Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

I Will Get to You

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On paging through Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americans:

I had to put the book down
and walk away,
the fire of it still running
up and down my spine

lest I fall into the pit of poetry
and lose myself there for the day,
for the year,
lose my family,
time,
direction.

Even this,
these black marks on the page,
these birds’ feet in the snow,
quiver on my skin
like coals.

***

Perhaps it’s the result of going so suddenly from teaching to resting, but now my brain is filling up with images and ideas, like a room crowded with children all clamoring for my attention.  Ah!  There’s the image: sometimes when class begins, I suddenly find myself in the center of a crowd of earnest and intent students all needing something from me–a pass, a signature, an explanation, a bit of comfort–and I cannot meet every need at once, but I want to look everyone in the eye and say, “I’ll get to you,” knowing that I haven’t the time or the energy to entirely fulfill the needs they carry.  Today, I opened that book, and suddenly the new poems and writing ideas that I have been putting off for so many weeks now have come crowding about me, begging for passes and signatures and permission to go get a drink.  Were I single and childless, I would make this a day of delicious writing, but I’ll need to put these voices off for just a little while yet.  I’ll get to you, Bright Ones.  I promise I will do my best.

 

Gratitude List:
1. The dimple in Ellis’s chin.  Where did that come from?  I don’t think that the Weaver or the Kreiders have chin-dimples.  Do they?  And why is it so endearing?
2. The poetry of Mara Eve Robbins, which fills me with delight and sadness, tears me up and heals me, whichever I need at the moment–her words always seem to come at just the right time, to be just the right thing.
3.  The writing of Barbara Kingsolver.  Why do I always take so long to get started on her books?  She writes with equal power of both internal and external landscapes.  I am listening to Flight Behavior these days, and all around me now I hear the whispers of butterfly wings.
4. The best Christmas ever.  That’s what the boys keep saying, and who am I to disagree?
5.  Dreams.  Listening.

May we walk in Beauty!

Poem: Advent 4

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This one has to be a place-holder.  I have more shaping to do for this one, but the day has been long and these last hours full of grading freshman essays.  My head is fuzzy, and all I can think of is sleep.  Still, the day called for a poem:

Today we sing
not just to welcome the light
but to push back the darkness.

We stand at the gates of that city
holding hands,
voices raised together,
our songs joyful
and defiant,

our own brokenness holding
evergreen and bittersweet,
like the mended pot
on the altar.

Hush

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The sun is setting out of the hollow now on this day before the the shortest night.  At about this time tomorrow (6:03 EST to be exact), we reach our furthest point on the outbreath of this trip around the sun.

Pause. Regroup.  A moment of holy hush.

These are the days for dreaming and contemplation, for listening for the messages.

What words, what images, will you glean from your dreamings to take with you into the coming wheel around the year?

 

Gratitude List:
1. The night has secrets and messages to offer.
2. Sunreturn is upon us.  I have made it to the center of another season of darkness. Now for the journey back around.
3. Anticipation
4. People believing that their work makes a difference.  It does, you know.
5. Blessings. Benedictions. Beannacht.

May we walk in Beauty.

Poem: Advent 3

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DSCN7696

 

“There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.”  –Leonard Cohen

This is how it is with brokenness
says the Mender of Pots:
The piece I placed so perfectly
to match that graceful curve,
and glued in place with confidence–

I had to break it off again
to make its neighbor fit.
Sometimes to reach the second stage
the first must be undone.
Heal and break, heal and break,
and heal again.

Sometimes the glue won’t hold.
Sometimes a shard will settle downward as it dries.
Sometimes the smallest pieces fall to powder.

The end result
will not resemble
exactly
the bowl that first was broken.

Light leaks through the lacy spaces.

Still–
the shape begins to once again
resemble the initial form
and the heart responds
with joy.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Mending.  And breaking and mending.  And breaking and mending.  Necessary work.
2.  Light leaking through the lacy spaces.
3.  Yesterday’s brilliant student concert at LMH.  My colleagues in the music department are inspiring, and the students are incredibly gifted.
4.  I know that the sun is out there somewhere.  It will return.  It will return.
5.  How your words feed me, how they return me to myself.  May we always know the words to offer each other.  Like bread.  Like gifts.

May we walk in Beauty!

After Strand

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Here is a poem, written after Mark Strand’s “From a Litany”:

Here in the hush before morning,
I praise the coming dawn which will push back the curtain of night.
I praise the secret shadows in the bamboo.
I praise the first brave bird to sing.
I praise the soft sighs of the cat curled beside the vents.
I praise the tang of pine entering my body through breath.
I praise the clatter of rain.
I praise the fortitude of the early-riser, driving up the hill to work.
I praise the quiet earthworms, deep in the hollows of warm earth below.
I praise the way words tumble from mouth and pen and keyboard.
I praise the thunder of words, their flood and their tempest.
I praise the silent words whispered at midnight,
I praise the tattered remnant of dreams that hover about me like a halo.
I praise the storm of the day as it approaches,
with all its wildness and adventure.

