Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

Good Work

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White Friends, this is difficult and constant work that we’re doing, that we must do, and continue to do. How can we really know how deeply we’ve been indoctrinated into this culture of white supremacy until we know it? And then know it more deeply? And then again. It’s not like a Bandaid that you rip off, and deal with the sting, and then everything’s fine. It’s layer after layer after layer.

And yes, it’s exhausting. And yes, it’s painful. But we have to do this work. Now. And always. It’s exhausting and painful for BIPOC folks to have to deal with microaggressions and explicit racism and systemic racism and inadvertent racism every day. We have to do this work. And keep doing it.

There is so much to learn on the way: new ways to articulate powerful ideas, new ways of exploring our own difficult feelings, new ways to see people and the world, new ways to experience the history of all of us, new ways to become more fully human.

I don’t quote many Bible verses here, but there’s one that fits pretty perfectly in this rhetorical moment. It’s in Romans 12: “Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world. Instead, be transformed by the continual renewing of your mind, that you may discern the will of the Holy One: what is the good and acceptable and perfect.” The patterns of white supremacy in this (US) part of the world are institutionalized and powerful. It’s going to take some intentional and constant work to break and transform those patterns.

If you hear a new thing that challenges and unsettles you–about white supremacy, or privilege or fragility, or about taking a new look at US history and ideals–I urge and challenge you (me, us) to not begin in defensiveness and argument, but to simply sit quietly a moment, and ask yourself (myself, ourselves) how it applies, how the integrating of this idea might be transformational and renewing. And then begin to rip off that bandaid.

There are doorways all around us, leading us to places where we can be more fully human and humane, and right now there are constant opportunities to see them, to walk through them, to learn and to grow. Let’s join the Good Work, beginning with ourselves.

Gratitude List:
1. So many good and challenging things to learn.
2. Watching a thunderstorm from the shelter of the pavilion by the River.
3. Good exercise. Moving my body. Healthy, limber, and strong: That’s my mantra for the summer. (It includes a lot of aches and pains on the way, but they’re the good ones.)
4. Toads. They’re such wise and ancient folk.
5. Finishing projects

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“You are a pure Soul in darkened soil.” —Rumi

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” ―Helen Keller

“What we need is here.” —Wendell Berry

“Million-to-one chances…crop up nine times out of ten.” ―Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

“Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.” —André Gide

“Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” —Ms. Frizzle

“We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses.” —Aldo Leopold

“It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a half-brick in the path of the bicycle of history.” ―Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

“Hilta laughed like someone who had thought hard about Life and had seen the joke.” ―Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

Evening Encounters

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My camera phone is pretty grainy, especially at distances, but if you look closely, you can see the spotty white breast of the wood thrush against the trunk on the lower left, and the curious deer in the trees on the upper right.

Last evening, we went for an evening walk up at Sam Lewis State Park. It’s easy sometimes to forget the glorious gems of we have in our own backyards. There is a series of walking trails through the woods around the crest of the ridge, over rock tumbles, through piney groves, along meadows, between mountain laurels and pawpaw trees. Massive oaks and maples stand sentinel at the edges of the woods.

I never really quite know where I am going when we set out on a trail at Sam Lewis. It’s probably no more than two or three miles of trails total, and they wind around and cross each other, and they’re all completely familiar. There’s no chance of getting lost, but I often think I am going to emerge from the woods at one point, and find myself at another point altogether. It’s not disconcerting or frustrating, partly because its so contained. It’s just a tiny bit mystical and dreamy. Probably it’s just me and my strange sense of direction, and maybe if I start walking up there several times a week instead of once every few months, I’ll develop an inner map of the place. I’m not sure I want to. I like the slight and utterly non-anxious disorientation, the sense of discovery.

It was a grateful and grounding walk.
It was St. John’s Eve, and I found a patch of St. John’s Wort at the edge of the meadow.
Down on the piney path near the big meadow, we encountered a wood thrush, who seemed completely unfussed at our presence, and sang a call and response with a friend further up the hill.
At one point, we were caught in currents that carried scent of pine, wild yarrow, and the freshly-opened buds of milkweed.
On a trail that wound around a group of giant boulders, we found some mountain laurel still blooming.
Around one bend in the trail, near one of the frisbee baskets, we met a deer. I’m not sure who was more interested in whom.
At the very top of the bald, where people like to go to fly kites, and where you can see the whole river valley laid out before you, evening breezes came tumbling up over the ridge.
The paths go from gentle ramble to strong and steady upward climb. My legs and lungs were glad of the exercise.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“Inside a moment, centuries of June.” ―Emily Dickinson

African proverb:, “When death comes, may it find you fully alive.”

