Gratitudes

Grace and Balance and Beauty

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DSCN8800
Christmas morning dewdrops on a birch tree.

My dreams have been disturbed the last two nights, sleeping in other rooms, other beds.  Last night, I was living by myself in an apartment, and I was moving out, turning over the lease to someone else.  I realized that I was going to have nowhere to live, nowhere to sleep.  I thought of all the many people in the town that I knew, and tried to think of who to call to ask for a place to stay, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  Even when I was talking to people I knew, I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Hey!  Could I stay at your house for a couple days?”  I told myself it was because I am an introvert, but I knew that it is because I couldn’t find the humility.  One of my fatal flaws, I think, is the inability to ask for help when I really need it.

Gratitude List:
1. Grace and balance.  (I have been watching my 9-year-old learn to ride his new ripstick.)
2. Beauty all around.  (I have been taking walks with my 6-year-old, looking for interesting things to photograph.)
3. A misty Christmas Day.
4. Fun playing games with the family.  (3-person chess is exhilarating!  And Ticket to Ride is stressful.)
5. You.  Your stories.  The music you make.  The powerful thoughts you put into the world.  The beauty and grace that you notice and share.  The way you are real.

So much love!

Bold Counsel

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labyrinth

Last night’s sleep was broken and convoluted.  Fredthecat started yowling at 3:30 (he has been much better lately so we had started letting him stay inside), so I went down and helped him out.  That disturbed a somewhat distressing dream: I was in school, in my classroom, and I heard a woman and a young child coming down the hall.  The child was in full tantrum and the woman was yelling.  Just outside my room, I heard the sound of the woman slapping the child.  I rushed to the door to try to intervene.  When I opened it, the child was standing quietly watching the mother, who was incredibly distraught in her abject shame and mortification at what she had done.  That’s when the yowling woke me up.  <Perhaps, the work is to help each other learn to live beyond our shame, so we become less bound to our reactive instincts.>

At 5:30, I was awakened by the sound of a trombone playing the Star Wars theme (we had told them not to come into our room and wake us up before 7:00, but we hadn’t specified that no one should play the trombone downstairs).  The dream that shattered was much sweeter and more tender.  We had gotten a new kitten, bright orange with black stripes, like a tiger.  I remember thinking that this was not an actual tiger cub, but in my waking space, I now re-call the image, and it was a very stocky kitten, and very tiger-like.  I was in the process of thinking of its name when I woke up.

*******

Because the comforting character of my dreams in previous nights had told me zir* name was Conrad, I looked that up this morning.  How incredibly appropriate!  Conrad comes from old German, and means “bold counselor.”  This week, I have been the recipient of such good and wise counsel from people I respect.  I love when the pieces fit together so seamlessly.

*zir: one of options for a non-gendered third person possessive pronoun.  While Conrad’s name is usually used for males, the Conrad presence in my dreams seems to need to not be attached to a gender.

Gratitude List:
1. Sleeping until 7 (sort of) and waking up to the children
2. Bold counsel
3. The Festival of 9 Lessons and Carols, and the new refugee carol
4. More dreams, more images, more stories.
5. The time of rest begins.

May we walk in Peace, in Hope, in Love–and always–in Beauty!

Keep Waiting, Keep Listening

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I took this last summer with a mirror filter with my son’s camera.  Angels everywhere.

Last night’s dreams don’t feel like any place to gather large and thoughtful ideas for the year, but here goes:

  • I got a ticket for parking my dune buggy in a handicapped space.
  • I spent a lot of time waiting for something to happen, in a bar, with someone named Conrad, a quiet and comfortable presence.
  • What looked like a dauntingly enormous tankard of beer was suddenly a quiet cup of steaming coffee in my hand.

Perhaps it was all a reminder to keep waiting, keep listening (like Conrad), accept responsibility for myself even when I don’t realize that I have broken the rules, remain temperate and awake.

