Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Animal Messengers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Sometimes when I am in a contemplative mood, perhaps doing yoga or cooking or sitting on the porch, I’ll get random images that flash into my mind’s eye. Yesterday morning as I was settling into Mountain Pose, I lifted my arms above my head as I was aligning my shoulders and spine, fingertips together. It flashed into my head that I was making the shape of an arched doorway, and I saw in my mind’s eye just such an archway in a green wood with golden light shining in through the opening, and two fawns looking at me. Deer represent unconditional love, particularly gentleness towards oneself, so I will take that as a message.

Perhaps my brain was remembering this portal archway that I painted a couple years ago. My younger son has been teaching me to use Pixlr to create digital art, so I superimposed an image of fawns I found (Creative Commons).

Sometimes we who grow up in a religious context accept the signs and symbols of religion as immutable and unchanging. Take Mary with her foot on the serpent, for instance. I have been noticing how often the snake appears in paintings and sculptures, open-mouthed, fangs bared, and writhing beneath the serene Mother’s foot.

Because I have grown up with a pretty well-rounded knowledge of scripture, I know that this is a reference to the verse in Genesis where God tells the serpent that the serpent’s descendants and Eve’s descendants would be enemies, that her offspring would crush his head, and he in turn would strike the heel of the humans. So when Mary steps on the head of the serpent, she is understood to be crushing evil (which the snake symbolizes in this story) by giving birth to the Christ.

And so, in my search for feminine images of the divine, I have begun exploring iconography and sculptures and paintings of Mary, looking for the ways in which Mary herself represents the Goddess. And also, I have been exploring the symbol of the serpent as woman-wisdom, woman-energy, kundalini. The snake represents the inherent power in the feminine.

So I can’t help but feel as though in those images where Mary is stepping on the head of the serpent that she is being forced by patriarchal religious structures to crush and destroy her own power. I think this is a truth, however unsavory, that comes through in the image–women have been forced to crush our own power because the prevailing religious structures perceive that power to be evil and dangerous. I’ve tried working with the re-interpretations of the image that some offer, that she has reached full understanding of her power and so she stands upon the source of her wisdom. She has integrated it. That’s a much more palatable overlay.

Still, because the original artworks were most certainly created with the idea that the snake is evil, and she is vanquishing it, it’s a challenge you get past the echoes of “Her children shall crush your head.”

Perhaps I need to try to create my own artwork, Our Lady of the Serpent, with a more truly Middle Eastern Mary and an integrated relationship with the power and wisdom of the serpent.

Gratitude List:
1. Relief from the aches and pains. I had let it get pretty bad. I don’t know if it’s a natural progression of arthritis, or residual effects of Covid, or results of being too sedentary. Since spring, my body has just begun to hurt more and more. I had begun to dread going walking with the family. I hurt so much. My co-pay at the doctor’s office is $80, so I kept putting off checking in with the doctor, and I didn’t really want to start a regimen of allopathic medicine for whatever has been causing my muscles and back and feet to hurt. I had considered elimination diets to see if that would work, but instead Sarah suggested adding anti-inflammatory foods to my diet. I’m eating fresh pineapple for the bromelain, and drinking tart cherry juice and eating berries for the anti-oxidants. When the pain flares, I take Aspirea Compound, from H&A (you can order some here). And I am being much more intentional about regular yoga practice. It’s taken a couple weeks to get to this place, and I’m not pain-free, but I feel like a normal 50-something now. Grateful, so grateful, for Sarah’s wisdom and knowledge.
2. Making progress, however slow, in the de-hoarding. I’m not where I wanted to be at this point in the summer, but the flow is better now. The energy is less clogged and brackish now that I have organized and released “stuff.”
3. Stimulating intellectual discussions. Some people make you feel like you’re back in a grad school classroom, with all the richness of shared ideas and the co-creation of ideas.
4. Caring communities. Empathy is still around, although it can sometimes seem in short supply. Never hesitate to show it. It builds and grows. That’s the magic of it. The more you give, the more it grows. It’s that magic penny, baby.
5. TOMATOES!