“I think there ought to be a little music here: hum, hum.” ―Mary Oliver

“Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” ―Albert Einstein

“I do know one thing about me: I don’t measure myself by others’ expectations or let others define my worth.” ―Sonia Sotomayor

“Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.” ―Buddha

“I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this: ‘Do unto others twenty-five percent better than you expect them to do unto you.’ … The twenty-five percent is for error.” ―Linus Pauling

Holy Trees

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The cathedral beech at the Jesuit Center.

Last year at this time, I was spending the better part of a week at the Jesuit Center in Wernersville with my favorite trees. The Jesuits are planning to close and sell the property in another year, so I will need to make one last pilgrimage in the coming year. The grounds require a great deal of upkeep and maintenance, as does the marvelous old building. The community of men who live there are aging, and there aren’t many of them anymore.

I long for someone to buy the place who could work with environmental groups to make it a nature preserve, to maintain the building as a spiritual retreat center, to keep caring for those holy trees.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“In one of the stars, I shall be living.
In one of them, I shall be laughing.
And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing
When you look at the sky at night.”
―The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you.” ―Octavia Butler

“The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.” ―Henry Miller

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.” ―Jane Goodall

Prayer for the World
by Rabbi Harold Kushner

Let the rain come and wash away
the ancient grudges, the bitter hatreds
held and nurtured over generations.
Let the rain wash away the memory
of the hurt, the neglect.
Then let the sun come out and
fill the sky with rainbows.
Let the warmth of the sun heal us
wherever we are broken.
Let it burn away the fog so that
we can see each other clearly.
So that we can see beyond labels,
beyond accents, gender or skin color.
Let the warmth and brightness
of the sun melt our selfishness.
So that we can share the joys and
feel the sorrows of our neighbors.
And let the light of the sun
be so strong that we will see all
people as our neighbors.
Let the earth, nourished by rain,
bring forth flowers
to surround us with beauty.
And let the mountains teach our hearts
to reach upward to heaven.
Amen.

Cherry Cobbler

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Here’s to good neighbors! A couple days ago as we were walking, our neighbor down the road invited us to his Solstice drumming circle. I would have taken him up on it, but we were going to see my parents the next day, and I wanted to limit my exposure to other people. I do hope he asks again!

And a couple days ago, another neighbor texted me that she had a bunch of extra sour cherries from her cherry tree–Could we use them? Um. Yes, please, and thank you! Supper last night was a sweet summer fruits meal: cherry cobbler with ice cream.

Gratitude for kind neighbors.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.” ―Granny Weatherwax, Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

‪”Nature is real and vital. Wealth is neither. How is it we grant imaginary dragons the power to breathe real fire?‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning. If we don’t, it may drench itself out in sorrow. You special, miraculous, unrepeatable, fragile, fearful, tender, lost, sparkling ruby emerald jewel, rainbow splendor person. It’s up to you.” —Joan Baez

“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

“A person’s a person, no matter how small.” —Dr. Seuss

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” —Nelson Mandela

“Every child you encounter is a divine appointment.” —Wess Stafford

“Children are one third of our population and all of our future.” —Select Panel for the Promotion of Child Health, 1981

“Anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me.” —Fred Rogers

“Safety and security don’t just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear.” —Nelson Mandela

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” —Frederick Douglass

“Do not be afraid to include other people in your story, to ask others to hold the light for you in times of darkness and pain. This is a grace and a gift you offer them, to allow another the honor of walking beside you on the path, in silence or in song, no matter how treacherous the journey.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider, 2012

“When you realize the Earth is so much more than simply your environment, you’ll be moved to protect her in the same way as you would yourself. This is the kind of awareness, the kind of awakening that we need, and the future of the planet depends on whether we’re able to cultivate this insight or not. The Earth and all species on Earth are in real danger. Yet if we can develop a deep relationship with the Earth, we’ll have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change our way of life.” —Thich Nhat Hanh

“It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.” —Rachel Carson

Maker’s Monday

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Look at that violet and indigo swirl of cloud above the barn.

