Original image by: Bria Goeller and good trubble (Black owned design shop out of California). The shadow is little Ruby Bridges from Norman Rockwell’s iconic 1963 painting “The Problem We All Live With.”
Some of the people I love are truly terrified of this moment, are feeling deep heaviness because of the apparent results of this election in the US. I don’t want to gloat, don’t want to add to their pain and worry. But I do want to celebrate. I do want to sigh with relief. And I wish I could assure you, if this is a frightening moment for you, that everything will be okay.
Can you watch Van Jones struggle to maintain composure, and then just give himself up to emotion, as he talked about the relief he feels, and not celebrate a little? Can you hear the relief of LGBTQ+ folx and not feel some relief yourself? Can you hear womxn who finally see themselves represented in the White House, BIPOC folx who see this strong womxn striding toward a seat at the table, and not be grateful for their joy?
And I look at this image of the shadow of Ruby Bridges cast by Kamala Harris, the gift and the burden of representation that Harris now carries, the fact that so many of my beloved young womxn--BIPOC especially, and white as well–will see their futures laid out before them with more possibility and clarity because of Ms. Harris. Today, I have been reading the words of some of these brilliant young womxn in my life as they express their great joy in this political moment, and celebrating with them.
I think of how Ms. Bridges has supported and continues to support young BIPOC people throughout her life, doing the thing that must be done, stepping into the moment as she did on that first day of first grade, no matter how lonely the prospects. And I also think of the layering of time, of Kamala Harris, this steady presence from the future, walking in that open space behind the young Ruby, and of all the BIPOC womxn who surround her.
And what shall the white womxn do? We middle-aged and elder ones? That crowd of rage-filled white supremacists still stands on the sidewalks, some jeering and insulting, and some quietly trying to make “peace” and look innocent. Our job, my white sisters, is–I think–to stand between the crowd and Ruby and the womxn who walk with her. To silence the crowd, to question the ones who want to make nice on the outside while holding the hatred inside. To question the haters within ourselves. To amplify and magnify the voices of Ruby and her sisters.
Tonight, I might get some Philly cheesesteaks and ice cream to celebrate the end of our “long national nightmare,” but then, I will roll up my sleeves and get to work.
Gratitudes and Prayers: * Grateful that the person from whom I heard the first official word that this election was being called was my mother. That feels right and safe to me. * Grateful for a womxn, a BIPOC womxn, is headed for the VP’s desk. * Praying for the safety of the President Elect and Vice President Elect. * Praying that we will see the work before us with clarity, and set to it with a will. * Grateful for truth.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly. May it be done in Beauty.
Beloveds, I don’t really have much in the way of words to offer this morning, to wade through the bog of my own anxiety to offer hope or resilience. I’m here in my bog, listening. I need to be a teacher today, especially for students who are equally as enmired as I am.
Here in the anxious bog of me today, I sit like an angry old spider. I cast a line from me to you. Catch. Send out webs of your own. While we wait for things to ravel or unravel, we weave and spin and hold our own webs as steady as we may. We are stronger when we are together.
Black lives STILL matter. Love is STILL love is STILL love. Your name and pronouns STILL belong to you. Your body is STILL your own. You STILL have agency. The Planet STILL needs us. The elderly and vulnerable STILL need protection from the coronavirus. STILL, nobody is illegal. Justice is STILL important.
This morning felt so dire, so much a repetition of 2016. Jon and I both woke up at 2:30, and made the perhaps unwise choice to check the returns. My heart was racing, and I figured I wouldn’t get to sleep until I saw something to confirm or allay the anxiety. Look the wolf in the eye, they say. I felt in a visceral way how the anxiety and sense of tragedy of the 2016 election had lodged in my body, and how it replayed itself in the night four years later.
This afternoon, there are a few more reasons to hope. The morning, said Vassilissa’s doll in the Baba Yaga stories, is wiser than the evening. Today, the afternoon is wiser than the morning. Get some distance. Get some rest. Get some perspective.
It’s not over, and won’t be for a long time, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve completely shattered the Democracy quite yet. And the popular vote seems to be pretty definitely against the tyrant.
Here’s the one thing that sticks with me, however, like a grief: It wasn’t a clear and obvious win. My neighbors, good people and salt of the earth in so many ways, have not–by and large–passed the test, choosing instead to vote for white supremacy and patriarchy, for homophobia and transphobia, against the poor and the ill and the immigrants. And I do not know what to do with that.