May we walk in wisdom, kindness, and Beauty!

“Some say you’re lucky
If nothing shatters it.
But then you wouldn’t
Understand poems or songs.
You’d never know
Beauty comes from loss.
It’s deep inside every person:
A tear tinier
Than a pearl or thorn.
It’s one of the places
Where the beloved is born.”
―Gregory Orr

“And the wood is tired, and the wood is old, and we’ll make it fine, if the weather holds. But if the weather holds, then we’ll have missed the point. And that’s where I need to go.” ―The Indigo Girls

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.” ―Joseph Campbell

“Friendship … is born at the moment when one says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
―Thomas Merton

“To say ‘I don’t know’ is an unparalleled source of power, a declaration of independence from the pressure to have an opinion about every single subject.
It’s fun to say. Try it: ‘I don’t know.’
Let go of the drive to have it all figured out: ‘I don’t know.’
Proclaim the only truth you can be totally sure of: ‘I don’t know.’
Empty your mind and lift your heart: ‘I don’t know.’
Use it as a battle cry, a joyous affirmation of your oneness with the Great Mystery: ‘I don’t know.’
(To revel in this reverie can be a respite, a vacation. Any time you feel ready, you can return to the more familiar state of ‘I know! I know! I know!’)” ―Rob Brezsny

“Declare amnesty for the part of you that you don’t love very well. Forgive that poor sucker. Hold its hand and take it out to dinner and a movie. Tactfully offer it a chance to make amends for the dumb things it has done.
And then do a dramatic reading of this proclamation by the playwright Theodore Rubin: ‘I must learn to love the fool in me—the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool.’” ―Rob Brezsny

“We all receive water from her, we receive food from her, we receive air from her, anything that is received as a gift from the Earth and from nature has to be a commons, it cannot be privatised, that is why privatisation of life forms through patents or water through privatisation schemes driven by the World Bank, or the privatisation of the atmosphere and the air through carbon trading and emissions trading are all illegal and illegitimate in a legal framework based on the Earth’s rights.” ―Vandana Shiva

“The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him; they crush those beneath them.” ―Emily Bronte

“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.” ―Susan B. Anthony

“To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.” ―Rudolf Steiner

The Tattered Pelt

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This dream reveals itself and ravels like a fairy tale or myth.

It’s been two weeks since I listened to Martin Shaw telling the story of Fox Woman Dreaming, but something in my Dreambrain has reached back to that for images to tell myself this story.

Part One:
I am sitting on a concrete ledge, like a loading dock, of the garage of my house, looking out over the meadow and the woods beyond.

I hear a cry of frustration and rage: “Aaarrrnnnngh!”

At the edge of the woods, where the neighbors have logs for splitting, a large wolf is dancing around in extreme agitation. It has thrown an ax across the snowy field. Its fur is striped and brindled, mottled. It flips back and forth in its frustration. I know at once that the wolf is a shapeshifter.

I can feel its frustration deep within myself, and I am frightened as it runs up the field toward me.

I search around for something to offer it to help it, to distract it from attacking me.

I find that I am holding an old and tattered pelt of some animal fur. As the wolf paces around the side of the garage and the base of the ledge where I am sitting, I tear a piece of the pelt I am holding and toss it into the snow. It distracts and calms the wolf for a moment. It sniffs the piece of pelt but does not eat it.

Part Two:
I am walking down a brick pathway in a park, trying to feel the different rhythmic vibrations of the various bricks. I can sort of sense the patterns of a couple of them. I am trying to remember the poems/incantations for a ceremony to awaken and celebrate the awakening of the powers of a girl child. I am trying to help her to notice the vibrations in the bricks, trying to tell her the bits of incantations that I remember.

I am aware that the child is coming into her power and I am feeling the dissipation of my own.

