Gratitudes

Re-Integrating

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

tattoo

Quiet, thoughtful, tired today. So much to absorb from my three days of learning to keep circles. Now the work is to learn to apply and integrate the practice into my work, into my Work. And after three days of circling with twenty-five others, that specific circle itself must settle in like a seed and germinate within. And now, somehow, I must now reintegrate into the world outside the circle.

I think it would be good for me, sometime in the next two months, to sit in circle with people who are planning to vote for Trump, people who are planning to vote for Clinton, and people who are voting for Stein or Johnson. Perhaps some non-voters should be in there, too. I could not be the Circle Keeper, but I think I would come out of such an experience a much healthier person, hopefully less anxious, less furious.

Gratitude List:
1. Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Spirit
2. Autumn is in the air
3. The circles expand out and outward
4. Poetry, how it says things that cannot articulated in didactic words
5. We are more alike than we are different

May we walk in Beauty!

My Voice and the Owls

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

DSCN8677
Now is the time of the seed-fall, leaf-fall.

“No single voice will be able to take control if everyone in the circle has a voice.” –Kay Pranis

I am learning, these days, about Circle Keeping, holding a space for powerful and intense conversations to occur, where every voice has a chance to be safely heard and listened to. It’s hard work, emotional work, vulnerable work. My school believes in the importance of restoration of relationships during times of conflict, and is spending the resources and teacher time to make sure that a cohort of us from the school become familiar with the process, so that it can be used in times of conflict. I hope that I can begin creating a stronger Circle culture in my classroom. I’ve read about it, and participated in many variations of circles over the years, and even implemented elements in my classrooms, but I know this experience will be very helpful for me.

I needed to leave circle early yesterday in order to celebrate a friend’s wedding. We were in the middle of some very hard work, and I left with quite a lot of anxiety. The topic at hand was about definitions of spirituality, which is a topic close to my heart, but also one that has been difficult for me because of the ways in which my own path diverges from the traditional forms of the faith community where I have situated myself. I didn’t feel that I could be truly, deeply, honest about myself. I was able to speak in one round before I left, but I felt inarticulate and bumbling, and weepy.  And then I had to leave, which should have been a relief, but I think something within me felt a need to engage the topic more head-on, in the way that someone had brought it to the group.

This paragraph right here. I have written parts of it and deleted it six or seven times now. This is the forest where I cannot find words. I wander through and pick up little stones, but none of them feels right to express the dance of distancing and belonging that I do in spiritual circles. Perhaps it is because this is a public forum, and I should write the words in secret. Perhaps it is because the words are like little birds that fly away when I try to catch them.

Gratitude List:
1. Hard conversations that help to bring clarity and deepen understanding
2. Dancing. The wedding last night was beautiful, and the dancing was delightful.
3. Owls. Last night when we got home, three or four screech owls were calling and calling, all over the hollow. This morning, the great horned owl is the one doing the talking. We almost never see them, but I love knowing that we live among owls.
4. When I haven’t found the words I need to express my own truth, but then someone across the circle speaks the very words that I needed.
5. Listening. Listening. Listening.

May we walk in Beauty!

Circle Keeping

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

seed
Same tree as yesterday, another pod beginning to let her seeds fall.

(Totally off-topic: Joss just said, “Mom, you know why my socks go to church?”
Me: “I don’t know. Why?”
Joss: “Because they’re holey.”)

The Circle Keeper places a canvas bag of small pieces of driftwood on the floor beside the center table. One by one, around the circle, the people come to the table and arrange wood. Everyone is silent, except for occasional chuckles and shuffling.  We are not to speak, not to stop until everyone in the circle passes and accepts what has been set up in the center.

First round. We’re tentative, building on each others’ ideas, adding a piece or two at a time. Suddenly someone dumps the bag on the table, and pieces scatter. What to do now? Are we angry? This is just a game. Still, someone has shifted the balance, upset the order. Some people are looking relieved that the order that was being enforced upon the pieces is now freed.

Second round. People re-build, tear down, rebuild. Set pieces under the table. Put them all in the bag but one. Dump them out again. Put one back in the bag. The floor comes into play. We gather and separate the wood. We build bridges and destroy them. We make patterns and sweep away patterns.

