Gratitudes

Dear Friends

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I love this tree

Dear friends, dear friends,
Can I tell you how I feel?
You have given me such blessing.
I love you so.
(Sing to the old tune of “Soul Cake”)

Try this:
Sit in a circle at dusk with people you love.
Let it be when the swifts are flying.
Let there be a catbird with a whiskery voice in a spruce tree.
Speak your stories into the bowl of the space between you:
stories like a rich meal, the bitter, the savory, the sweet.
Let it get dark.  The darkness will listen, too.
You can hear people listening when you speak in the dark.
You may light a candle if you have a candle.
Laugh together.  Cry.
Let there be occasional questions,
occasional grunts, occasional exclamations of oh-I-hear-that!
Make a meal of the stories before you,
and eat your fill. Be nourished.
Be together in your stories.
Know that all these stories are your story, too.
Let there be a benediction,
words sung or spoken into the full dark,
accompanied by the chittering of bats,
good words to keep you always
in this circle where you belong.

Gratitude List:
1. Circles
2. Swifts and bats
3. Children obsessed with the game that they have created between them.
4. Stories.  All of them.  Holding them together. The inspiration of stories.
5. Circles.  Did I say circles?

Much love.  May we walk in Beauty.  May we walk in Love.
May we live in the center of our stories

Almost Paradise

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

almost paradise

What a gift it is to have lifetime friends, people you can sit with and say, “Remember when you said. . .?  Remember what she did. . .?  Remember how he used to always. . .?”

People you can look in the eye and see not only a reflection of who you are in this moment, but also a reflection of who you have been–a year ago, five, ten, twenty.

People who know too much about you, who remember you before you settled adulthood’s masks into place, and they still love you, love you more for who you’ve been and who you’ve become.

People you can look at and see the butterfly of the now, but in whom can you identify the caterpillar of the past–and you love the butterfly, and the caterpillar, too.

People who know just which questions to ask.

People who help you live in this moment–with their laughter, their thoughtful eyes, their conversation.  People who draw you into the realm of memory.  People who help you envision the future.  People who help you to live in all those layers at once.

Gratitude List:
1. Living in those layers of time (past, present, future) with people I love and trust
2. People who know my warts and rough edges and love me anyway
3. The way the next generation at reunions also gathers with ease and comfort, enjoying each other
4. Peaches and ice cream
5. Crisp, cool mornings

May we walk in Beauty!

Livin’ in an Amish Paradise

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Amishparadise
Spending the weekend with college friends at the Amish Paradise Vacation Home in Leacock, PA.  I feel like a tourist in my own territory.  It’s like we’re all one family gathered at Grandma’s house for the weekend, only there’s no common Grandma.

Gratitude List:
1. (What do you hear?) A rooster singing morning matins. Chickadee.  Cars out on 30.  Whoosh of an early morning biker.
2. (What is satisfying?) Sitting around the dining room table like we used to do, how the conversation just gets going, the serious ideas, the laughter, the kids.
3. (What do you see?) Coppery leaves of maple, shining green eyes of my early morning companion.
4. (Where does hope reside?) In re-framing the conversations.  In holding willfully and fiercely to hopes and ideals and dreams of what-may-be.
5. (What are the words for the day?) Memory, laughter, love, children, conversation, listening, friendship, family.

May we walk in Beauty!

Black Lives Matter

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

blm1 blm2

It was heartening to see so many people gathered for the vigil in Lancaster yesterday.  I couldn’t hear the speakers very well–my ears have trouble sorting sound–but I caught bits and pieces, and I could see that people were deeply moved by the speeches.  Afterward, a young black woman stood up on one of the benches and gave an incredibly powerful performance of poem.  I was glad to see colleagues and students there, as well as many folks from Mennonite churches and the local peace and justice organizations.

Black Lives Matter
Don’t let that threaten you.
That doesn’t mean that yours doesn’t, too.
It’s a way of saying that black people should get an equal portion of protection and peace at this great big banquet table.

It means that a traffic stop should be a traffic stop.  Routine.  “Oh yeah, Officer, I forgot to put my inspection sticker on there.  I’ll do it as soon as I get home.”  And a “There you go, Son–just a warning this time, but you go home and fix it up right now, or next time I’ll have to give you a fine.”

Not a broken-tail-light, I’m afraid you’re going to shoot me, so the demon of terror-of-young-black-men pulls my trigger and kills you in front of your lover and a child.