As I am working with the bricks and incantations, I notice that the girl has found a stump with a large and tangled root system. A woman and a child, their faces painted with stripes of brown and yellow in many different shades, look out at me from the stump. The girl knows they are there and has been listening to them.

Unpacking:
I have so many questions.
Am I both the Wolf and the One Who Watches?
If I am the Watcher, have I given away my own shapeshifting power, my own Wild, in order to protect myself and appease the frustration–ease the loss–of another?
What have I done?! I have thoughtlessly torn my pelt. Is it possible to repair?
I feel acutely both the loss of my own Wild (the Watcher) and the sense that it’s unbridled and out of control (the Wolf).

And am I both the Child and the Teacher?
Again, I feel acutely the loss of my own powers even as I am able to recover a little of my awareness of vibration, my memory of the words of ceremony.
I feel a need to prepare the Child, to mentor and teach, but the work has moved beyond me, and she has found her teachers in nature.
But I am also the Child. She has met the spirit beings who inhabit the stump and they are teaching her.

Both pieces of my dream seem to be about internal rifts/separations that help me to see the ways I am disconnected from my Wild, from my own personal sense of my power.

Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea to offer part of my pelt to the shapeshifter. Maybe that’s what I need to do, to offer my own inner Wolf the key to her transformation. But I need to tend to my “skin.”

And maybe I don’t need to focus so much on remembering the words and patterns of the ceremony for the Child, but just settle into a space where I can hear the living voices of the beings who surround me. I feel like this is a message to rely less on head knowledge, but to focus on simply perceiving what is around me.

Two nights ago, I dreamed again, as I often do at times of inner change and transformation, that I needed to push my way through a tight and claustrophobic portal in order to enter a new space. In these dreams, I sometimes refuse, or the dream ends as I am trying to find the courage to enter the constricting passage, but in my recent dream, I actually made it through the portal.

I think these dreams are connected. First, the portal, then the reckoning with the state of my own inner awareness.

Gratitude:
1. The way shifting and de-hoarding and organizing makes space for energy to flow more freely and serenely. Clogged energy is either stagnant or frenetic. Unclogged energy flows.
2. I’m getting really eager to dive into the planning process for the coming school year. I relish the shift of this energy from the overwhelm of last spring (of the past three semesters, really) to the excitement of setting the table for the coming academic feast.
3. Mending. Like de-hoarding, mending makes the energy flow. And physical mending causes the heart to turn toward the inner mending as well.
4. A different type of energy, but not unconnected: Feeling my own physical energy returning. It’s been a circuitous journey. But it feels so good when we go walking and I feel the surge of energy and strength in the stride rather than feeling like I am fighting against gravity.
5. Thresholds. Liminal spaces. Betweens.

May we walk in Beauty!

“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” —Virginia Woolf

“Every person is a living treasure box. Listening holds the key.” —Mollie Marti

“The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

“I take care of my own.” —Hushpuppy (Beasts of the Southern Wild)

“You are my own, and I am yours–I think this is what God is saying, or trying to, over the din. We are each other’s. There are many forms of thirst, many kinds of water.” —Anne Lamott

“You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire.” ―Leymah Gbowee

“You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to
remember that the planet is carrying you.” ―Vandana Shiva

“To be brave is to behave bravely
when your heart is faint.
So you can be really brave
only when you really ain’t.”
—Piet Hein

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” —Upton Sinclair

“You can never go down the drain.” —Mr. Rogers

“Good People,
most royal greening verdancy,
rooted in the sun,
you shine with radiant light.” ―Hildegard of Bingen

“Just living is not enough said the butterfly, one needs sunshine, freedom and a little flower.” ―Hans Christian Anderson