Gratitude List:
1. The long Sabbath of Christmas Break, impending.
2. Answering well, then disengaging.
3. The way One Small Boy loves to make Christmas.
4. A life free of boredom.
5. All the creative ways in which people birth their dreams.

As salaam aleikum.  Shalom.  Peace to you.

Sunreturn

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2014 January 010
The sun is not up yet today, and I must be off, but this is from a previous, and snowy, year.  Here comes the sun!

Sunreturn is the name I give it.  After the longest nights, we whirl back to face our star.

Last night’s dream images:

  • Riding on top of the bus–terrifying.  I had to tell the others that I needed to find another way to get where I was going.  I was too afraid of sliding off.  There was one person–I don’t know who he was, though he was substantial and comforting–who let me hold on to him while I was up there.
  • Trying to find route 76.  Also called Trout Highway.  (I don’t know a rural Rt. 76 in waking life, nor a Trout Highway.)
  • Vast and glorious vistas–rolling hills and mountains, like Scotland.  I think I needed to be on top of the bus to really get those views.  Sigh.
  • Getting separated from my friends (because I couldn’t handle sitting on top of the bus), but finding my own way anyway.

Gratitude List:
1. Watching Mandela with people from the school community last night.  The turn-out was a little small, but hopefully it will still spark some good discussions about how to respond to unjust situations.  “This is how it begins.”
2. Sunreturn.  This morning.  In a few minutes.  We begin to whirl back toward the sun, begin to turn our face once again sunward.
3. Christmas Break.  Soon.  Soon.  Soon.
4. Kindness.  It gets a little under-rated, and sort of smooshed under the big calls for Change and Justice.  It gets pushed aside sometimes by Righteous Indignation.  But Kindness needs its own time in the center.
5. How these children are growing and changing and becoming themselves.  It’s terrifying (No!  Where’s my little tyke?) but so beautiful to watch.  Just now, a small person came to tell me something, and I didn’t entirely recognize his face as he spoke.  Some new, older child is emerging.  Even the loss of a teeny tiny baby tooth shifts the way he looks, the way he speaks.

Salaam, Shalom, Peace.

Shortest Day

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NASA photo

Today is Solstice.  I like to picture us flinging our way through space, held in our ellipse by the flaming star at the center of our dance.  In these days we are out at one of the further points of the oval, and our northern face is turned away, mostly, from the sun.  We get to gaze, for these few moments a year, into darkest space, to sense the comfort of the darkness that enfolds our tiny galaxy, to really feel the presence of the stars.  I feel these Solstice days as a hush or a pause, a breath, before we begin our inward whirl again, back into light, back into slightly closer proximity with the sun.

The twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany are often spoken of as high holy days, days in the Christian calendar when people reflect on the darkness and the light, on our place in the cosmos, on the past year and the coming year.  I like to begin those days of deep reflection at the Solstice, to watch my dreams, to see what images and visions come to me, what words become important.  Perhaps what comes is purely random flotsam from the unconscious, or perhaps it’s messages from the Spirit.  Either way, what appears provides me with visual and linguistic hooks on which to hang some of my meditative practice for the coming year.

May your dreams comfort and disturb you in this season.

Gratitude List:
1. The quietly enfolding darkness
2. Dreams.  Quiet.  Waiting.
3. Good counsel.  I am not alone.
4. Prayer.  Praying.  Inter-cession: being “yielded between.”
5. Looking backward.  Looking forward.  Looking inward and outward.  Up and down.  How many ways can I examine the space around me?

May we walk in the light of the stars.

Find the Antidote in the Venom

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summer-2009-160

Gratitude List:
1. “Find the antidote in the venom.” –Rumi quote I found yesterday, but echoed in Pema Chodron’s piece about dealing with chaos.  This has been important to me as I consider the balance of nonreactive non-judgmentalism while trying to establish and maintain firm boundaries.
2. The UNICEF club at LMH–they came up with an idea to bake cookies and sell them to the school’s advisory groups for snack for the last meeting before Christmas break.  It is an excellent educational/fundraising experience for the club, the advisory groups get a delicious treat, and the club advisor discovers that baking cookies doesn’t have to be a frustrating experience.  Everybody wins.
3. The lessons keep coming at the moment I need them.
4. That morning sun
5. The comfort of darkness

As salaam aleikum, shalom, paix, peace. . .