I don’t feel like I can muster appropriate Gratitudes today. Perhaps a couple Commitments might stand in: 1. I commit to not respond smugly if Biden wins. I will express relief and hope if it happens (because I am human and must live my emotions), but I will not be smug, and especially I will try to be open to the pain and confusion of people for whom that is frightening, even though I do not understand it. 2. No matter who wins this election, I commit to standing for justice and compassion, for Black and Indigenous People and other People of Color, for LGBTQ+ folx, for women, for immigrants, for poor and houseless people, for all who are harmed by our systems. I commit to pushing whoever is president for the next four years (and other elected officials) to do right by the people, especially whose who have not been truly free and equal. 3. I commit to harbor no illusions that the lesser of two evils is the savior. 4. I commit to walk this together with you, my Beloveds, and to ask for help when I am sinking.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly. In Beauty.
This is pretty harsh and grim, I know. It needs to be said. American Christianity has been bastardized and mis-interpreted. Jesus has been thrown out of the church and a false god has been put in his place. This new (and ancient) god is a white supremacist and a misogynist, a liar and a fraud who begs for power and influence, treads upon the heads of the poor and the marginalized, scoffs at the ill and the incarcerated, turns away the foreigner, laughs at your pain.
American Jesus: People were bringing the children to Jesus so he could bless them, but Jesus said, “Make the children suffer who want to come to me!”
And he told the disciples to separate the children and their parents, like the sheep from the goats, and lock them up far away from each other.
And the disciples said, “Lord, shouldn’t we keep track of which ones belong together?”
And he said unto them: “They should have known what would happen. They have it coming to them.”
***** And he went up onto a mountainside, and he sat down and began to teach them, saying, “You know all the stuff I told you before, about being peacemakers, and being kind, and loving your neighbor as yourself? Yeah, that. I didn’t really mean all that. As long as you call yourself ‘pro-life,’ the other stuff doesn’t matter. Also, don’t bake cakes for gay people, mm-kay?” ***** And someone from the crowd asked him, “Lord, what is the greatest commandment?” And he answered them saying, “You have heard it said that you should love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself, but I say unto you that the greatest commandment is this: Follow the leader! Follow the money! Follow the power!” ***** Outside the Temple gates, they came upon a blind man, who called out, “Son of God, have mercy on me!” And he stooped and gathered dirt from the ground, and spit in it, and threw it at the blind man, saying, “Loser! Blindness and sickness are for losers!”
I wrote this prayer to say in my school’s chapel service the week of the election in 2016:
Election Day Prayer by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Oh God, Creator of the Universe, Creator of stars and planets and people and nations:
Make us to be spinners of webs of prayer and webs of kindness, catching each other, wrapping each other in silken threads to keep us from falling.
Make us to be builders of bridges of peace, bridges of grace, creating firm pathways so all may walk safely over the chasms or meet in the middle.
Make us to be wanderers willing to walk in the wild places, seeking each other when distance has broken our circles.
Make us to be dreamers and planners, wishers and makers, singing songs of hope and possibility, devising a future where everyone may find a home in Love.
Amen.
Gratitudes: For the amazing variety of wild things that I have never seen, but might someday. For the afternoon sun shining through the quivering leaves of the little tree in the neighbors’ lawn. For the quiet peace of a day working at my desk at home. For the people who are working for justice. For all the ways in which my beloveds keep me grounded.
Meet it All with Love Have a care with your words. Speak justice. Speak truth. Words ignite. Words incite. Words inspire. Have a care.
Don’t be afraid. To act is to risk. To not act is to risk. Weigh and measure.
Meet it all with love. Find joy in every place you can. Be a prophet. Be a fool. Step into the gap and become a bridge.
Avoid vengeance. Provoke for change. Provoke to love. Provoke for epiphany. Be a gadfly and a peace-maker. Be a prophet and a lamb. Wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove.
Enact peace. Overturn the tables. Rage and heal. Meet it all with love.
American Parable: Once a shepherd brought his sheep back to the fold after a long day of grazing in the high fields. As they entered the fold, he carefully counted each one, until he reached 99.
Oh no! One short! He must have lost one somewhere on the mountain! What would the other shepherds think of him if he lost a sheep? How would he ever live it down?
He stood a while in thought, then said, “Meh. What’s one sheep when I have 99 others? It was probably old or sick or weak anyway. A loser sheep. It is what it is.”
He locked his gates and doors, ate a hamburger from a golden plate, and went to bed.
The times are feeling fearful to me. After listening to a discussion on the radio on the way home, in which People Who Seem to Know Things suggested that there’s a possibility of uprisings and violence after this election, I offer a slight paraphrase of the Rune of St. Patrick:
At Pisgah in this fateful hour, I place Earth and Heaven with their power, And the sun with its brightness, And the snow with its whiteness, And the fire with all the strength it hath, And the lightning with its rapid wrath, And the winds with their swiftness along their path, And the sea with its deepness, And the rocks with their steepness, And the earth with its starkness: All these I place, By divine help and grace Between myself and the powers of destruction!