“I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.” ―Dalai Lama

Fatalism By Choice

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
How scars hold memory

Some things I noticed today with gratitude:
1. A young person with a burgundy mohawk walking down the streets of Lancaster with a chill ginger tabby hanging out in their backpack.
2. How conversations about life and books weave webs of experience and story, creating scaffolds for the next set of experiences.
3. When I walked through the city today, I felt the sense of power in my own body again, the joy in movement, in striding. It’s been really hard in the last few months to regain that. At first, I thought it was just the weight gain and sedentariness of having had Covid that was causing me trouble. Then I thought it must still be residual Covid problems in my body. Then I thought, “Maybe I just got old during the time of my illness and recuperation, and it will always be this way.” There’s likely some truth to all of those bits, but I can still have moments when a brisk stride brings pleasure.
4. I was pondering this thought this morning: I am not a serious fan of determinism and fatalism, but I began to wonder how life might be if we would begin to consider every moment of interaction with others to be a “fated” moment, that each conversation, each random meeting, is designed by the Fates or God or the Universe as an opportunity for some spark of tenderness or energy or truth or even boundary-setting to occur. On one hand, it’s exhausting to think about always being that “on,” but it’s also instructive to me to consider how to live more intentionally in the moment, to maintain those moments of human interaction as holy.
5. Hummingbird. Whenever we spend a little time on the front balcony (which is pretty often these days), we’re pretty sure to see the hummingbird at the hanging baskets, within about four feet. And I have been seeing more of oriole, too–he’s no longer calling in the treetops, but he’s very present. And blue heron has been stalking the creek. And the young hawk still fusses regularly in the treetops.

May we walk in Beauty!

It’s a Momaday sort of day:
(I looked up Momaday and got carried away by his words and ideas)
*
It Works
by Rabia of Batista (c. 717-801)
Would you come if someone called you
by the wrong name?
I wept, because for years God did not enter my arms:
then one night I was told a
secret:
Perhaps the name you call God is
not really God’s, maybe it
is just an
alias.
I thought about this, and came up with a pet name
for my Beloved I never mention
to others.
All I can say is—
it works.

“Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength- carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” —Corrie Ten Boom

“Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it’s often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis.” —Brené Brown

“Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?” —Garth Nix

“We need to walk to know sacred places, those around us and those within. We need to walk to remember the songs.” —Joseph Bruchac

“A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things.” —N. Scott Momaday

“As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.” —N. Scott Momaday

“I wonder if, in the dark night of the sea, the octopus dreams of me.” —N. Scott Momaday

“We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least, completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.” —N. Scott Momaday

A Calming Retreat

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

In June, right after school was over, and before I had even completed my grading, I went on silent retreat at the Jesuit Center at Wernersville, probably my last time there, as the Jesuits are selling the building and grounds. I needed that healing time.

In the weeks since, I have been taking stock, clearing out my hoard (fabric, mostly, but more will come), and working on getting healthy.

Here is a little photo essay of my time on retreat:

On the way, I stopped and walked the labyrinth at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church near Lititz. On the way out of the labyrinth, the word embodiment came to me. That became the focus of my retreat. When I got home, I listened to sonia renee taylor’s The Body is Not an Apology. I liked it so much that I bought my own copy so I can underline bits and read sections to my classes.
My room. First time I have had air conditioning. It was very hot, so I actually spent more time in my room than usual.

I took along a white cloth and some red thread. I have been inspired by several instagrammer embroiderers to begin to create a story cloth, something that’s not specifically functional, but is more of a journal, a dialogue with my inner self. On one of the first days there, I was meditating on something I’d read, a Buddhist idea about the base of the spine being where the three rivers meet. I began to consider what my three rivers are. Along with embodiment, I received creativity, and magic/mysticism. So I began embroidering the flowering hand image I found framed on the wall–for creativity. Then I embroidered a full body–my body–with wings and a crown, to represent embodiment, being alive within this body. And later, I embroidered my stump, the center of my current magical work, representing the inner work and the spiritual connection to the Source of All Life. All three are connected to a center cauldron, which is the place where the three rivers meet. Other images above include some collages I made while meditating, a painting (“You can become all flame,” said the ancient desert abba), and the back of my #alonetogether sweater, which I completed during retreat.

