Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Grace and Wind

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Today’s gratitude list is mostly gleaned from our church service yesterday morning.  After a startlingly harsh and jangling sermon from a visiting preacher the previous week, yesterday’s service was one of healing and hope.  I felt much more called to the care and tending of souls during yesterday’s gentle and loving setting than I did during the previous week’s harangue.

Gratitude List:
1. The healing power of words, how they hold and restore.  How healing words fill a space after words have been harsh.  I am grateful for Darvin and Michelle’s words yesterday.
2. St. Hannah/Francis preaching to the birds.  “You should try this at home.”  Ellis did: he came home and stood near the feeder with bird seed in his hand.
3. Breath, air, wind: spirit.  Ruach, one of the Bible’s feminine terms for God, is also the spirit, the breath.  Whistle.  Preach to the birds.
4. Counting time in Chesters.  The oldest member of our congregation is almost 100.  About three Chesters ago, the US became a country.  Eight Chesters ago, St. Francis preached to the birds.  Chester whistles, too.
5. These two hanging ferns that my family gave me for Mother’s Day.  The house finch has been whistling in their fronds, begging his lady love to consider them as the setting for raising their family.

May we walk in Beauty!  Breathe.  Whistle.

Arise, then, Women of this Day

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2013 April 156

Those are the first words of Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation.  It was a call to action, not just to American mothers, but to all women in all nations, to come together to create peace between our countries and to repudiate the wars and violence that were being caused and prosecuted mostly by men.

I know that this day is difficult for many people for many reasons.  The word Mother is a difficult word for may people.  Mothers can be cruel or absent or distant or controlling.  Mothers can feel inadequate, captive, unappreciated (but for one day a year), shamed.  Motherhood may be elusive or greatly desired but seemingly unattainable.  Beloved mothers may be gone too soon, too soon.  My first memory of my own experience of being a mother was the Mothers Day ten years ago when I learned that my first pregnancy was failing.

Today, if this day is difficult and painful for you, I wish you a quiet place away from all the cultural glitz and holler of the day.  I wish you healing from difficult or grief-filled memories.  I wish you freedom from the expectations that clamor about you.  I wish you people in your life who nurture you and who help you discover you how strong you really are.  I wish you at least one person in your life who believes in you no matter what, who trusts your inner knowledge and ability to succeed. I wish you opportunities to mentor and care for others. I wish you the fire and power to bring to birth your own ideas and creations, to watch your dreams and projects and plans come into being as surely as any child is born into the world.

Gratitude List:
1. My mother, whom I would seek out as a friend were she not already my mother, who has been my guide as I find my own way into the land of motherhood, who believed I could do fly and sometimes sort of nudged me off the cliff’s edge a little, who has taught me the importance of firmly speaking truth to power, who has provided a motherly presence for so many people, who showed me how to pay attention and to look at the beauty of the world around me.  I love you, Mom!
2. The Motherline:
I am Beth Weaver-Kreider,
daughter of Ruth Slabaugh Weaver,
daughter of Lura Lauver Slabaugh,
daughter of Mary Emma Graybill Lauver,
daughter of Elizabeth Shelley Graybill,
daughter of Lydia Gingrich Shelley,
daughter of Elizabeth Light Gingrich,
daughter of Mary Dohner Light,
daughter of Anna Landis Dohner,
daughter of Fronica Groff Landis,
daughter of Susanna Kendig Orendorf Groff,
daughter of Elsbeth Meili Kundig,
daughter of Anna Barbara Bar Meili,
daughter of Barbara Biedermann Bar (born 1580 in Hausen, Switzerland).
3. All you who have been mentors and muses and fire-lighters and hearth-keepers for me.
4. My own two children (and perhaps also the two who did not come to be) and all they have taught me about who I am in the world, all the joy they bring.
5. Seed. Womb. Birth. Fire. Earth. Source.

May we walk in Beauty!