Gratitude: For the golden leaves of autumn and the golden eyes of the cats. For darkness, of rest, of birth, of preparation for the new thing coming. For the inquisitive and curious minds of teenagers. For the web of beloved hearts that yearn and work for justice and peace, for true equality and for functioning and healthy communities. For you, beloveds. For you. For you.
May we walk humbly, loving mercy, doing justice, ever in Beauty.
This past week, I posted the first of two Found poems that I wrote using the help of friends on a Facebook post. You can find that first poem here: Finding Poetry, Part 1.
Here is the second one I did.
That Which is Indestructible (A Facebook Crowd-Sourced Found Poem) by Beth Weaver-Kreider and Friends
There is a time and place for a child to grow up, playing between scrabbly hibiscus bushes, but the best way to tell about a town, any town, is to listen deep into the night, long after midnight, after every screen door has been slammed shut for the last time.
When he stood in his room in the tower, looking out over the invisible city spread below, he found that he could justify his inquisitiveness.
He came in about supper-time with his sketchbook and his mud-bespattered boots. In reflex, she stepped back against the safety of the wall, began climbing, using both hands, all white eyes, a flickering lamp, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightning in a summer cloud.
Yet she grew to like him, for he was always kind and gentle to her. A little flame of hope had been lit. He saw that it was not in the object of desire that lasting satisfaction resided but in the absence of that desire.
I think I know why porcupines surround themselves with prickly spines: White throat, dark chest-patches or nearly— If you tear down the web, I said, it will simply know.
There is no question in my mind that these men have had a terrifying experience. I was responsible for all of them and would mourn every life lost in my name. We cannot fear it, play games with it, or manipulate it—the Path just is, and the nights are full of nightingales, even though they would like to die. The prayer wheel ceaselessly cadences the pilgrim’s path. The sound of the new color console—Zenith— rose and fell, sounding like the babble of running water.
Welcome To The World, Baby Girl. Did you hear that? (We are in a book!) Oh, my. I read that years ago. Sorry, I forgot: Thanks for the memory. PS—I love all of this!
Okay, later, with the book on my bedside table, which has quite a history: This is a third re-read. These sacred rituals involve prescribed traditions. So here are three short phrases: I. Lay all the items on your altar for about an hour, just to let them “cure,” soaking up and charging with sacred energy.
II. To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.
III. We must become friendlier with our dark emotions in order to use their energies for healing and transformation.
The cares and preoccupations of life draw us away from ourselves. Look, money’s an engine and it’s out there running day and night, whether you like it or not. Destroying things is much easier than making them. Fire is catching, and if we burn you burn with us! Fire is catching, and if we burn you burn with us! Fire is catching, and if we burn you burn with us! Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.
I needed a mental health break. I wasn’t feeling the burn of an emerging poem, but I needed the fix of a poetic experience without having to go deeply into the trance state of poetic midwifing. So I posted a request: I asked my friends to open a nearby book to a random page, put a finger at a random spot, and type in a short sentence or phrase near to where their fingers landed. I took all their lines and crafted a poem. It was playful, whimsical, and deeply satisfying.
Here is the result of the first one I did (yeah, I have done more):
The Impermanence of This Floating World (A Facebook Crowd-Sourced Found Poem) by Beth Weaver-Kreider and Friends
Pray for us, O Mary. Show us the face of your Son. Then she spoke to me. “There’s nothing to figure out. I am who I am. The way I see it, all children are our children. Mature souls are more comfortable being vulnerable— all feeling is born in the heart.”
I looked up and saw the beauty, looking upward into its mighty boughs. Still, we know who’s swaying: outside there is quiet in the dark.
Sleep is, I know now, impossible when skylarks are in song. . . Did we fly swiftly toward the stars until our wings tired? While the vault of heaven rings, it appeareth about Easter, when Alleluia is sung again, a drawing together of any kind: that isn’t sacred?
Jean asked Maxwell not to utter another word until he heard her side of the story. So long a journey confirms that work, his blue figure struggling. . . Imagine how easy it is for me. Monitor the type of risks you’re taking, for this is the Lia Fáil, the stone of destiny— must need both hands to pick them up.
Pentacles are work, money, and security, a degree of understanding. Looking back, she did not regret the making love, a welcome relief from the daily drudgery of life, having effected this disguise so completely.