Every year when I am at the monastery, I greet Jesus in the stairwell when I go up and down the stairs. This year, he and the painting of Mary with the sacred heart were especially meaningful as I held my anxieties about my father’s upcoming open-heart surgery (all has gone exceedingly well, and he is now recovering and regaining his strength).

More than almost anything, perhaps, I will miss this grand cathedral beech.

Cherish the Body You’re In

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Start a revolution today: Decide to love your body just the way it is.

Instead of dieting or restricting, offer your body delicious and nourishing food.

Instead of exercising to change your weight or your shape, move your body because moving in a body is a wonderful and wholesome thing to do and your body loves to move.

Don’t get in shape. Be the shape you are. Love the shape you are.

Embody yourownself.
Eat and move and feel sensations.
Sniff the air. Learn to identify smells and aromas.
Name new colors. Differentiate hues and shades.
Listen for birdsong and crickets and the murmur of voices.
Taste your food. Really taste it. Experience crunch and flavor and texture.
Feel the wind in your skin, the pop of humidity, the softness of cat fur.

Stop obsessing about your weight and shape, please.
There is so much more to experience about being in a body than whether you fit some socially-constructed idea about an “ideal” body.

Be in your body. Love your body. Offer it care.

Gratitude List:

1. So many circles of care. Holy, holy, holy.

2. Book discussions. I joined a book group! I love my book group!

3. All the Big Birds catching today’s thermals. And I think that was an osprey fishing in the River this morning. At first I thought maybe peregrine, but I think that was a fish in its talons.

4. Being in a body. There’s so much to experience in these bodies we live in.

5. Will. Determination. I’m working on opening and focusing on the solar plexus right now. Much has been left undone. I’m going to do.

May we walk (in our bodies) in Beauty!

Summer Solstice

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

A joyful Summer Solstice to you, my Loves!

How do you find your fire? What is the thing that awakens you, gets you moving, feeling alive?

Today is a day to open and energize the solar plexus chakra. This year, I’ve felt sluggish and bleh in the face of the pandemic, especially since my illness. I’ve lost my drive, my energy. My will has been blunted. So, lately, I’ve been concentrating on my solar plexus, the seat of the will. Here’s a meditation I’m working on, which I think is good for a Solstice Day:

Find your resting equilibrium, either seated or standing or sitting in lotus position. Gently stretch your spine: left, right, upward–until you feel aligned. Breathe.

I’m a little obsessive about opening the chakras in order, so I start by breathing deep roots toward the earth star chakra, grounding and centering.

Then breathe that energy up into the base, the root, where survival and support are seated. Red. Solid.

Then breathe the energy up to the sacral chakra, where your senses are seated, your gut responses, your creative urges, your desires. Orange. Energetic. Fertile.

Now we take a little more time breathing into the solar plexus chakra. Golden light shines from that space between the heart and gut. I always picture the bees living here, making liquid sunlight. Feel the buzzing hum of the bees, the purring whir of their wings. And breathe and breathe. You know that twinkling lively light of a June morning? That’s the bee-light. That shines from within you. It’s the fire of the sun translated and transmuted by the Little Sisters into the golden light of the hive. Breathe and breathe. As the solar plexus opens and enlivens, can you sense the trays of golden sun shining outward from within you? Breathe and breathe. Direct that light outward. Know there’s is always enough. Know that you are in charge of the flow you keep, the flow you share outwardly. Can you taste the honey on your tongue? Golden. Alive. Shining.

Bask a while in the hive within you.

When you are ready, keep breathing that energy upward, to your green, green heart, and spiralling out to your palms. Healing. Tender.

Breathe it into your throat. The seat of your voice. Make a sound: a hum, a sigh, a wail. Speak your true name. Blue of the sky. Mary’s robes. Swirling.

Breathe into your third eye, the space between your brows that Knows, that Gnows, that Sees. That gets it. Indigo. Mystery. Gnosis.