Bright Women

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Gratitude List:
1. The life of Sophie Scholl, (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943).  One of the founders of The White Rose, a student organization organized to resist the Nazis.  She was executed at age 22 for her activism.
2. The life of Ruth Kasl.  I just found out today that my friend and former colleague has died.  An inspiring teacher, committed to her students’ development as people, Ruth was/is a shiny soul.  So many people, both human and animal, will miss her.
3. Asparagus
4. May Day fun at Wrightsville Elementary
5. Getting it said

May we walk in Beauty!

Happule Evr Aftr

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Here are some stories.  The author requests anonymity, so it’s probably best not to talk to him about them.

“ther was a liyin. ther was a mce. the liyin was chasing the muce. the liyin chast the muce up the chrey.”

“Waunts apon a tim thir was a chicin. the chicin codnt lia ene eggs. the uther chicins laft at him.”

“If cows came into my bedroom they wod eat my sox. the wod dschroy my desr. they wod poop on my machris.”

“thir was a dog. the dog’s gob is hrding the shep. a lam was mising. a caing roo was coming to the frm. in its pawch it was ciyreing the lam.”

“Thier was a froge. the froge lived in a ran foriest. one day the froge mit a maucee.  they wre frens. they lived happule evr aftr.”

Gratitude List:
1. One year ago today, I interviewed for a job at Lancaster Mennonite High School.  I am grateful that they hired me, and that it has been as good a fit as I imagined.
2.  I am grateful for my colleagues and the way they care for the students as much as for the subjects they teach.
3.  I am grateful for my students and all that they teach me.  Today, a student announced our new Unicef Club in chapel.  I was hoping that at least five or six people would respond and sign up.  By day’s end, over thirty had done so.  I am thrilled that so many kids want to get involved in humanitarian work, and delighted that the student who hatched the idea is getting so much support.
4. Not being in labor–9 years ago right now, I had already been in labor for about 20 hours, and I still had a whole night to go through.  I am grateful for the medical technology that ensured we both survived.  I’m inexpressibly grateful for this child, who amazes and delights me every single day.
5. The way the sun is shining over the ridge.

May we walk in Beauty!

Spring Settles in to Skunk Holler

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Gratitude List:
1. Music.  What a concert at the school tonight!  It puts the arts into a liberal arts education.  I am so proud of these young people.  And of my colleagues who lead with such heart, such professionalism, such a striving for excellence.
2. The birds are back in town, birds are back in tow-ow-ow-own.  Chipping sparrow.  Sparrow.  Kingfisher.  And my bright bird of fire: Oriole.  And the goldfinches have put on their brightest vests.
3. That view from Mt. Pisgah over the valley in the mornings, light on the hills at the gap where the River runs through.  The bridges spanning my here to my there.
4. Lily of the Valley.  And lilac.  What an aromatic duo.
5. Grace.  Apologies.  Earnest civility.

May we walk in Beauty!

Lessons and Bright Wings

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My gratitude list tonight is a two-pointer.

First, a challenging situation this morning gave me a chance to practice holding onto my center in the midst of an extremely awkward social situation that might have once caused me either to dither and apologize when I was the one who should have been apologized to, or to get angry and stony and withdrawn.  I think I managed to keep my cool.  There are things, in retrospect, that I wish I had said, things that could have added grace to the situation, had I kept my wits more firmly in place.  Still, I was able to be present in the moment when someone was criticizing me, to let a little piece of myself sit on my own shoulder and observe my emotions, to tell myself, “Now isn’t that interesting?”  I am grateful for the chance to practice, even when the moment itself was difficult.

The second thing is this: I am in love with a bird, and today he came back to my hollow.  I heard him out there this afternoon, as I was brooding about that first item, and I ran out to see, but he was hiding high in the branches of the poplar.  Later, though, when I went out to turn off the irrigation pump at the pond, and the sun had just set out of the hollow, but the last rays were still leaking over the ridge and hitting the top branches of the sycamore, there he was, shining orange in the light.  Oriole.  I can’t describe how I love this bird, but when I hear him, when I see him, I could weep for joy.

May we walk in Beauty!