Gratitude List:
1.  Heat!  A new furnace came yesterday, earlier than projected, and we are warm again. This new one sounds different, and the house has a new winter voice.
2.  The deep, secret green of the ferns by Cabin Creek, after everything else has turned brittle and brown, this green holds on.
3.  That verse in Brian Wren’s song “Joyful is the Dark”:

Joyful is the dark Spirit of the deep,
winging wildly o’er the world’s creation,
silken sheen of midnight
plumage black and bright,
swooping with the beauty of a raven.

The whole song, actually.  In these last days before sun-return, the darkness begins to feel claustrophobic.  This keeps the darkness broad and wild and open.
4.  Being part of a community that actively practices restorative justice, and discusses it together.  I am constantly inspired by my colleagues.
5.  The delight of children anticipating Christmas.  I love being on the parental end of the holiday.

May we walk in Beauty!

Poem: Advent 2

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

DSCN7684

Someone has begun
to puzzle the pieces
of the shattered bowl
back into place.

The fractured pattern flows,
a twisted pathway,
across the scarred surface.
The break will always be visible.

Somewhere in the distance
a voice is calling, “Cry Out!”
And what shall I cry?

Hands up!  Don’t shoot!
Black lives matter.
I can’t breathe!
Justice!

I will not cry for an unholy peace
which rests upon your shoulders.
My cry is only my breath,
all I have to offer
until we all can breathe together.

Emerging

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Gratitude List:
1. All of you who are priestess/priests to me, lights in the shadowy places, warm currents in cold places.
2. The Kissing Hand–thanks to Anne for reminding me of this–it’s helping the mama as well as the littles.
3. Audio books–it’s not quite like reading a novel, but it satisfies my craving for story on the ride to school at a time when I have no time for extracurricular reading.
4. The power of the people
5. The winds of change

May we walk in Beauty!

Weary

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

I am so weary.
So furious and weary.
So weary of my fury.

You’ve got your hands in the air.
I’ve got my hands at your back.
They’ve got their hands on your throat,
and our hands are prying at them,
our hands are clawing with all our might.
We are screaming with all the strength
our sob-wrenched throats can utter.

And the hands that hold the gun,
the hands that squeeze the breath,
they look like mine.

The voice that says,
again and again,
in such a tone of reason,
that rings in my ears,
“Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty.”
It sounds like mine, somehow.

 

Poem: Advent 1

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

 

 

 

This morning, church was about despair and hope.
The altar table was covered with the shards of a broken pottery vase.
There was space for grief and rage and confusion,
and also for healing and hope, and good singing, as always.

This poem happened:

DSCN7654

On the table
the bowl is shattered,
the shards are scattered
across the torn cloth.

A city inside me is burning
and the sky is torn by fury
or by the hand of God
and who is to say
which of those names
we shall give it today?

Where shall we go now?
Where shall we find
the threads of the tale
when the wind has blown,
wild,
through the window?
Will the mystery matter
within the wreckage?

Still–

into the silence
a bird on the windowsill
sings a brief note
that sounds for the moment
like hope.

Scandalous Grace

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Sometimes it just feels good to settle into the grumpy places, like a hen, and brood a bit. Then when the time is right, you step out into the sunshine, shake the dust out of your feathers, and run with the flock.

We live in the layers. Part of me wants to be so evolved and conscious in my living that I don’t get into the occasional grumpy snit, that I don’t lose my temper and holler at my kids, that I don’t go on a rant with no reasonable basis in facts, that I don’t buy myself a new pair of boots just for the fleeting happiness of new stuff. But there’s a paradox in there, I think. To actually embrace my humanness, to live in the layered reality of being a being in a body right now, I have to experience those bits of me that I am a little sheepish or ashamed about. Part of the mystery and the delight of being human is the life in the layers–we can be seeking to understand the deep pools of our emotions and the far-reaching paths of spirit and still, when it comes down to it, these are the clothes we wear, these human clothes, and sometimes the emotional bits get a little messy.

Perhaps it’s also partially a function of the Swiss/German DNA that I carry in my human clothing. Even while I am having a rant or a snit, some small voice in the back of my head is saying, “Now is that reasonable?  Is that proper?” Perhaps for me, diving more deeply into the layers, exploring the depth of my humanness, might mean stilling that voice, letting myself have at it, not worrying whether my current rant is grounded in verifiable facts like a college research paper, whether I am going to sound sulky or whiny.

I think that what I am saying is that reason and philosophy and spiritual seeking are all good and useful tools, but that a life too focused on being reasonable and rational can divorce us from the emotional part of our fully human selves. Emotions aren’t reasonable. Like any art supply, they’re messy. But they’re colorful, too. Here’s to the art of living in the layers!

Gratitude List:
1. Getting home in the dark and getting out of the car to the hooting of the Great Horned Owl in the bamboo. They’re really active right now. About a week ago, one night as we were putting the boys to bed, the owls were having a regular hootenanny out in the woods–there must have been at least three of them, and they weren’t leaving their usual thoughtful pauses between comments.
2. I finished all my coursework for my class:Building Caring Communities. It has been a wonderful class, and I have found much that I can apply directly to my classroom, so I am grateful for that. But I am weary and eager to have a little less on my plate for a while, so I am grateful that it is over, too.
3. Family time over the holiday. Crazy Uno games with both sides of the family. Thoughtful conversations. Hugs and snuggles and sharing delicious food.
4. Tender justice and scandalous grace.
5. Revolutionary poetry.

May we walk in Beauty!