Not much to say today. I’m going to make masks, make zines, create writing prompts for a project, crochet the arms of a doll I started over the weekend. Read. Make a cherry cobbler with the sour cherries my neighbor gave me. Watch for Beauty. Plot the Revolution. Pet cats. Stretch and walk and learn some more Spanish. I suppose that’s my Gratitude List for today–looking forward to a week of making and noticing and working on inner transformation in order to keep participating in world-changing events of the day.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“I sometimes visualize the ongoing cycle of racism as a moving walkway at the airport. Active racist behavior is equivalent to walking fast on the conveyor belt. The person engaged in active racist behavior has identified with the ideology of our White supremacist system and is moving with it. Passive racist behavior is equivalent to standing still on the walkway. No overt effort is being made, but the conveyor belt moves the bystanders along to the same destination as those who are actively walking. But unless they are walking actively in the opposite direction at a speed faster than the conveyor belt—unless they are actively anti-racist—they will find themselves carried along with the others.” —Beverly Tatum

“The Holocaust was not the holocaust until it was too late.” —James Regier

“People are hard to hate close up. Move in. Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil. Hold hands. With strangers. Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart. ❤️” —Brené Brown

“We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!” ―Wangari Maathai

“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” ―Joseph Campbell

“Every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times. But all of them picked themselves up and kept going, and that is what I have always tried to do.” ―Wangari Maathai

“It is the people who must save the environment. It is the people who must make their leaders change. And we cannot be intimidated. So we must stand up for what we believe in.” ―Wangari Maathai

“How many kinds of beauty exist in nature? A sunset’s beauty is not the same as a river’s beauty is not the same as a newborn’s beauty is not the same as a kind act’s beauty is not the same as an old oak tree’s beauty. And yet, they are the same. Why do you think that is?” —Jarod K. Anderson

“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. . . . To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.” —Terry Tempest Williams

“The extremists are afraid of books and pens, the power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women.” ―Malala Yousafzai

“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.” ―Edgar Allen Poe

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ―Mark Twain

“It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility. ” ―Rachel Carson

“…drink in the beauty and wonder at the meaning of what you see.” ―Rachel Carson

Feel the Shift

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Like feeling your way along in the dark, or letting your nose lead you to the little shop in a town that is baking fresh bread, or looking just to the side of the Pleiades so you can get a clearer sense of the seven stars, or following the call of the indigo bunting along the edge of the woods until you finally spot that drop of impossible blue–that’s how we feel the shift into midsummer. Feel the directness of the light, and look sideways, between the sunrays. Feel how the sun hits your shoulders, sense the shift in birdy activity from the establishment of territories and nesting spaces to the gentler rhythm of housekeeping and childrearing, intuit the planet’s pause in apogee–at the end of its long cycle outward, as we begin the slow roll inward. Here we are in the season of fire, of long days and short nights, of full green and hazy blue, of harvest and abundance. Summer can feel like a sleepy time, a dreamy place, but it doesn’t have to be a time of dullness, just a time of taking in the signals of the world through your skin, through every sense you can name, and more that you can’t. Deepen your roots. Unfurl your leaves and petals. Feel the seeds of the new thing forming within you.

Sometimes everything
has to be
enscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.
—David Whyte

“Whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market.” —Pope Francis

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” —Annie Dillard

“This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath.” —Margaret Atwood

“Now, on the longest day, light triumphs, and yet begins the decline into dark. We turn the Wheel… for we have planted the seeds of our own changes, and to grow we must accept even the passing of the sun… Set Sail…See with clear eyes…See how we shine!” —Starhawk

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” —Albert Einstein

“Ceremonies large and small have the power to focus attention to a way of living awake in the world. The visible became invisible, merging with the soil.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer

“The cure for anything is salt water – tears, sweat, or the sea.” —Isak Dinesen

Simple Solstice

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In our house, pizza is a good symbol for the fire of Solstice, how basic ingredients laid together on bread are transformed by heat. Also, pizza makes joy.

Today is Summer Solstice, the beginning of the season of learning our passions, tending our fires, meditating on our energies.

What fires you up?
The ancient Greeks called the Fire nature within us our choler, so people who have a lot of fire are often called choleric. We’ve simplified that complicated idea in modern days to mean quick to anger, but it’s also about passion and energy.

When it comes to emotional responses, I can be choleric–quick to get angry, quick to get excited, quick to respond. And I often sustain those passionate emotions over time, burning coals. Physically, I tend to be more phlegmatic, less able to sustain energy over the long haul, preferring to sit quietly and read or make things than to be up and doing.

