Author: Beth Weaver-Kreider

How Do You Enter?

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How do you enter? How do you come? Photo of a photo on the wall of a retirement center.

Gratitude List:
1. Doorways
2. Dreams
3. Sleep
4. Sun in the holler
5. Hopeful baking

May we walk in Beauty!

Words for a Golden Friday:
“Who would I be if I didn’t live in a world that hated women?” —Jessica Valenti

“The heart is right to cry
even when the smallest drop of light, of love, is taken away
Perhaps you may kick, moan, scream—in a dignified silence,
but you are right to do so in any fashion…until God returns to you.”
―Hafiz

“All water is holy water.”
―Rajiv Joseph

“The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all.”
―Arundhati Roy

“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness.
Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.”
―Scott Adams

“You know what breaks me, when someone is visibly excited about a feeling or an idea or a hope or a risk taken, and they tell you about it but preface it with: “Sorry, this is dumb but—.”Don’t do that. I don’t know who came here before me, or who conditioned you to think you had to apologize or feel obtuse. But not here. Dream so big it’s silly. Laugh so hard it’s obnoxious. Love so much it’s impossible. And don’t you ever feel unintelligent. And don’t you ever apologize. And don’t you ever shrink so you can squeeze yourself into small places and small minds. Grow. It’s a big world. You fit. I promise.”
―Owen Lindley

“The bond of our common humanity is stronger than our fears and prejudices.” ―Jimmy Carter

“The reality is we have more in common with the people we’re bombing than the people we’re bombing them for.” ―Russell Brand

Season of Oak

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Gratitude of Resistance Twenty-Seven:
Oak leaves. I find myself getting obsessed with oaks at this time of year. The maples are mostly bare, and the walnuts have long ago dropped their leaves. But the oaks muscle through, holding onto their leaves longer than the rest, all shades of brown and ochre and umber and maroon. When we go walking, it’s oak leaves my eyes are finding: chestnut oak, white oak, red oak, pin oak. . .

Wishing you joy on this day of thankfulness for harvest and for beloveds. If family is difficult for you, I wish you friends, peace, quiet reflection, and grace in the minefields of conversations.

May we walk in Beauty!

Time Out of Time

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Gratitude of Resistance Twenty-Six:
This Break. This Rest. This Time out of Time. I will do my work, yes, but I will also sit here in my pajamas and watch the sun come into the holler. I will go to the post office to mail some things, and then walk down to the coffee shop at the bike shop and drink something special. I will have some time when it is only me in my own head. And I will spend beloved time with my beloveds.

May we walk in Beauty!

More Music

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Roses still blooming after the snow.
Sunday evening in Lancaster, in the week after the snow,roses were still blooming, and the hips are swelling. If you don’t put chemicals on your roses, now is the time to harvest the hips for tea.

Gratitude of Resistance Twenty-Five:
The McCaskey Gospel Choir and their amazing director Ms. Stevens. Energy, verve, commitment, delight, depth. . .they brought such a fine musical program to our school yesterday, and finished up by inviting our singing groups up onto the stage to perform the last song with them. Such a rich experience. All day, that moment of their day was one of the things my students were expressing gratitude for.

May we walk in Beauty!

Hymns and Harvest

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A field of waving corn is part of the Field Hymns show now up at the Freiman Stoltzfus Gallery in Lancaster. Now until November 29.

Gratitude Twenty-Four:
The hymn sing at Freiman Stoltzfus’s Gallery in Lancaster. An annual event, Freiman and his friends bring in wooden benches to line the gallery, fill a table with a delicious appetizer feast, and invite musicians and a song leader and poetry readers for an evening of harvest celebration in this space filled with Freiman’s paintings. Looking a painting of a cornfield feels like the painting is hinting at the secret of the universe. Music and good food and beautiful words in the midst of these sublime paintings is a deeply spiritual experience. I fell so blessed and honored to participate.

May we walk in Beauty!

I wrote this poem for this year’s hymn sing (I need to acknowledge that the title is somewhat borrowed from a Jan Richardson poem, “And the Table Will Be Wide”):

The Table is Wide
(for Freiman Stoltzfus)

May your table be wide,
may your arms be laden
with the bounty of harvest,
may your heart be willing.