The dermatologist was, in his own eyes, an artist beyond reproach (g to return to. Excerp t the futhe r he goes, t he smaller t he hallway). Knowing Hollywood, they probably would have whitewashed it anyway. Moral theories are wanted to explain what makes an action right or a person good Guilt is another common reaction, particularly among parents.
The children of your servants shall continue the duet, flush with possibilities that produces a continuous pitch; the most important and familiar among them is the common Buttercup of the meadows.
Remove the air joints, then the grease line from the left bearing cap: fourteen hours of driving ahead. Nourish faith— there are many ways to reach the goal. What we have to eat and drink together, we usually mean traveling, waves, ice-cold waves arched up into walls. The impermanence of this floating world I feel over and over. Is sorrow the true wild ?
Again, you’ll have to trust your senses and be very focused as you use this technique. The visions are so terribly distinct that I almost imagine them to be real. “Most people don’t burn to death,” I said.
Gratitudes: 1. The forthright golden gaze of a black cat. 2. Titmice and nuthatches at the feeder. 3. The way the sky glows blue through the clouds at this season. I think Chagall must have been a fan of autumn. 4. Health. We had an emergency this past weekend. The story is not mine to tell, but all now appears to be well. And I am very grateful for everyone’s health. Also for adrenaline. 5. I stood in the center of a faerie ring of mushrooms today. Felt my skin dissolve and my hair turn gray. Felt my senses being released into something greater–my hearing drawn outward like a bowl in a potter’s hands, my sight turn deep into the well of me. Felt wind rush through my branches, and sunlight raining like droplets all around me. Then I breathed and stepped out into the world again.
May we walk in Beauty!
Please vote, friends. Please consider your values, what you want for your country, what you expect of democracy, and Vote. Don’t let anyone convince you to be cynical or despairing about this basic tool of democracy. Yes, things are broken, and powerful people are taking advantage of the vulnerabilities in our system, and our history has been whitewashed and sugar-coated, but if we believe any of the better ideals our country was founded upon (no matter whether we were ever true to their deepest intents), then we must Vote. Let’s make this country not great–but Good, not again–but for the first time, let’s live into the ideals the founders expressed. But this time, let’s live them for everyone.
After nearly a month of silence here, I find it difficult to pull out particular threads of thoughts to put down in a blog post. Or perhaps it’s more a function of the times we live in, existing as we do within so many layers of challenge and crisis and change. So today’s post will be more of a smorgasbord than usual.
I am at odds with myself. There’s a Cackler in me who is rubbing her hands with satisfaction at the way karma has finally alit upon powerful people who have minimized the danger of the coronavirus. At the same time, my internal Monk is saddened to contemplate anyone’s suffering, and wants to wish ill upon no being, no matter how brutal and selfish that being is.
Message to self: It’s okay to be human. It’s okay to experience a sense of relief when an out-of-control train that has already been responsible for the deaths of many is suddenly slowed and perhaps side-lined. I’m letting the Monk and the Cackler work together here, working to avoid feeling and expressing glee at this turn of events, but allowing myself to feel relief: This could signal a shift that could save lives in the end.
This is a moment for the type of complexity I have been attempting to integrate since I began working with the Bowl of the Heart several years ago: All of it goes in there together, painful and tender, vengeful and compassionate. We’re many-faceted creatures, we humans, and we have the capacity for myriad responses. While I want to always be appealing to my better nature, I cannot deny the Cackler her space. And I can learn from her. The quiet Monk in me was trying so hard to respond with light and wisdom that I almost missed the essential message of the Cackler–that it is okay to be relived that this bit of suffering being visited upon those who inhabit the White House may be a pathway toward mitigating the suffering of thousands.
A few days ago, I checked in with the faeries about a couple things I’ve lost. One was pretty urgent and timely. The other is a necklace I haven’t seen for over a year, a treasured piece I made myself from various shiny and dangly things I’d received from beloved friends.
Within a couple hours, I found the first, most urgent thing, but I still haven’t found the necklace, although I have been searching all the place that suddenly popped into my head.
But last night, I had a haunting, lingering dream. I kept waking up with images of the two beings in the dream, sometimes with clear recognition of their names, and then falling back to sleep, only to wake up again with their images in my brain. They were two elves, dressed in skinny suits like a 1950s boy band, with white shirts and black skinny ties. They were both dark-haired with piercing dark eyes, very Spock-like.
I woke up, feeling like they wanted to cut some sort of deal with me, like they were looking to draw up a contract. I thought if I could remember their names, I could outwit them, control them, but in the stories, magical names also sometimes backfire, and it’s perhaps best that I don’t quite remember. I do want my necklace back, but I’m not ready to sell my fate to a pair of pushy dream-beings. Still, it couldn’t help to make an offering. . . (I know, I know, no first-born children or anything like that).