What makes you angry? What is your trigger for the rage-fires? How can you use that energy to help you bring about change and transformation? Fire transforms landscapes, not only destroying with fierce and random abandon, but creating spaces for new life to grow, new structures to be built. Will you pledge to learn about your anger, how to control and direct it so that it burns down old and tired and unjust systems in order to make way for new and love-filled ways of being that have space for all to breathe?

Do you tend, like me, to the sedentary life: quiet, still, and restful? How can we use this season of fire to feed us the energy to move our bodies, to revel in the fire of muscles moving, of our bodies in motion? Use this season of fire as a time to revel in the way your body moves. Careful now–it’s not a time to hate and despise the bodies we’re in because they’re bigger or slower or flabbier than we want them to be. Let’s live this season of fire to exist in the joy of being in these bodies we’ve chosen, to marvel in the senses, to move, to stretch, to learn speed and strength and limberness.

Summer Solstice is a time, too, to think about what sparks joy. Justice and joy are not things we need to choose between. They feed each other, if we let them, if we keep our hearts focused on their flames. Where do you see Beauty? (I usually capitalize Beauty because I believe it is the Holy One’s middle name.) What fills you? How does your love of Beauty feed your flames of desire for justice?

What ideas and images catch passionate fire in your brain? Flash of birdwing, the shade of red in that quilt, the way those words sound together, the crinkle at the corners of your beloved’s eyes. How can you feed the coals of those fires that fill you with passion? Fire season is the source of the energy of creation, of making, of designing, of appreciating Beauty. Give yourself to those fires. Feel the way they make you sizzle and roar to life.

A Blessed Solstice to you!

Gratitude:
The fires of justice, of love, of making, of delight, of transformation.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty! Blessed Solstice!

“We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.” ―Bayard Rustin

“Bless the poets, the workers for justice, the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache, the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh meaning—We will all make it through, despite politics and wars, despite failures and misunderstandings. There is only love.” ―Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.” —Howard Zinn

“It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says good night, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing. What is most beautiful is least acknowledged. What is worth dying for is barely noticed.” —Laura McBride

“Love lit a fire in my chest, and everything that wasn’t love left.” –Rumi

“Developing your feeling takes time, especially if it has been systematically discouraged in you. There may be an initial layer of numbness or anger you have to move through and, beyond that, a backlog of grief. But as you make the seemingly bottomless descent, it helps to remember that grief is the downpour your soul has been thirsting for. Like rain, the more excellently and prodigiously you grieve, the more growth and fertility you can expect. There is a future beyond the spiritual aridity and meaninglessness of our time, teeming with life. If each of us has the tenacity to retrieve the elixirs of our discomforts, our combined medicine will heal the collective wound.” —Toko-pa Turner

On Monuments and History

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(Ned Oliver/Virginia Mercury)

When you see the flags come down and watch the monuments getting removed, and you say things like, “But we can’t just erase our history,” please listen to how incredibly racist that is.

These are monuments to honor people who fought to keep people enslaved, placed there decades after the Civil War in order to try to control the narrative about who won and who lost, about who emerged dominant. These are monuments to racism.

They say history is written by the victors, and that is so often true, but the proponents of the confederacy could not allow a story that saw the people they had formerly enslaved taking an equal place at the American table. So they took hold of the story, placed statues of their slave-owning heroes in the public square, and swayed the narrative to place themselves again at the center.

Please don’t worry that we’re erasing history. We’ll keep teaching Civil War history, but we’ll also teach about the massacres and the lynching and the systematized racism that was put into place in order to terrorize and intimidate and demoralize Black people in its aftermath, to try to keep them unfree. We will teach the full history, of all of us. We’ll keep finding primary sources and researched, academic analysis of the post-Civil War era. And certainly, we’ll teach about those statues, which were raised by people who refused to lose a war, in order to offer a visual symbol of white supremacy. We’re not erasing history, and we’re not changing history. We’re completing the narrative.

As my friend Chantelle says, “Some of white history NEEDS to take a backseat.” It’s time, and past time, to tell the entire narrative.

And–Happy Juneteenth!
I know white people have a tendency to take over everything, and I don’t want to do that here. This is an important day in United States history, and I celebrate this day with all whose ancestors were enslaved in this country, when the word finally came two years later to Texas that “All Slaves Are Free.”

None of us are truly free until all of us are free. If ever we can celebrate true freedom and the hope of freedom in America, it is today. I pledge to continue that work of freedom in any way I can.

