Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

It’s Really That Easy

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“Why are you a Mennonite, Mom?” asked Ellis.
Because, I said, I want to honor my ancestors who died for this path.
Because I like the way we sing.
Because I want to walk this path of building peace.

“This is the way to stop a war,” he told me.
“Tell the people that we were not created to fight.
We were created to love each other.
It’s really that easy.”

I bit my tongue and did not ask
why he still fights with his brother then.
Time enough to absorb the subtleties.
For now, I’ll follow that golden child
and listen to his story.
It’s really that easy.

Gratitude List:
1.  Saying Yes.  Weaving my strand into the story.  Being welcomed.
2.  Largesse.  I like that word, and the idea.
3.  A tapestry of excellent conversation and tasty food and wine.
4.  A nap.  I felt as if I had shifted sideways into someone else’s reality.  Last year it would have been an unimagined luxury to lie down for a nap on a Sunday afternoon with a warm purring cat on my lap, but today my children could sort of end for themselves for an hour.
5.  The good quick-read mystery novels of Ellis Peters.  I am reading A Rare Benedictine at the moment.

May we walk in beauty.

Soft

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for Leigh Phillips

Tell me something soft, you said,
and all I can think is the soft bellies of my hens,
the place on the inside of the elbow,
or the tender skin on the head
of the woman of Goose Creek
who has shaved her hair
and walked into her story.

Soft, like the ashes that have cooled
when the burning is done,
when you sift the remnants of the past
between your open fingers.

Even the word loss has a softness to it,
the rounded vowel, the soft hiss at the end.

Are there breezes in your Brooklyn,
soft whispers in the air?
Can you hear how a tree in Pennsylvania
murmurs with your voice
into the soft and tender wind?

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Noticing.  Today I have been thinking about the spiritual practice of noticing, and of all the ways
2.  My parents have taught me to notice.  How noticing keeps me conscious of
3.  The present moment.  How the present moment is
4.  The Exquisite Doorway between past and future.  How that transition from past to future is always taking place, as naturally as
5.  Breathing out and breathing in.

May we walk in Beauty.  Namaste.

Oriole is Home!

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Sun shines through new leaves on the sycamore
then, high in the treetop,
clear, like whistling for a dog,
he calls.  Home again.
A flash of orange,
the truest orange possible,
and oriole has returned to the hollow.

Gratitude List:
1.  Oriole is home!
2.  May day party at the elementary school.
3.  Watching my 7-year-old painting the belly cast made when he was in my belly.
4.  Denise Levertov
5.  Reading A.A. Milne to the kids.

Namaste.  May we walk in beauty.

Through the Cobweb Curtain of Memory

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Some days I’ll find several things that I want to put on my gratitude list, and I’ll keep bringing them back to me throughout the day, but the moment I sit down to write them, they disappear from my brain.  There was one in particular today that I was excited to place on the list, and I can’t seem to pull it out no matter how I dredge the depths.  No Matter.  There are plenty of things to be grateful for.

Gratitude List:
1.  Sleeping in.
2.  The way threads of dreams shimmer through the waking hours and inform the day.
3.  Striving.  Where would I be without striving?  Each next time, I will strive to do better than each last time.
4.  Good news.  In times when news is often challenging, it is so nice to hear that someone you know is making a name for himself as a musician in New York City, that someone you know has discovered that her brain tumor was benign, that a school district somewhere is expanding its art and music programs, that people are noticing the important things.  (I think that’s the one I was trying to dig out of my memory.)
5.  Lilacs are blooming.

Namaste.  May we walk in beauty.

Bowl Full of Winter

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Here in the space between what it means
and what is brightly shining,
in the moment between breathe out
and breathe in again,
in the doorway to May

I have found the key to the door
of my grandmother’s old house.

Here in the thin space
between sun rays,
in the verdant corner
between the wren and the bluebird,
on the threshold between worlds

I place the key,
along with a small white stone
and the small arm bone of a squirrel
into my bowl of winter.

I have been pulling poison ivy
from among the honeysuckle vines,
plotting kindness to my neighbor,
watching how the wisteria twines
around the iron railing,
how it cascades into sunshine
like a purple waterfall.

Gratitude List:
1.  Reiki.  I saw so many colors during my session.  Such colors.
2.  People who support their local farmers.  I am humbled and honored by it every year.  Grateful, so grateful.
3.  The Gnomes of Goldfinch Farm.  They offered Jon the gift of a stunning clear quartz crystal today.  A twin, with double terminations.  Jon would say he found it.
4.  The way the wheel turns so lucidly into May.
5.  Fried Rice.

Namaste.

Ducks in the Rain and a Dove with the Fire of the Sunset in Its Eyes

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

It happened to me again this morning.  I woke up with the fragments of dream-world swirling through my brain, but as text, not as image.
“I place it into my bowl full of winter.”