Breathe into your crown, where silver and violet light cascade upward and fall around you. Send that energy up to the star chakras that connect you to the cosmos. You are a conduit, connecting the energy of earth at your roots to the energy of the stars above you.

Rest within yourself. Breathe and breathe. Feel that golden bee energy at your core bringing you alive.

When you are done, speak your name, sigh, stretch. Feel the energy running your spine. Take a taste of honey. Thank the bees. Thank the earth. Thank the sun.

Joyful Solstice to you!

Visitation

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment
Snek visits the Mockingbird.

Let me tell you the story of a snake.

This afternoon, as Jon washing out some old bins beside the barn, and I was transplanting hosta by the shop, we were caught by the sight of a pair of brown thrashers dancing underneath the walnut tree. We figured it was a mating ritual. After one flew away, the other continued to dance-flit in a sort of circle around a branch, flashing its wings in rhythmic motions. When that one, too, had flown, I went to inspect the stick, which seemed odd to me. I thought maybe instead of a mating ritual, the birds were agitated about another dead bird or small animal.

It was not a stick, and it was not dead. It was a four-foot long black snake, squiggled in upon herself. (Note on Snake Pronouns: “It” seems disrespectful, somehow, like I am refusing to acknowledge her beingness. And somehow singular “they” doesn’t quite feel right here either, so I am going to use she/her.)

The whole family spent some time watching her, and she didn’t move more than to flick her tongue and shift her head to watch us. She was either frightened or torpid or waiting to figure out her next move. Snakes are patient that way.

Twenty minutes later I was carrying the black flags my parents had given me to the hole by the shop where I was planning to plant them.

The snake was sliding along the edge of the grass at the driveway toward the little stream of water running from Jon’s bin-washing. She stopped, dipped her head to the stream, and drank. Have you ever watched a snake drink? It was already feeling like a pretty sacred moment of wonder by this point watching a snake drink. I felt like the Goddess in Denise Levertov’s poem “The Fountain.”

I stood where I was, bag of plants in one hand and shovel in the other, and the snake began slithering toward me.

I’m not afraid of snakes. Not exactly. I love them. And yet, perhaps I actually am just the tiniest bit afraid of them.

This one slithered right toward me. I made a conscious decision not to move, to stay where I was, and to see what she would do when she came near to me. She kept on, right toward me, and I had a momentary sense that she was going to slither right between my feet.

And then she DID! Right between my feet!

I don’t think I would still be believing myself that it had happened had Jon not been there watching, too. Off she went to the hosta I had just disturbed beside the sycamore tree, and curled herself in a hollow beneath their broad leaves and in a hollow between sycamore roots.

You can tell me there’s a scientific reason that she came my way–snakes perhaps can’t see particularly well, perhaps they move toward tall things, and she slithered my way thinking I was a bush, perhaps it was simply the most direct route from small stream to sycamore.

Still. Still. Still, it was a magical moment I needed right now. A messenger. A visitation.

The Fountain
by Denise Levertov

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes

found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched — but not because
she grudged the water,

only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,

up and out through the rock.

Living with Covid’s Aftershocks

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Yesterday, my father helped me to articulate what it feels like to live with the after-effects of Covid for weeks after I have supposedly recovered. It feels like languishing. It’s like that word was made for people like me, who can’t quite get out from under the rug of this thing.

There’s that meme of Count Rugen from The Princess Bride, where he has just tortured Westley on his Machine, and he says, “I’ve just sucked one year of your life away. Tell me, how do you feel?” Covid has been my Count Rugen. I always assumed that the year of life was taken away from the far end, that when people say, “It took a year off my life!” they mean that year 99 is now gone. After Covid, I feel like I’ve lost a year or three from my life, but they’ve been taken from right here, like I’ve gone from 53 to 55 or 57 in six weeks.