Third round, or maybe fourth by now. A circle of wood forms. Shifts, becomes almost a spiral, then a yin/yang. The table is set aside. We’re entirely on the floor. A smiling face emerges. Laughter. Clapping. Everyone passes around the room.

It’s not the meaning I would have chosen. It’s too orderly, too specifically a sign for me. I think it’s way too orderly for the Chaos and Loki folks on the other side of the circle. It’s not the fluid beauty that some of the other folks wanted. Still, I am left feeling like I had my part to play in the creation of this. And it does represent us as a group–in the process of the exercise, we HAVE become a group. We have made choices together, we have made assumptions about each other and shattered those assumptions or shifted them to something deeper. We have laughed together, grinned at each other, watched each other carefully, thought about our own internal reactions. The final image in the center is a wobbly circle, representing us, and with a quirk of a smile that adds a little mischief, which is who we are, too. This is who we will be for three days together.

Gratitude List:
1. The Circle Keeper. Circle Keepers, formal and informal. Wise women.
2. Holding paradoxes. Leaning into ambiguity.
3. Looking through the others’ eyes. Shifting perspective.
4. This boy, who watches and notices, who sees when another child is being mistreated, who cannot help but speak up. Such a balance in him between the technological and the human. He loves his numbers, but he loves people, too.
5. Omelet for lunch yesterday. I think I’ll reprise that one today.

May we walk in Beauty!

Say a Blessing for Seeds

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

imag1997
And now is the time for seed to burst forth.

We have arrived at Autumn Equinox, one of those exquisite balance points of the year cycle, the moment of shift in the whirl around our star. The light has been shifting, coming in at a slant that sets everything atwinkle. Every dusk, hundreds of robins sail into hollow and set up a clatter and cacophony in the bamboo grove. The geese are going, cormorants winging their way, thousands of feet above us, or angling down to the River for a rest. Seeds burst forth.

Say a blessing for the seeds, those packets of potential that burst from the ripened fruits of the flower buds and fall to earth, some to be trampled by passing feet, some to be eaten–fuel for the journeys of the little birds or stocked up by small animals as fat for the coming cold.  And some to fall into the rich soil to wait through the winter until it is time to Become.

How has your own ripening been? What is the seed within you at this moment? What is the hopeful little bundle of potential that is waiting to fall, to be carried by the winds and the waves and the creatures that pass, to tumble into the soil of your future self? What has ripened within you, and what will you release, knowing it may grow and bear its own fruit, or may become food for others? What of yourself to you give to this season?  Say a blessing for the seeds.

Gratitude List:
1. Little things. A little help at just the right moment. Little things are sometimes big things.
2. Commiseration. I cannot walk these coming days alone. I do not want to give in to despair or complaining, but having others who share my worry, who hold the bowl of these days with such tenderness, helps me not to feel alone in my angst. Let’s help each other to hold this one. Sigh together. Be the people for the moment–together.
3. Blue. I keep noticing the cobalt reflection beneath the clouds these mornings, not the Maryblue that shines through from sky, but a shining cobalt underneath, mingled with the Prussian Blue and Indigo of the shadows. I think it must be light reflecting in an autumnal slant onto the water of the cloud.  Whatever creates it, it’s a new way to experience blue, and I am grateful to see it.
4. Crows. I want to be a crow, diving fearlessly into wind, wings akimbo and a shout of joy in my throat.
5. New things to learn. Today I am beginning a three-day workshop/class with the Center for Community Peacemaking on Restorative Circles, a way of working with conflict in communities. I love that I work in a school that is putting forth the resources to train its teachers in this work, and I am honored to be doing this.

May we walk in Beauty!

Medicine for the Moment

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

cairns

Where is the medicine for this moment?

These are crass and ironic times, when the tragedies of millions of lives, of people fleeing their homes in terror, are reduced to a simplistic candy analogy. Where is the medicine?

When day after day after horrific day, another black man lies dead in the streets, the evidence of his murder caught on camera, and no one is brought to justice.  Where is the medicine?

When the nations of people who first lived upon this land call for a halt to the destruction of the land and water, and the response is to bulldoze the graves of their ancestors. Where is the medicine?

