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.
Gratitudes
Radical Hospitality
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
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
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
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
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
Establishing balance.
Gratitude List:
- 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.
- The music concert at Wrightsville Elementary last night. Those shiny, shiny kids.
- The giant pine tree that someone on the darkest stretch of Cool Creek Road has decorated with lights.
- Breathing prayers. Breathe in gratitude. Breathe out love. Breathe in gratitude. Breathe out peace.
- 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
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!
Playing Nicely Together
This is an old photo. Winky is no longer with us, and I miss her. For some reason, she loved to sleep in the nativity scene. Fred did, too, but now he seems content to curl up underneath the tree.
Gratitude List:
1. Sometimes those kids play so beautifully together. Yesterday afternoon, for almost an hour, they played the dreidel game together without fighting, without yelling. Let’s all try to play nicely together too, shall we?
2. Salmon sunset in the hollow last night.
3. Untangling old patterns. Drawing new ones.
4. Owls. Most mornings I hear them as I am working here quietly. May there always be great horned owls in the wood.
5. The week ahead. May it be filled with satisfying work, powerful ideas, and loving connections.
May we walk in Beauty!
Growth
A caution, from William Stafford:
“If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in
the world and following the wrong god
home, we may miss our star.”
A found poem I put together a year ago.
Gratitude List:
1. Cleaning and shifting in order to make room for Christmas. Changing up the routine. Even Mzee Fred, the old man cat, changed his routine: we couldn’t bear to kick him out last night–he looked so peaceful sleeping under the tree–so we left him there, and he didn’t come yowling up the stairs at 3:30 in typical fashion. I woke him up this morning.
2. Taking a day’s break from the news. I may do it again today. Only a few moments at day’s beginning and day’s end. . . Bringing the Contemplative and the Activist into balance.
3. Pattern and texture and line. I have started exploring the meditative possibilities of Zentangles and doodles again, and am loving the way it helps me notice things, to pay attention. It can get obsessive, as it did the other day when a girl with amazing braids walked into my class–I wanted to sit down and draw them. She had braided several little strands of fishtail braid and then she braided those together. Layers of line and texture.
4. Mercy. Like dawn, like light streaming in, illuminating the dark corners.
5. How we grow together in wisdom. One of us says something, and it sparks a new idea for the other. Together we refine and develop and grow and share. Isn’t it lovely how that works? Thank you for being open to working new wisdom together.
May was walk in Beauty, in Mercy, in Wisdom.
Mockingbird Chronicles 