Gratitudes

Standing Together

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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!

I Do Not Want to Leave the Sky

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star

Gratitude List:
1. Ticking of a clock
2. Dark before dawn
3. Cuddlesome children, cuddlesome cat
4. The work.  The Work.
5. Doors, windows, passages.

May we walk in Peace, Salaam, Shalom.

Radical Hospitality

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

2013 December 105
Today is the anniversary of the day when the Paxtang Boys rode in the pre-dawn hours through the last remaining Susquehannock village in Conestoga, PA, and massacred most of the remaining people of the tribe, a quiet group including elderly residents and children.  Fear of the Other, coupled with bombastic and unreasoning rhetoric, turned a group of citizens into a murderous mob.  

In recent weeks, I have heard bombastic and hateful rhetoric toward the perceived Other spewed from national pulpits.  The mob gathers.  In what ways will you and I work in these days to diffuse and redirect the rhetoric, and to offer hopeful and peaceful responses?

Gratitude List:
1. Synchronicity piled upon synchronicity–feels like messages.  Yesterday morning at church, I picked up and read the introduction to a little book titled Radical Hospitality.  It’s about the Benedictine Rule.  After lunch, my father gave me a copy of the John McQuiston book Always We Begin Again, about the Benedictine Rule.  This morning’s Advent Reading is titled “Radical Hospitality.”  I think I ought to be spending some time with St. Benedict this week.
2. Feeling good.  Throughout the day yesterday, I began to feel sicker and sicker.  I had a low fever in the late afternoon and almost called my principal to get me a sub for today, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of another sick day.  I feel much better this morning.  It was just a quick little bug.
3. Citrus.  Tangerines and grapefruit.
4. All the people who are working for justice and peace in the world.  We can respond to the mob with reason and compassion and tenderness.  Repeating history does not have to be an inevitability.  The Paxtang boys do not need to ride again.
5. The light will return.  The light will return.  (It is so dark, but) the light will return.

May we walk in Beauty, in Shalom, in Salaam, in Peace.

Walking Through the Veil of Ego

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Cacao

Gratitude List:
1. Last night’s choral concert at LMH.  Incredible music.  My children were singing the opening lines of “Here We Come A-Caroling” all evening: Ba-ba-da-dum!
2. The pottery mural in the chapel foyer. Tiles that reference cultures around the world.  Clay pots.  Vessels.  Diverse colors, textures, designs.
3. Lights at ends of tunnels.
4. Choices.  I can respond in anger and disgust, or I can choose to give the anger and disgust a nod of acknowledgement, and then say, “What does this situation need of me?  What is my work here?”  So often, an available choice becomes clear when I can walk through the veil of my own ego-based response–I don’t manage this nearly as as often or as gracefully as I would like, but I can be grateful that the opportunities to practice keep appearing.
5. Micron and Prismacolor pens: .005 is my favorite right now for spidery little lines

May we walk in Beauty!  <Ba-ba-da-dum!>

Rock-Tumbler

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Lettuce turnip the beet
Visual pun: Lettuce turnip the beet.  (Heehee.)

Gratitude List:
1. Driving beneath a veritable cloud of gulls as I crossed the River into sunset last evening.
2. Sometimes the world brings the test of the thing I am learning–at the exact right moment.
3. Learning to live round–so you can turn yourself toward all.
4. The “rock-tumbler of community.”  –Cynthia Bourgeault
5. (A reprise from last year) The Motherline:
I am Beth Weaver-Kreider,
daughter of Ruth Slabaugh Weaver,
daughter of Lura Lauver Slabaugh,
daughter of Mary Emma Graybill Lauver,
daughter of Elizabeth Shelley Graybill,
daughter of Lydia Gingrich Shelley,
daughter of Elizabeth Light Gingrich,
daughter of Mary Dohner Light,
daughter of Anna Landis Dohner,
daughter of Fronica Groff Landis,
daughter of Susanna Kendig Orendorf Groff,
daughter of Elsbeth Meili Kundig (?),
daughter of Anna Barbara Bar Meili,
daughter of Barbara Biedermann Bar (born 1580 in Hausen, Switzerland)

Salaama.  Salaam.  Shalom.  Paz. Walk in Peace.

Mouse in the House

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radish
The room is a little dark, and it’s a Chromebook photo, but you can get the idea of the sweetness from this.

Gratitude List:
1. Tabea’s radish mouse
2. Steadily working on the “slow, gentle ripening of the human spirit.”  –Cynthia Bourgeault
3. Distilling thought into words
4. Listening to 9th grade short stories
5. Moderation.  Balance.

As salamu alaykum.  Walk in Peace.  Walk in Beauty.

Heart

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Barn

Gratitude List:
1. This is what I signed up for.  I don’t know quite how else to say it.  It doesn’t sound quite like a gratitude, perhaps.  More a statement of intention.  The gratitude comes from knowing where the priorities lie, I think.  It’s not about being comfortable or happy or at peace.  It’s not about fulfilling the needs of the ego.  It’s about doing the work that I am here to do.  That’s when it feels right.  That’s when it clicks, when I know I am in the right place. I am grateful for that, even if it challenges the equilibrium.
2. Heart Prayers
3. Green
4. The renewed courage and fortitude that dawn brings.
5. Humans of New York.  When I get overwhelmed by the viciousness and bombast of the political rhetoric, I scuttle over to Humans of New York and read the comment threads.  These days they are full of people’s open-hearted offers of help and connection and friendship to people who are in dire need.

As salamu alaykum.  Peace be unto you.

Camel Coaxing

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Stones
Establishing balance.

Gratitude List:

  1. There are people in Mongolia who have a cultural tradition of camel coaxing, a ceremony of singing and tender handling of a mother camel and an orphan, to get the mother to take on the orphan as her own.  That there are people who ritualize and pass on this sort of cultural knowledge from generation to generation–this fills me with great joy.
  2. The music concert at Wrightsville Elementary last night.  Those shiny, shiny kids.
  3. The giant pine tree that someone on the darkest stretch of Cool Creek Road has decorated with lights.
  4. Breathing prayers.  Breathe in gratitude.  Breathe out love.  Breathe in gratitude.  Breathe out peace.
  5. Voices that call for reconciliation and dialogue and peace amidst the clamor.  This morning I am grateful for the voice and vision and courageous leadership of Loren Swartzentruber, the president of Eastern Mennonite University (another southern Christian College), calling for dialogue and sensitivity and action that leads toward greater understanding between people.

As salamu alaykum.  Shalom.  May we walk in Peace.

Preparation

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IMG_0212
Ellis used a fancy app to turn our Christmas tree into a cathedral window.

Gratitude List:
1. The moon and her morning companion.  How brightly beams the morning star.
2. (I don’t really believe in jinxing a good thing, but something in me fears to name this for fear it won’t last.  Here goes, anyway.) SLEEP.  Good sleep.  Long sleep.  While it lasts.
3. Potatoes and mushrooms and broccoli.  Companions, again.  May we accompany each other like the right combination of vegetables, like moon and star.
4. Courage.  My favorite quotation from the Narnia books: “Courage, Dear Heart.”  That was Aslan speaking to Lucy.  Sometimes I hear him say it to me, too.
5. Advent.  Anticipation.  Expectation.  Preparation.  Inner work. Remembering that the Light Returns.

May we walk in Beauty!