I’ve started painting my nails. It’s strange, because I tend to feel like I am a little kid playing dress-up, or like I’m sort of wearing drag when I wear make-up or get my nails done. It’s like it’s territory that doesn’t really belong to me. I identify completely as she/her, and have never had any questions about my gender, but there are myriad ways to express femaleness, and the salon/nails/make-up way has not really been part of my way. I always feel like I’m in someone else’s territory when I do these things.
But I am loving wearing different colors on my nails. I change the color every weekend. A couple weeks ago, I just had to get green. I needed green nails. Today, I painted them RED! My fingernails are red. I needed flames on my fingers right now. Hmmm. I should see about getting some little flame decals. . .
I realized the other day that I almost never find feathers anymore. Perhaps I am not looking hard enough? Or maybe I don’t need them now. Or maybe it’s because we no longer have the glorious owl-perch of the poplar tree anymore.
The day after I began to ponder this, I found this woodpecker feather at the park:
This week two girls stopped outside my classroom to read my bulletin board during my prep period. When I went to say hello, they thanked me for my poster about how all people are valued in this classroom. They said they would like it to include something about how we live on stolen land. I love that they were so ready to add their own pieces, so open to ask for what they want, so intersectionally aware. We talked about how the statements on the poster are all stated in positive ways, and the stolen land piece doesn’t seem to quite fit that tone, but how that’s not quite a good answer even so. I do have a little poster in my room about the people who were first here on the land where we attend school, but I really want to add a line that will respond to their request, if it’s possible. (Or maybe I’ll move that poster out to my hallway bulletin board. One of the girls said she is going to make me a drawing of the hands of many different races gripping each other in a circle, to add put next to the sign.
I would love ideas about how to include an intersectional awareness of the truth of that statement–We are living on stolen land–in the grammatical and tonal context of this. Feel free to offer me your thoughts.
Some Random Gratitudes: 1. Red-breasted hawk on a snag down Schmuck Rd. 2. My wise and compassionate students. 3. The Wheel of the Year. All comes around again. 4. Smoothie for breakfast 5. The treehouse. I spent a couple hours up there yesterday, reading and drawing.
May we walk in Beauty!
“The ways creative work gets done are always unpredictable, demanding room to roam, refusing schedules and systems. They cannot be reduced to replicable formulas. […] To spin the web and not be caught in it, to create the world, to create your own life, to rule your fate, to name the grandmothers as well as the fathers, to draw nets and not straight lines, to be a maker as well as a cleaner, to be able to sing and not be silenced, to take down the veil and appear: all these are the banners on the laundry line I hang out. […] Some women get erased a little at a time, some all at once. Some reappear. Every woman who appears wrestles with the forces that would have her disappear. She struggles with the forces that would tell her story for her, or write her out of the story, the genealogy, the rights of man, the rule of law. The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.” ―Rebecca Solnit, from: “Men Explain Things to Me”
“The first product of self-knowledge is humility.” —Flannery O’Connor
“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” ―Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook
“Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.” ―Barry Lopez
“‘Remember on this one thing,’ said Badger. ‘The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memories. This is how people care for themselves.’” ―Barry Lopez, Crow and Weasel
“Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage, need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream.” —Maya Angelou
“With dreamwork, we are endlessly tenderising ourselves to subtletly. When we begin to know its dimensions, pain can no longer envelop us in an indistinct mass. It’s not that we are ridding ourselves of suffering, but rather learning its name, which is the prelude to befriending it.” —Dreamwork with Toko-pa
Humility by Mary Oliver Poems arrive ready to begin. Poets are only the transportation.
“On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree.” —W. S.Merwin
“Nature never repeats itself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.” —Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.” —Kabir
Mirabai Starr said, “Poetry is a gateway into unitive consciousness. It knocks on the doors of the heart and the heart opens. Poets speak truth in a very naked way that bypasses the rational mind. Poetry evokes, rather than describes.”
Kathleen Norris writes, “Poets understand that they do not know what they mean, and that is their strength. . . . Writing teaches us to recognize when we have reached the limits of language, and our knowing, and are dependent on our senses to ‘know’ for us.”
“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories . . . water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estés
“Every seed contains the potential to save the world. Each seed can keep millions of people from starvation. Each seed is a mirror and guardian of the world’s future. Each seed is the ecology that can sustain the economy. This is why seeds are sacred…” —His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
Mockingbird Chronicles 