May your feast be filling,
may your beloved’s eyes
be filled with laughter,
may your table be wide.

May your doors be open,
may strangers be welcome
to sit at your table,
may your feast be filling.

May your heart be willing,
may stories flow like wine
poured into glasses,
may your doors be open.
May your table be wide.



Poetry

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Gratitude of Resistance Twenty-Three:
Poetry. November always feels a little frantic because I add writing a poem a day to my schedule. I have been doing this for so many years that by now, I would feel lost and bereft if I didn’t do this. It’s part of what holds me to my true purpose. I love teaching, and I feel like I belong in this job with these students and these colleagues at this time in my life. But I have chosen Poet as my identity, and whether or not my poetry ever makes an impression in the world, I would no longer be able to do my other work without it. November and April and summer always bring me back to poetic center.

May we walk in Beauty!

Courage and Generosity

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Gratitude of Resistance Twenty-Two: 
The giving hearts of Lancaster people. This is my favorite thing about the Thanksgiving season in this place: The ExtraOrdinary Give. It’s true, we can be pretty divided about many things, but the Lancaster Community Foundation brings us together on the Friday before Thanksgiving for a massive celebration of giving. Nearly five hundred organizations signed up this year, and people from all over the county (and beyond–I’m a Yorker, after all) donate whatever they can afford to these hard-working organizations. This year Lancaster raised 10 million dollars from 23, 545 donors. What an amazing community-building experience. I am proud of my community. And grateful. So, so grateful.

May we all be generous.

I’m doing the Poem-A-Day Chapbook challenge again this year, but on the advice of a friend, I have not been publishing the poems on social media, except as comments on the Poetic Asides site–in the hopes of making the more marketable. This is one I likely will not try to publish because it’s so tied to the Harper Lee quotation, but I like it. Yesterday we read chapter 11 in To Kill a Mockingbird (which is about courage), and Brewer’s poetry prompt was to write a brave poem. It felt like a lovely bit of serendipity.

“Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It’s knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” —Atticus Finch

Courage is
not a gun
not a word
that slices skin
not a look
that tears up
a soul
but a way to begin.

Two Today

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Gratitude of Resistance:
A couple different ones today.
1. Yesterday’s chapel, led by Latinx students. Students from the Dominican, from Puerto Rico, from Colombia, from Guatemala, and from Honduras stood up and spoke about culture and foods and people from their countries. On Wednesday, they had asked students from around campus to write their stories of experiencing discrimination based on their race. In chapel, students stood up and read these stories, as though they were coming from their own voices. It was really powerful.
2. Getting home. Yesterday afternoon was really trying for me. School was let out just before noon for the snow, and the drive home on the highway was a white knuckle experience. We couldn’t make it up Cool Creek Road. But there were beautiful moments in the story. We took refuge for an hour or so in the home of friends who live at the bottom of the ridge. Rochelle gave me coffee in a mug that says: “I love you. That’s all.” Our sons did computer whiz-kid stuff together in their den, and their sweet puppy Ophelia washed my face with kisses and snuggled on my lap. It was a moment of serene and utter safety in the midst of an anxious trip. It gave me courage to get out and try again. We made about 8-10 attempts on the hill until a plow finally came through at 4:30 and we made it up to the top. It was such a relief to get home and snuggle with cats and sit in the living room with the whole family.

Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?

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Gratitude of Resistance Twenty:
Studying Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” with my students in AP Literature. It was one of those experiences where I didn’t spend as much time as I usually like on preparing a lesson plan. I just sort of presented them with the poem, and we read through it, and I worried (like old Alfred himself) that they were going to be so removed from Eliot’s time and world that I would just have to go old-school and explain things. When we’d finished reading, they just went at it. They covered everything–Point of View, sexual anxiety, setting, timidity and uncertainty, social anxiety. . .all of it. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. And as they were walking out, one student asked if we could keep talking about it. Umm–YES!

May we walk in Wisdom.

Step by Step

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Gratitude as Resistance Nineteen:
It only has to be one step at a time. When I look at the map, and the journey just seems so long, and I know that I can’t go all that distance, I need to remember to look down at my feet and just walk it one step at a time. Bit by bit. Piece by piece. Bright leaf by bright leaf. Morning by morning. Challenge by challenge.

May we walk in Beauty!