Onions and Roots

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2013 October 108
I know this is garlic and not onions, but the metaphor holds.

Gratitude List:
1. Onions.  All those layers of self to peel through, each crisp paper pulling away as it is shed.
2. Roots.  The roots of the roots.
3. Support.  Again.  There when I need it, from so many corners.
4. Sychronicity.  It has been uncanny in these Advent days how at just the moment that I am experiencing a challenge of some sort, the morning’s spiritual practices are referring to the exact challenge that I am living through.
5. And finally, I think I am ready to say that I am actually grateful for the particular challenges that are currently on my plate.  Likely I have not yet learned from them all that I need to learn, but I think that they are teaching me.  At least I feel myself learning, little by little, how to manage the quick rush of indignation, the wounded wildcat impulse to attack back, the urge to be right, to explain myself. I may not get it the next time, but at least for now, I think I am learning a little.

May we walk in Beauty!

Throw Open the Windows

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candle

If you wish to find rest here below and hereafter, in all circumstances say, “Who am I?” and do not judge anyone. –Abba Joseph to Abba Poemen

Rattle the bars,
turn the screws loose,
throw off a limitation or two
like veils and garments cast to the wind.
Open the windows and doors,
welcome the wild wind,
escape the cage.

Gratitude List:
1. Synchronicity.  When you begin to look for it, you see it everywhere.
2. Advent.  Something new is coming.
3. Weekends.  Time to rest.
4. Solstice.  Soon, soon, soon the sun returns.
5. Poetry in the hands and brains and hearts of ninth graders.  Brilliant.

May our hearts, our hands, our minds be open to what the day brings.

Standing Together

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

WIB

I had written a parable that came to me in the wee hours this morning, but my Chromebook blinked off, and I lost it.  I think it was meant to stay in the heart-realm for now.

Gratitude List:
1. Support. I am particularly grateful for the support of my school administrators in helping to sort out a sticky issue yesterday.  Good folks.  Solid, good folks.  Teachers are much freer to do their jobs with energy and compassion when they know they can trust their administrators.
2. Women in Black.  We stood together again last night against war and violence, after a long hiatus.  Good women (and a man), carrying on the tradition that has been woven together by women of many nations over many years.
3. Parables and fables
4. The 4:30 Epiphany.  If I am going to be awake, it’s nice that it sometimes brings some new awareness.
5. Wind.  Blow out the old and weary.  Bring in the fresh and new.

May we walk in Beauty!

Music and Story

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wordcloud

Gratitude List:
1. More wonderful student music last night at my school–everything from fiery Vivaldi violins to Christmas pieces to a gentle jazzy rendition of Amy Winehouse’s “Valerie.”  I went with my boy, who plays cello and trombone.  He, of course, had to sit right behind the sound booth, so he could watch that action.
2. Mercy.  From the Old Etruscan for “exchange.”  Cynthia Bourgeault speaks of “inter-abiding” with the Divine.  Mercy.
3. Poetry Unit with the 9th Graders.  When I announced that we are starting poetry in my three English 9 classes, I only heard one groan (and that from the obligatory groaner–there’s one in every crowd–I could say, “Hey Gang, time for candy!” and this one would groan).  They left class chatting about the poems they were going to write.  Aaaaah.
4.  The intersection of this world and the real world.  Yesterday when I was dropping off some Scholastic forms at the library, I ran into a friend from online, someone I have only met in person three or four times, but whose heart is dear to me.
5. Story.  Narrative. Literature. The way people’s hearts gather ’round, as at a campfire, when someone says, “Let me tell you a story.”

May we walk in Beauty!