The tides of hate and selfishness and division have risen, and those who See must come together in these times to pray, to hold council, to stand against all that tears at the fabric of our common humanity. When history looks back at us, let it not be said that we sat quietly by while our sisters and brothers were subjected to hate and horror and terror.

Today is the International Day of Peace.  What will be your prayer for peace today? How will you put hands and feet on your prayer? What medicine will you be for this moment?

Gratitude List:
1. The praying mantis who hung upside down with her hands held way out before her, like she was waiting for high fives.
2. Those golden clouds at dusk last night.
3. Young possum with a pink nose and white mask and black twinkly eyes, out searching for late night snacks.
4. Daily practice.
5. The peacebuilders. You. All of us together, working it out, watching, working. We are not alone.

May we walk in Beauty!

Open Heart

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

imag1867
Last week, we met this teeny tiny turtle–a snapper the size of a half dollar–on the sidewalk into the school. We set him in the grass where he would be safer from the many feet that would be thundering through during the coming day.

“It can hurt to go through life with your heart open, but not as much as it does to go through life with your heart closed.” –Jim Doty

The bud always opens toward decay,
toward falling, the fragile bits within
slipping off their tiny moorings,
sifting downward, petals drooping,
dropping to the ground below,
offering beauty and a lingering aroma
in the briefest span.

The bud which never opens
also lives toward decay and rot
but never senses sun-warm petals,
never knows the draw of butterfly,
the tickle of the bee, never feels
the moment of release, of
settling to earth.

Gratitude List:
1. Teeny tiny turtles
2. Having enough: enough sleep, enough love, enough time, enough of what we need to get by.
3. Spoken word poetry–always inspiring
4. Crickets, heartbeats
5. Believing in the good

May we walk in Beauty!

Here Comes the Rain Again

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

2013 August 339

Today’s gratitude list brought to you by song titles, in honor of that water coming down from the sky. It has been nearly two months without appreciable rain in the holler. The began at 3:30. May it continue.

Gratitude List:
1. Here comes the rain again
2. Early morning rain
3. Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head
4. Buckets of rain
5. Rain down

May we walk in Beauty, in Rain!

Sun and Sunflowers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

sun-and-flowers

This river keeps rolling
rushing beneath me
even when my small boat
rests still on the water
quiet and open

Gratitude List:
1. Good Parenting is alive and well. Yesterday at Hersheypark, in the claustrophobic middle of the masses, where exhausted, grouchy parents are trying to deal with exhausted, grouchy children, I did not expect to so consistently witness such tender and attentive parenting. The whole point of going to an amusement part as a family is to have fun together, and mostly I saw adults eagerly sharing and creating a fun experience for their children.
2. Watching a child conquer his fears by going on a slightly scary roller coaster. “Let’s do that one again!”
3. Oak and sycamore and larch. The beautiful old trees at the park.
4. Seeing the world from high above. Perspective.
5. Doing the inner work. There is always a new challenge, a new practice, a new perspective to incorporate.

May we walk in Beauty!

Remembering Old Friends

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

imag1857
This is one of the Lehmans’ fields, just about a week ago. Now their heads are all bowed, the petals have faded and dried up, and the seeds are filling in.

Last night I went to the viewing for a childhood friend of mine. When we moved to Pennsylvania when I was ten years old, Linda and her family lived about a mile away from us–a nice bike ride–and our families went to the same church.  Linda was tall and sort of shy; I was short and chatty. I remember hanging out in her family’s cool basement, reading each other the Dear Abby column from old newspapers, playing with her brother’s chemistry set (I think we wanted to make something blow up–what kid with a chemistry set doesn’t?), and riding our bikes down over the field to the Green Dragon yard sale and buying stuffed animals that our mothers wouldn’t let into the house.

We went to different high schools, but we remained friends, going to youth group together, and writing each other long notes during the week that we would give to each other to read each Sunday at church. On really cold winter afternoons, a bunch of us would head over to Leroy and Beulah’s pond for raucous games of MudSucker, a version of ice hockey with players on skates or in big old boots, and lots of body checking and laughter.

Linda was a loyal and gentle friend, always present in conversation, often smiling, thoughtful, and lots of fun to be with.