And then there was more, several more surreal, semi-attached bits of cobweb-phrases.  But those I don’t remember.

Something about the key to my grandmother’s house.

I woke up and tried to write it as a poem.  All I could do was to write and re-write the phrase.  Again and again.  So this will be my next poetry prompt.  I’ll try again tomorrow.  Join me, if you like, or pull an image or phrase from your own dreaming to join to mine.  We’ll see what we come up with, eh?

In the meantime, here’s a photo of my goofy son and a blue egg.  And a gratitude list.

2013 April 055

Gratitude List:
1.  Funny Blue Cat: Winky sat on one of Ellis’s pastel drawings last night and now she is blue, providing lots of laughs today.
2.  White ducks in the rain on the green grass.  I’m not trying to channel WCW, but I love this pair of white farm ducks that seem to love sitting on the lawn of the Rutter’s right next to the road.  They could be under the forsythia bushes.  And I love the look of them in the rain.
3.  The lovely people who send me images.  My heart is so warmed and encouraged by the photos, the wonder, the story my cousin Don told me about seeing a white dove with the fire of the sunset in its eyes.
4.  Community-building.  Changing the system together.  I went to see the movie Fresh tonight.  Family First Health, a local medical practice offered the screening free at York Little Theater.  They’re pushing for real health, those folks, eating real food.  I love Joel Salatin and his “Chicken-ness of the chicken, pig-ness of the pig, tomato-ness of the tomato.”  He gets the deep archetypal import of it all.  And Don Ikerd.  I love Don Ikerd–he says we can change, we can wean ourselves from industrial ag and back to real actual food again.  Now, if only the small farmers can make a living in the meantime. . .
5.  Being who I want to be.  I feel like the chrysalis may soon be ready to crack open.

May we walk in beauty.  So much, so much love.

The Importance of Story

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

“I can’t tell you why your story is important, only that it is.”
— Mara Eve Robbins, at TEDxFloyd in Floyd, Virginia today

2013 April 156

Gratitude List:
1.  Wise friends
2.  The zebra-stripey heads of the white-crowned and white-throated sparrows, extra intense this time of year.  The white-throat’s vivid yellow eyebrows.  And to think, I used to blow them all off as just a bunch of little brown jobs.
3.  This developmental stage of my children.  They still fight and carry on and get needy and demanding, but they can entertain each other for long periods of time while I get other things done, too.  I feel like my own life is expanding.
4.  Sore muscles–feels like lots of good work got done today.
5.  Cool, clear water.

May we walk in Beauty.

Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day

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Gratitude List:
1.  That impossible yellow of the sun on springtime goldfinch feathers.  Blazing.  Glowing.  Shining.
2.  All sorts of old friends still returning to the hollow.  A pair of blue jays, red-winged blackbird, and the sweetest little family of chipping sparrows.
3.  Getting the message.
4.  Putting my skills to use.
5.  Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day and a town that celebrates.  Thanks to Near the River Bakery (10% off delicious scones and pretzels and cinnamon rolls), Susquehanna Dodge (goody bags for the kids and a free oil change for me), Jimmy Mack’s (25% off ice cream) and Touch of Italy (20% off supper).  We ate lots today, and Ellis read his poem at each place in order to secure us our discounts.

May we walk in beauty.

Green and Nettles and Play Group

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Gratitude List:
1.  Nettles, mint, and honey
2.  Green, viridian, verdancy
3.  Shiny bits of quartzite
4.  Nearly a dozen small boys and a girl playing at the pond and in the creek, catching polliwogs and crawfish and little fish, moms talking and picking watercress, Golda the giant koi swimming up to see what was going on.
5.  Listening to mockingbird and phoebe and the longingly off-key song of the white-throat.

May we walk in Beauty.

Boys and Chickens 2013 April
Photos by Angel Brown
Play Group 2013 April

Finding Your Sacred Song

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I looked up mockingbird in Ted Andrews’ Animal Speak.  He says the keynote of the mockingbird is “Finding your sacred song.”  In these days when the mockingbirds are singing from treetops in every hollow and on every hilltop, I wish you that finding.  May your song rise clear into the air.

Gratitude List:
1.  Deer and lion and rabbit and Suzy.  Messages of compassion and courage and listening.
2.  We managed to catch Pepita without too much trouble after she ran across the street and under the grumpy neighbor’s forsythia bush.  And we have a sort of funny story out of it.
3.  I feel so good about what I accomplished today, all that mowing and making supper (Shepherd’s Pie) and spending time with a friend–and the children didn’t melt down and fall apart in the meantime.
4.  The way swallows climb the sky.  How they beat their wings against the wind and rise up it.
5.  Forgiveness.

May we walk in Beauty.