Here’s the part where I sit with the folks in the Nursing Home and enumerate my aches and pains, so feel free to skip down to gratitude and inspiring quotes here. Since this blog is also my personal archive and chronicle, I feel like I need to set it all down here.
* I am definitely regaining my energy, but I still crash. I can’t push myself or overdo it, and expect to rest for an hour or two and bounce back. If I push myself too hard, I crash hard, and end up on the recliner for the rest of the day, my body exhausted and my brain foggy. This is definitely improving as time goes by–fewer crashes.
* I have always been forgetful. I prefer to think of it as engagingly flaky. It just feels like I’m more forgetful now, like my brain enters fogs and mists more regularly. I need to really slow down and breathe in order to focus. This is also less intense six weeks out.
* Before Covid, my body had been sort of toying with the idea of menopause for several years. I’d have periods of time when I would have a hot flash very morning at 3 am, or months of unbearable insomnia. I’d skip a period once in a while, or be late or early, or have really intense and heavy periods for a while and then really light ones. But my body would always re-regulate. In the time since I have had Covid, I’ve skipped two periods in a row.
* About two weeks ago, I developed pain in my shoulder and upper arm. I figured I had just slept on it wrong, but it persisted and worsened, and I realized it wasn’t actually all muscle pain, but mostly nerve pain in my brachial nerves. The pain became excruciating at night, and has been manageable during the day. I did some research, and discovered that brachial neuritis occurs after injury, virus, or vaccine. The primary treatment is painkillers, yoga, and breathing exercises until it subsides. Several nights in the past week and a half, I have gotten very little sleep because of the pain, but the last three night are getting much better, and last night, I only woke up twice, and was able to get back to sleep almost immediately after doing some yoga stretches on the arm.
* The other day when I was eating, I noticed that a piece of enamel had chipped off the back of one of my front teeth. Later in the day, as I was exploring the spot with my tongue, the top edge of the tooth just crumbled away. My brother is a dentist, and he didn’t think I should be too alarmed, that it’s not uncommon as people age. I have also heard that one side effect people are noticing after Covid is that their teeth crack or fall out. I’m getting it fixed this week.

Gratitude List:
1. The fiercely creative students at my school. This is school play weekend, and I am the head usher for plays, so I go to every show (which means I need to especially guard my energy this weekend), and this play offers them the perfect chance to collaborate in ensemble acting, and to sing and dance and do comedy and drama.
2. The little beans of Tanzanian Peaberry are such cute little peas, and it’s just the perfect coffee.
3. Every little noticeable bit of ground regained in my recovery. I slept most of last night, with very little nerve pain in my arm. This is huge.
4. Hugging people again. Carefully and with full consent, but hugging.
5. These cat-folx and their varied personalities. Interspecies communication.

May we walk in Beauty!

“The only time incorrectly is not spelled incorrectly is when it is spelled incorrectly.”

“There is no such thing as one-sided generosity. Like one ecosystem, we are each at different times receiving or purging, growing or pruning. In those moments when you believe you aren’t receiving enough, consider what you most want to receive might be the thing you need to give away.” —Toko-pa Turner

“Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.” —Henry David Thoreau

“Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art. Yet we so easily take this gift for granted. That is why so many spiritual traditions begin with thanksgiving, to remind us that for all our woes and worries, our existence itself is an unearned benefaction, which we could never of ourselves create.” —Joanna Macy

“What if the Creator is like the poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s God: “like a webbing made of a hundred roots, that drink in silence”?
What if the Source of All Life inhabits both the dark and the light, heals with strange splendor as much as with sweet insight, is hermaphroditic and omnisexual?
What if the Source loves to give you riddles that push you past the boundaries of your understanding, forcing you to change the ways you think about everything?
What if, as Rusty Morrison speculates in “Poetry Flash,” “the sublime can only be glimpsed by pressing through fear’s boundary, beyond one’s previous conceptions of the beautiful”?
Close your eyes and imagine you can sense the presence of this tender, marvelous, difficult, entertaining intelligence.” —Rob Brezsny

NPM Day 30: Doors

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
Student poetry on my white board. Both poems are apt messages for standing in the doorway to May.

