in the house this year.
5. How we are all in this together, you and me and the rest of us.  How you teach me, give me ideas, help me to let go of my stereotypes and old-worn ideas in order to grasp newer, more helpful ways of encountering the world.  Keep me accountable.  Remind me always to keep becoming my better self.

May we walk in Beauty!

River of Song

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

hymnal

On Friday mornings, we have a faculty and staff hymn sing for fifteen minutes before the school day begins.  It’s usually about fifteen of us–all four parts represented.  Someone suggests a song, the pages rustle, the pitch pipe hums, and we’re off into a river of harmonies, notes and words tumbling together.

During the past couple weeks, I have been struck by how the harmonies pull against each other and support each other, forming a thing that is greater than the sum of the parts, how we make a landscape of sound, a basket, a tapestry, a bridge.  Singing together with attentiveness makes use of a subliminal sense that goes beyond hearing and sight and touch.  We share breath and heartbeat.  

Perhaps the sixth sense is the sense of connection to others, the awareness of the web of human interbeing.  Singing together acknowledges this web in powerful ways, as we rest and flow and build the song with each other.  What a gift it is to sing with the gathered community of these people who are all focused on the one task of teaching and supporting our students.  It strengthens and supports our work, builds us together.  The bridge of music that we build between us is at once the symbol of the support we create for our students, and the support itself.

Satisfying

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Peony

I have a stack of student papers
I carry with me like an amulet, like a lifeline.
Pages whisper to me in the dark:
Attend to me.  Listen.  See me.
Read my stories.

I am surprised you cannot see them,
circling like birds around my head,
fluttering like butterflies or leaves
around me when I walk,
these pages waiting for me
to take them in my hands,
hands that look like my mother’s,
to listen for the lives behind the words.

Gratitude List:
1. This satisfying teaching moment: After working through a logic and reasoning exercise with a class that really struggles to focus, one young man exclaimed, “Miss!  This really got me thinking!”
2. This satisfying teaching moment: After my English 9 class read Ray Bradbury’s “The Sound of Thunder” this week, one boy asked with shining eyes, “Can you suggest some books that might be sort of like this story?”
3. Golden.  It just gets more and more golden.  I drove up Ducktown this evening in the slanting afternoon sun, under the canopy of shimmering orange and golden leaves, and down Schmuck into the hollow, and I felt as though I had found my way into Brigadoon.
4. These good fifteen years of the CSA.  It is hard to see it end, though there’s a lot of relief, too, and hope that the next phase of our lives will also bring us joy and community.  We have been incredibly blessed by the presence of so many good folks in our lives during this phase, and I am really going to miss the camraderie, the jokes, the feasting, the powerful conversations, the sense of connection to these good people, and the connection of the people to the land.  This work has shaped and formed us, and I am grateful for it.
5. What the future holds.

May we walk in Beauty!  May you be Golden.

Layers of Time

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Making hay on the old farm
(Old Slabaugh Family Photo.  I’ll need to ask around to find out who they are.)

Layers of Time

Sit in this bubble
of now, and settle yourself
into the moment.
The past will wash over you,
and the future will rush in.

Gratitude List:
1. Were I on our custodial staff, I would hate it, so I feel a little sheepish saying this, but I love the way the leaves leaves track all over the floor at school on rainy days.  It’s like the trees are trying to come inside.
2. Our long-suffering and hard-working custodial staff.
3. One of my Chinese students made sushi for Advisory Group snack yesterday.  That was delicious.
4. Problem-solving.  Puzzles.  Conundrums.
5. Restorative Justice.  What if our schools and communities would start offering classes and workshops and trainings in restorative justice, in creatively addressing conflict rather than escalating it?  What if all prospective security guards and police officers were required to log 50 hours of restorative justice training (and anti-racism training) before they entered their jobs?

Blessings on your Beautiful Day!