Color

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Was Winter just particularly ugly and colorless this year?  I know that I had moments of reflection on the beauty of its austerity, the golds and ochres, the many shades of sky.  Still, I cannot remember a time when I have felt such a sense of complete and utter relief at the appearance of the colors of spring.  Most years, the feeling of entering spring has been for me one of coming up from under the earth, breaking out of hibernation.  This year, it’s been more akin to the first breath of real air after nearly drowning.  Every color, every new tendril of viney growth, every spring bird song–like lifelines drawing me back into wholeness.  I don’t think my energy this winter was even as sad or dampened as it can become sometimes in winter.  Still, the colors of these days make me feel like I am coming alive again.

Gratitude List:
1. Flowering trees
2. Pear blossom snow
3. Spring full moon
4. Green
5. Raccoon in the bosque

May we walk in Beauty!

Bury the Seed

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Today’s Prompt is to write a poem titled, “Bury the (blank).”

“What didn’t you do to bury me.
But you forgot that I was a seed.”  –Dinos Christianopoulos

So many voices they have tried
to hide under the earth,
hidden within the clamoring din
of newscasts 24/7,
buried beneath the thousand faces
of the pontificators, the experts,
the mad chatter of the talking heads.
Shovelsful of opinions thrown in
and tamped down firmly
to hold the voices underneath.

How could they have known
the seeds would sprout and grow
like vines that wind around the fences
in the meadows, to bring them down?
Could anyone predict the way those vines
would lick along the base of the barn
like flame to burn up the building?

Gratitude List:
1. Poem in Your Pocket Day, and my students reading poems to me all day long: a Korean poem translated to English, Pablo Neruda read to me in Spanish, Shakespeare and Rosetti, Dickinson and Dylan Thomas and Frost.  Ogden Nash and Shel Silverstein, and poems of their very own.  I have been in a sort of heaven.
2. Stuffed Shells
3. The twins who appeared in last night’s dream: Fearless and Anna.
4. Everything is suddenly so beautiful.  I have been paying close attention to the seasons for several years now, and I don’t remember the last time I was so desperate for Spring’s beauty to arrive.  Warmth, yes.  But this year, it has been an end to the drear of winter that I have craved, and Spring has given me so much green.
5. Pear blossom snow.

May we walk in Beauty!

What Nobody Knows

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Today’s prompt is What Nobody Knows.

Not the trouble I’ve seen,
nor the exact moment blackbird returns in spring,
nor what lies under the blackberry brambles,
nor where vulture rests in the shade
after she has circled the meadow her dozen times.

Not the way to San Jose,
nor the way to make a perfect souffle,
nor infinity’s penultimate number,
nor the hundredth name for God–
except for the camel, of course.

Not which way the wind blows,
nor who is watching the eagle fly above the River,
nor the true purpose of the appendix,
nor the thoughts of the monarch in its jade cell.

With all that can be known blowing about our feet
like the husks of leaves on the forest floor in autumn,
let us wait in the this moment beneath the dogwood tree
while that handsome finch turns his eye sideward to see us,
and embrace each moment of wonder
as if it is a new thing being born.

Gratitude List:
1. Getting a lot of work completed
2. Stretching
3. People who hum happily as they work
4. Blooming lilacs
5. Thoughtful conversations with teenagers.

May we walk in Beauty!

What Does it Matter?

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Just a few more days!  I love the challenge of these months, and I am so glad to get the break when they are done.  Today’s prompt is to write a matter/anti-matter poem.  I just let this one run its little free-association course.

Aunty Matter strides into Grandma’s kitchen
in her black stockings with holes in the heels
and a long black velvet dress
with fine lace insets.

She pirouettes.

“What does it matter, Mater,
if I should wander once in a while?
The fact of the matter is:
I’m green only for a day
before my dreams are heaped
in that pile of rubble in the orchard.”

It’s just a matter of time, perhaps
until she’s gone down the anticline,
until she’s reached the event horizon,
the point of no returning.

Still, the young ones are donning
black stockings of our own
to follow her in her dance
as though the dance is all that matters.

 

Gratitude List:
1. People working for Justice
2. People willing to engage the hard conversations
3. People with hope in their hearts
4. People who sing even when it’s dark
5. People whose M.O. is Love

May we walk in Beauty!