When that has become the routine, it’s time for some big words on a page, easy to read, easy to speak, easy to call out at a rally:  Black Lives Matter.

Of course yours matters, too.  That’s a given. We know that all lives do.
Let’s just focus on keeping the black lives alive for a while, okay?
Then when it looks like all lives truly DO matter here,
then we’ll go back to saying that all of them do.
When it’s true.

Gratitude List:
1. Communities rallying to say to stand up for Black Lives.  Please don’t let the momentum stop here, don’t let Philando Castile and Alton Sterling become quiet footnotes.  Say their names.  Believe so deeply that all lives matter that you can walk with those whose lives are threatened and anxious because of the color of their skin.  Black Lives Matter.
2. Good conversation with a dear friend.
3.  Looking forward to several days with my college friends.  They ground me and help me to re-situate myself in the long timeline.
4. The way the light shone over the ridge as I was driving home last evening.  The sparkle on the fields.  A different sort of evening sparkle than we get in the hollow.
5. Exploring semantic implications.  Words.  Meanings.

May we walk in Beauty!

Say Their Names

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Sycamore

baby phoebes

I am a little obsessed with the panorama function on my camera lately.  Yesterday, I realized it just might help me to portray a little bit of the glory that is our friendly Sycamore, the way she shades the house, the way the light shines in, the way she seems to fill the hollow.

And three infant phoebes try to manage the heat.  Their parents are incredibly attentive, so I am not worried about their survival in this heat wave–they have plenty of insects and lots of water.  This is the second phoebe brood this summer in the barn.

We have such Work ahead of us in these days.
We cannot afford to sacrifice ourselves to the whirlpools of despair and rage.
How can I–today, in this moment–respond to my sadness and anger in ways that help to create healing?

I will say their names.  Alton Sterling.  Philando Castile.
And then I will say my own name, in response.  I will pledge to show up.  I will listen to the voices of those who have the most at stake in this story.  I will stand, at least in spirit, with those who stand.  I will listen more than I speak.  I will keep looking inside myself, to notice my own unacknowledged biases and stereotypes and fears. I will not make excuses for myself.  I will own my role.  I will use what power I have to amplify the voices that must be heard.  And I will not lose heart, not lose hope, not lose will.

If you are finding it hard to cope with the news, listen to Mr. Rogers talk about helpers, or read Clarissa Pinkola Estes on what we were made for (click on their names).

May we do what we can to be part of the solution rather than a continuing part of the problem.

Gratitude List:
1. Voices that lead with wisdom and compassion.  Listen.
2. Communities of people who seek a better way. Participate.
3. Webs that hold us together through prayer and concern.  Connect.
4. Shining moments of Beauty.  Observe.
5. The possibility of a more just future.  Envision.

May we walk in Beauty.

Wide and Close

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

JClabyrinth

Panorama photos provide interesting, and often slightly disturbing, perspectives.  This one captures the way the labyrinth at the Jesuit Center is in a little protected space, but also how it has a view of both the monastery and the grounds.  But the benches on either side of this photo are placed next to each other, on either side of the entrance to the labyrinth.

Gratitude List:
1. Learning a new thing.  I have been making empanadas, expanding my dough repertoire.
2. This kiddo is cutting and pasting magazine pictures, making his own little book of pictures he likes.
3. Reading with children.  This is connected to visceral memory from my childhood.  I sometimes say that I became an elementary school teacher years ago just so I could read to kids like my mother read to us.  Then I had kids so I could read to kids (there may have been some other reasons).  I cannot read CS Lewis or JRR Tolkien without hearing my mother’s voice.  My children will not be able to read Redwall without hearing my “interesting” attempts at various accents.  I sit on the couch, and no matter how hot it is, they snuggle under my wings.
4. Summer’s pacing.
5. Goldfinch Farm Crew!

May we walk in Beauty!

A Little Satisfaction

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

deltadawnsundial

One of the words that came flying through the air to me while I was at the monastery was satisfaction.  One morning, I went out into the western cloister to write and watch the day.  I began brainstorming for a project that has been waiting within me like a seed, like an egg, like a cocoon.  The words and ideas started to come in a rush, then a flood.  I rode the wave for a while, and then I sat back and took a breath, and said, “This is so satisfying!”  Later that afternoon, it happened again as I was working on a series of collages.  I got so deeply involved in piecing images and words together that I stopped paying attention to what was in my head.  When I came back to myself, I again felt the word satisfaction bumping about inside my spirit.