Gratitude List:
1. I saw a hairy woodpecker! I often wonder if some of what I am calling downies might actually be hairies, but those weren’t. When you know a downy, then when you see a hairy, you know it’s a hairy. I love how perception works like that.
2. Learning ALL the history, terrible as much of it is. Half a narrative is a false narrative.
3. Seeing my parents! We were allowed to visit at a distance with my parents last evening, and it was incredibly pleasant to sit and chat and see their eyes again.
4. I am almost finished with the prayer shawl. It will be complete in just a couple hours. I am grateful with the anticipation of passing it on to the young man it is meant to bless.
5. Indigo bunting–one drop of holy shining blue in all that writhing mass of green.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“Won’t it be wonderful when Black history and Native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.” —Maya Angelou

“I do not understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” ―Anne Lamott

“[E]ducation is not just about utilizing a particular curriculum, or ensuring that critical reflection in a community follows a particular formula. It is full of intangible and random events. It is not just taught in the classroom, but lived in the midst of the community in ways that are not even fully quantifiable.” ―M.S. Bickford on the educational theories of John Westerhoff

“The trouble with trouble is, it starts out as fun.” ―Anonymous

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. . .give it, give it all, give it now.”
—Annie Dillard

“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

“There are opportunities even in the most difficult moments.” —Wangari Maathai

“Throughout my life, I have never stopped to strategize about my next steps. I often just keep walking along, through whichever door opens. I have been on a journey and this journey has never stopped. When the journey is acknowledged and sustained by those I work with, they are a source of inspiration, energy and encouragement. They are the reasons I kept walking, and will keep walking, as long as my knees hold out.” —Wangari Maathai

“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.” —Joseph Campbell

“I’m a Zen Buddhist if I would describe myself. I don’t think about what I do. I do it. That’s Buddhism. I jump off the cliff and build my wings on the way down.”
—Ray Bradbury

Don’t Normalize Hate Speech

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

This morning, as I was looking through the list of quotations that I have gathered over the years for this day, I consciously removed two, both of them lovely and thoughtful sentiments, both of them by writers who have also said and done some things I find inappropriate. One was by Garrison Keillor, the other by J. K. Rowling.

I don’t know what I think about Keillor. The stories make me cringe; they make me angry. As much as I loved the humor of his voice, I have also usually rolled my eyes a bit at his curmudgeonly persona. With the stain on his reputation, I don’t feel like I need his words as part of my holy morning reflections.

I don’t always throw out the writings when I find out that the writer is objectionable. Humans are fallible, and even brilliant thinkers have their blind sides. Some blindnesses are too difficult to ignore, however. When I read Neruda’s piece about the woman he raped, how he didn’t even seem to understand that what he had done was to commit rape, how he described her with the same tender pen he used for the love poetry that made me swoon, I knew I would never return to his words. I no longer read or share his poetry. There’s rot at the heart of that. The same is true for others, for Marion Zimmer Bradley, for Orson Scott Card. On the other hand, I still love, and teach, Shakespeare despite some of his truly objectionable elements.

The one that is bothering me–a lot– right now, is J. K. Rowling. I think it is important to look with a clear eye at her recent tweets about trans people and name the speech what it is: hate speech. It’s couched in lots of attempts to sound open and conciliatory, but she cannot hide her transphobia. Even without any other red flags, this sentence in one of her tweets to try to explain herself is a real kicker: “I know and love trans people, but. . .” Yeah, nothing good ever comes after the “but” in such a sentence. She goes on to defend transphobic restroom laws. She has liked tweets that refer to trans women as “men in dresses.” It feels like I am building a case against her, doesn’t it? It’s just that I don’t want to excuse bigotry or normalize hate speech, and that is a sentence I have stolen from Rowling herself.

Yesterday, I listened to some of the recording of Daniel Radcliffe reading the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I was caught up again in the way she develops the Dursleys in the first few pages of her tale as people who are terrified of difference. She sets up a scenario in which the reader, from the very first moment, feels like this tale is going to be about celebrating the weird people in the cloaks who stand out because they live who they are instead of who a constricting and unimaginative muggle society tells them they should be. That’s the liberating beauty I have found in the Harry Potter books, the deep truth that anyone who has ever felt marginalized for living their truth can hold onto.

As I try to be part of the movement to create a society in which my trans beloveds are not marginalized but are safe and welcome and embraced, I have sought out stories like this. And now it turns out that the author herself is doubling and tripling down on her anti-trans language. Not just flinchy and cringey, but hateful.