Today is the last day of Poetry Prompts for April. I might take a break from the blog for a few days when this is done.

Today, as we stand in the doorway to May, write a poem about doorways and doors. Doors can be portals from one world to another, the symbol of the step of faith we take from one stage to the next. Doors can also be symbolic of the space between ourselves and others. What doors keep us apart or invite us in? Or write about the doors of your town.

Doorways are about liminal spaces. Write about thresholds, about standing poised between one thing and the next. What holds you in the past? What pushes you into the future? What are the spiritual lessons you learn from standing in the in-between? Or write about the doorway to another world.

Who or what is on the other side of that door?

Today is May Day Eve, one of those special moments in the solar calendar, situated between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. We’ve watched the riot of spring creeping over the gardens and fields, delighted in the shining colors of flowers and the tender greening of leaves, paid attention to what is hatching within us.

May Day, or Beltane, is about celebrating the freedom from that egg, about jumping into the green of the season, feet first, taking risks, whooping with joy. Dust off your wild barbaric yawp. Wanton is the word of this season. We’re stripping off the constricting cloaks and coats and scarves of winter, and running through the fields, barefoot and maybe naked (some of us keep that purely in the realm of metaphor).

What do you need to release and let go of in this season? What are the names of the items of clothing you drop in your wake as you run to the fields? What is the name of the green field before you, the thing you give yourself to with every ounce of your passion?

As we enter the season of Beltane, consider all that has kept you from living fully and joyfully and passionately into your purpose. Name the habits and boxes and dogmas that keep you from living in the world with you Whole Heart. Drop them. And run for the fields.

Gratitude List:
1. That phoebe, calling his name into the dawn.
2. The oriole who called from the sycamore trees yesterday as we left school.
3. Although I was disappointed that opening night of the school play was cancelled because of the rain, our whole family needed the rest of being cozy together in our house last evening.
4. Living by the seasons means that every year has its reminders and rituals of letting go, paying attention, living fully, resting, growing. On the threshold of May, I commit to ditching the constricting habits that keep me from living joyfully.
5. The dawn keeps coming earlier and the twilight comes later, even when the day is cloudy and grey.

May we walk in Beauty!

“Things aren’t so tangible and sayable as people would have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are world of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

“We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into t anew way of thinking.” —Richard Rohr

“To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.” —Georgia O’Keeffe

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal… To hope is to give yourself to the future – and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.” ―Rebecca Solnit

“The child’s hand
Folding these wings
Wins no wars and ends them all. “
―Thomas Merton

NPM Day 29: Tree

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Write a poem about a tree, or a grove of trees, or a quiet wood, or a wild forest.

Gratitude List:
1. Morning Thor snuggles
2. Oriole is back!
3. How the green of early sycamore leaves filters the light into the holler
4. Sleep
5. Mint chocolate chip ice cream

May we walk in Beauty!

“The path isn’t a straight line; it’s a spiral. You continually come back to things you thought you understood and see deeper truths.” —Barry H. Gillespie

“There is room for you at our table, if you choose to join us.” —Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred Thing

“For beautiful to happen, the beautiful has got to be seen.” —from the musical “Ordinary Days”

“You will be found.” —from the musical “Dear Evan Hansen”

“How do you become the person you’ve forgotten you ever were?” —from the musical “Anastasia”

“The universe is not made up of atoms; it’s made up of tiny stories.” ―Joseph Gordon-Levitt

To all the children
by Thomas Berry

To the children who swim beneath
The waves of the sea, to those who live in
The soils of the Earth, to the children of the flowers
In the meadows and the trees of the forest,
To all those children who roam over the land
And the winged ones who fly with the winds,
To the human children too, that all the children
May go together into the future in the full
Diversity of their regional communities.

Carl Jung: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

“Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth.” ―Rumi (Barks)

“You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend, or not.” ―Isabel Allende

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy – the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” ―Bréne Brown, Wholehearted