What makes you satisfied? It’s not the same as happiness, I think–though being satisfied makes me happy.  For me, it’s the feeling of being in tune with my purpose, of being so involved in the moment that the voices are stilled, the voices that beg me to be this or that, to do more and better, to appear to be something I am not.

May some moment in your day bring you real satisfaction.  Let’s nurture those moments.

Gratitude List:
1. Memory
2. Dream
3, Vision
4. Aspiration
5. This Moment

May we walk in Beauty!

Art, Work, Play, Prayer, Breathing: Beauty!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

sundial

Gratitude List:
1. Art
2. Play
3. Prayer
4. Work
5. Breathing

May we walk in Beauty!

Love and Hope

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

milkweed1  Love and Hope  eggses

“Where there is love, there is life.”  –Mahatma Gandhi

Today is US Independence Day:
May your celebrations today be filled with joyful moments with people you truly See you.

May we as a people live up to the ideals we set for ourselves, the dreams we claim to offer, and
the maturity that independence demands.

Here is your assignment for this morning, class: Set a timer for ten minutes.  Write a poem or an essay about what this day means to you without using the words freedom, values, ideals, dream, democracy, independence, liberty.  (Yes, I broke those rules in the little blessing I wrote up there–that’s what gave me this idea.)

Perhaps it is a function of the lazy rabbit-trail-filled brain-meanderings of summer, but a warning: Today’s gratitude list is rife with parenthetical notations.  I could not help myself, but I am not apologizing, nor am I amending.

Gratitude List:
1. I still haven’t seen one this season, but Jon keeps seeing them, and it makes me happy to know that they live here, too: black snakes.  They’re earnest and secretive, mysterious.
2. Yesterday I wrote about prayer, and a new and dear friend wrote to me of the Sufi concept of prayer as “opening to the divine radiance.” I looked it up, and my preliminary searches have found references to the phrase “Divine Radiance” in Muslim, Christian, and Jewish discussions of prayer.  This brings me great joy.  (And it was a lovely synchronicity, because I read her note just after a conversation with my parents, in which we had discussed Sufi mysticism, in which my father had been reading Hafiz poems to me. Am I not fortunate to have such parents? There’s a bonus gratitude thrown in for the morning.)
3. I love the charge in the air on a morning that is waiting for rain.
4. All the flowers.  In my parents’ (yes, there they are again) garden: deep red gloriosa lily with yellow tips, fluffy white hydrangea, deep purple and dusky rose lisianthus (because my name is Elizabeth Ann, I have this feeling that the Lizzy-Ann flower is personal to me), deep magenta rose, yellow day lily, violet clematis.  Along the roadsides, thousands of blue-eyed chicory (we used to call them cornflowers–I like both names), the elegant dusty green and golden-tipped heads of hag’s taper (mullein, but I like the common name), shaggy pink balls of milkweed that haven’t yet been mowed down (please let them stay!), bright orange day lilies, the delicate lace of Queen Anne, violet carpets of vetch, bright golden patches of buttercup.
5. Community conversations

May we walk–like the snakes, like the flowers, like the birds–in Beauty, in Wisdom, in Prayer.

Scattering Prayers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

milkweed  lawnlabyrinth
Scattering Milkweed seeds like prayers.

Yesterday I mowed a labyrinth into the grassy patch between the barn and the greenhouse.  The boys and I took a basket of milkweed pods that we had gathered last fall, and spiraled our way into the center of the labyrinth, where we scattered the the fluff like prayers.  Prayers for the monarchs, for the future of these children and the planet that supports them, for the people I carry in my heart.  For you.  For me.  For transformation, and for compassion and for love.  For Beauty, and for fun.

Gratitude List:
1. That wren out there reminding me to keeping listening, keep talking, keep the conversation going.
2. Being in a body.  These morning aches, this slightly blurry vision, this stuffy head–it’s all part of being in the body, along with tastebuds, sensations of cool breezes and warm sweaters, satisfying stretches.
3. Prayers.  I am re-establishing my connection to the word prayer.  I will keep using my other words, too–carrying stones, casting webs, holding the bowl–but prayer is a strong universal signifier for being mindful and concerned, and I am finding that I am choosing it more often to represent what I do, wordless as it so often is.
4. That tiger swallowtail that slipped like a sunbeam down the green slope of the ridge yesterday.
5. Compassion, and all the places you find it.

May we walk in Beauty!