Here is the Rowling quote I took out of today’s quote line-up: “We stand together. We stick up for the vulnerable. We challenge bigots. We don’t let hate speech become normalized. We hold the line.” So. I’m holding the line, Ms. Rowling. I will not tolerate your hate speech toward the beloved children of the Universe who are trans and gender fluid. I don’t know what I will do with your books or your movies. Meanwhile, I’m going to seek out other constructed worlds that offer their readers hope and vision for just and loving societies where everyone is safe and welcome and encouraged to live their truth, worlds created by authors who won’t exclude anyone for who they are.

I’m not asking you to give up the HP world. But, if you’re looking for some alternatives to Rowling, try Nnedi Okorafor, N. K. Jemisin, Octavia Butler, Charlie Jane Anders, Ursula K. LeGuin, Starhawk, Madeleine L’Engle, Tamora Pierce. Listen to LeVar Burton reads–he has an absolute treasure trove of authors who question the boxes a dull-witted and authoritarian society wants to place people in. Who else do you suggest?

Gratitude List:
1. Friends who bear with me and help me stumble along as I figure things out.
2. The way good literature offers visions of what we can be.
3. Finishing a project! I’m going to wrap up the prayer shawl today.
4. Oriole still sings in the sycamore every morning, but his call has changed. I think he must be feeding young ones now.
5. I’ve been seeing this sign in images of the BLM protests: “Sorry I’m late. I had some learning to do.” We can change and grow. I can change. You can change. Keep listening. Keep learning!

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation.” ―Marian Wright Edelman

“Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree.” ―Marian Wright Edelman

“It’s still a world with plums in it, my loves, & chamomile & lipstick & cellos. It’s still a world with us in it. Find a hand & hold on.” —Elena Rose

“The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.” ―Wendell Berry

”So many of us feel an agonizing longing to contribute something meaningful to the deficits of our time. But years can disappear in the doing of duties, in the never-reaching of rising expectations, in the always-falling-short of proving of one’s enoughness.

“The truth is that if we really want to make an eloquent offering of our lives, we have to step out of that ‘call and response’ relationship with the external world and locate our source of guidance within.

“To hear the rhythm of your indigenous song, to fall in step with the poetry of your unfolding, first there must be a clearing away: a ‘temenos’ of simplicity in which to dwell.

“Strike a holy grove of silence where you can listen as you long to be heard, see as you long to be seen, acknowledge where you long to be relevant, needed and necessary in the ‘family of things’.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa

“One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.”
―Henry David Thoreau

Rumi: “Ours is no caravan of despair.”

“I profess the religion of love wherever its caravan turns along the way; that is the belief, the faith I keep.” ―Asma Kaftaro, UN Women Advisory Board

“Human rights are not things that are put on the table for people to enjoy. These are things you fight for and then you protect.”
―Wangari Maathai

Change of Plans

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

One of the things I love about summer is the time to work on this project, and that project, and then a little bit on that project. I don’t sit and knit or crochet for really long periods because I feel like I “should” be doing something else, something “productive.” I’ve been taking a break from scraping the balcony porch ceiling because I got so mad at it the other day, and wore myself out. I’ve been focusing on some camp materials the last few days instead. Yesterday, I found out that the prayer shawl I have been knitting needs to be delivered this week. So, hurray! The thing I MUST do, all day, is knit. I guess it’s me and the cats and LeVar Burton’s voice reading me stories all day.

Gratitude List:
1. Knitting
2. All the incredible forms of Life. I watched these three awe-inspiring videos this morning: https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/ecosphere-jar-atomic-shrimp-video?fbclid=IwAR1ZMyQnRBbaRsiLqnI1KDfKFJro9LH9Q_tn6cYO6e8mtWy6hl5SXJZ5AC4
3. Stories. How narratives shape us.
4. Getting limber, healthy, and strong
5. How the pair of house finches seem to like to come to the feeder to eat together. It’s like a little date.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“Only to the degree that people are unsettled is there any hope for them.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
—Wendell Berry, The Real Work, Standing by Words (1983)

Annie Dillard says, “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives.”

“We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit.”
—Audre Lorde

“Acknowledging our love for the living world does something that a library full of papers on sustainable development and ecosystem services cannot: it engages the imagination as well as the intellect. It inspires belief; and this is essential to the lasting success of any movement.” —George Monbiot