After high school, our lives went different ways, and I never made the effort to get back together. We each made attempts here and there to connect, but somehow we never managed to maintain the connection.  Every once in a while, I would wonder where she was, how she was doing. I reconnected with our friend Stacey a couple years ago on Facebook, and she at least updated me on Linda, but I still didn’t make the extra effort to get her number, to call her, to see her again.

This is a story about regret. I am trying to learn to sit with these crunchy emotions, to welcome them into my guesthouse (to use Rumi’s phrase). If I don’t sit with the tough emotions and listen to the stories they have for me, they get in anyway, and then they barrel around and destroy things. Regret turns to flaming shame and eats all the food in the house. Perhaps if I invite them in for a while, just to talk, and listen to the stories they have to tell me, I can learn something about myself and about the past.

This is a story about friendship. Treasure your friendships in your heart. Know that the friends you make will be there, ready to pick up the threads again when you reconnect. But never waver at a chance to re-connect, to make contact. Our friends become part of us, they shape and mold us in ways we can’t always name. I could vow to never again take a friendship for granted, to never completely lose touch again with people I have loved, but I think it is the way of the world, that people connect and move on, and the contact fades. I can, however, use this moment to remember the ways in which my friends over the years have blessed and changed me, and to be ready, whenever the moment presents itself, to take the time and attention to reconnect, to make that extra effort.

Gratitude List:
1. This weather. Yesterday’s weather was perfect. Thermal Delight.
2. Pawpaws. Like custardy mangoes. I really need to plant me a pawpaw tree.
3. Asian pears. For lunch, I have been eating a soft and tender pawpaw, and then a crisp and crunchy pear. Perfect crunch, perfect sweet tang.
4. Old friends. Even (or especially) in the painful times of death, it is nice to reconnect with friends I have known and loved long ago.
5. Fridays. Faculty hymn sing, a schedule that sort of teaches itself, and anticipating Saturday with the family. Rest. Breathing. Rejuvenating. (I will love Monday, too, when it comes.)

May we walk in Beauty!

Where Does Coyote Go?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

chicken-of-the-woods
Hen of the Woods, Halifax,PA. Altered by Dreamscope.

Where does coyote go to rest in these hills and mountains
cross-hatched by houses and fields of corn and soy?
Where does he lay his head? Where does vixen raise her family?
Where does she hide her young ones?
Where do they find a patch of sun to play in?

Coyote brought us losses. We breathe a sigh in memory
of the soft feathers and sweet cluckings of our little flock.
Perhaps we drew him here with hens, and when they were spent,
he stayed on for fatty groundhog and the tenderness of rabbit.
An we breathe a sigh of gratitude for that.
If only now he brought us rain.

(I’m not sure quite what that is–I think it might work better in a prosey form, but I have become accustomed to lining out my thoughts like poems, considering where I want to breathe in the spaces of the phrase.)

Gratitude List:
1. Sleeping until just minutes before the alarm went off. I think I must have slept even more deeply last night.
2. Watching my children grow and learn and become themselves. Sometimes when they start to talk about what they are learning or thinking about, I find myself watching them from outside myself, marveling at these creatures that I know so intimately and that I do not know at all. Where have they come from?
3. My colleagues. Yesterday after a meeting about our accreditation process, one of the other teachers said to me that he found it interesting that no one in the meeting seemed discouraged or frustrated. Anyone can tell you that the beginning of an accreditation process can seem daunting at best. But he was right–the team seemed cheerful and eager. The administrative folks who are holding us through this and guiding the process are walking with us and brainstorming ways to streamline the process even as we take it seriously and fulfill the work of it thoroughly.
4. This steely grey moment before dawn bounds over the hill, when everything gets just a little quieter, even the crickets, and the trees are silhouetted against the sky.
5. My Book of Days (it sounds better than “bullet journal”) Fishing around inside myself for that fifth point, I keep circling around to my little daybook again, abandoning it because I wrote about it a couple days ago, and picking it up again. I have always had a sort of anxious relationship to calendar-keeping, finding it difficult to conceptualize future time, struggling to commit to future dates because the future is so fluid and I don’t want to nail it down. Somehow the little system that I have begun to use in the last week has helped me to visualize and conceptualize the framework of the future. I feel like I have organized the garage.

May we walk in Beauty!