Gratitudes

Poem: Advent 5

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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Birds are flying
in the quiet light
above the altar.

Our tears fall with the sound  of rustling wings,
the child sleeps in his mother’s arms,
and an old woman prays for the light to dawn.

For weeks now
we have walked
through our burning cities.

We have stepped carefully
among our shattered shards,
pieced our brokenness together,

and held the birds of despair and rage
captive in the cage of our hearts.

Our pens have bled anguish
onto the page.

Herod will go on
to murder Rachel’s children.

A sword will pierce your heart.

Where is the comfort
promised in the ancient songs?

Still

still

still

There is light.
There is breath.

Our pages have taken wing.
The birds fly between rays of sun
shining through sea glass
falling upon the altar.

The mother hands her baby
to the old ones for their blessing.

“Now,” sings the old man,
“now I can depart in peace.”

Gratitude List:
1. The impossible green of the moss on the bricks
2. Epiphany is coming
3. A Sunday afternoon without the Monday-ness that usually encroaches
4. Taking it one step at a time
5. Holding stories in the bowl of the heart

May we walk in Beauty!

A Poem Should Be

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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After my long post the other day about meaning in poetry, I keep hearing Archibald MacLeish’s line in my head: “A poem should not mean but be.”

And Grace Paley’s “Responsibility.”

I am in the midst of trying to bring to birth a poem that I think might be titled “The Shaman’s Lexicon.”  Perhaps I need to write my own “Ars Poetica,” my own “Responsibility.” Getting caught up in the whirlwind of a compelling poetic idea reminds me again that despite the thought-provoking analysis of even the most careful critics, when it comes down to it, writing poetry is an art, and that like a visual artist, a poet is often following the trail of an obsessive idea.  The process is less about seeking meaning, perhaps, and more about relieving the curiosity of what lies beyond the next turning.

Gratitude List:
1. A Christmas Carol. Joss discovered Grandma Kreider’s unabridged copy with gorgeous illustrations and asked Jon to read it to him.  They spent hours with it, Jon explaining some of the denser bits and skipping some of the longer bits of of description, and finally made it through. Joss was engrossed.  I’ll admit to openly weeping when the Spirit of Christmas Future showed Scrooge the Cratchit house after the death of Tiny Tim.  I hope we can make that a tradition.  Now I am going to try to finish The Best Christmas Pageant Ever with them today.
2. Dawn in the hollow, sun shining on frost.  The chickens used to get me up and out to see it every day.  Now, most days, I am on the road before the dawn spreads her rosy fingers over the sky, and I have bequeathed the chickens to friend who will be a less distracted caretaker.  So I am grateful this morning for the wee sleekit mousie who needed repatriation in the upper fields.
3. Advice Rebound: I told a friend the other day, in that advice-giving tone that I can’t seem to make myself stop using: “You need to take a break, carve out time just for yourself.” I could feel those words bouncing back on me as I said them.
4. Dreams.  I am gleaning my dreams for the messages of the year, here in the bowl of Twelvenight.
5. The murmurings and mutterings of the children playing together in the background.

May we walk in Beauty!

I Will Get to You

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On paging through Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americans:

I had to put the book down
and walk away,
the fire of it still running
up and down my spine

lest I fall into the pit of poetry
and lose myself there for the day,
for the year,
lose my family,
time,
direction.

Even this,
these black marks on the page,
these birds’ feet in the snow,
quiver on my skin
like coals.

***

Perhaps it’s the result of going so suddenly from teaching to resting, but now my brain is filling up with images and ideas, like a room crowded with children all clamoring for my attention.  Ah!  There’s the image: sometimes when class begins, I suddenly find myself in the center of a crowd of earnest and intent students all needing something from me–a pass, a signature, an explanation, a bit of comfort–and I cannot meet every need at once, but I want to look everyone in the eye and say, “I’ll get to you,” knowing that I haven’t the time or the energy to entirely fulfill the needs they carry.  Today, I opened that book, and suddenly the new poems and writing ideas that I have been putting off for so many weeks now have come crowding about me, begging for passes and signatures and permission to go get a drink.  Were I single and childless, I would make this a day of delicious writing, but I’ll need to put these voices off for just a little while yet.  I’ll get to you, Bright Ones.  I promise I will do my best.

 

Gratitude List:
1. The dimple in Ellis’s chin.  Where did that come from?  I don’t think that the Weaver or the Kreiders have chin-dimples.  Do they?  And why is it so endearing?
2. The poetry of Mara Eve Robbins, which fills me with delight and sadness, tears me up and heals me, whichever I need at the moment–her words always seem to come at just the right time, to be just the right thing.
3.  The writing of Barbara Kingsolver.  Why do I always take so long to get started on her books?  She writes with equal power of both internal and external landscapes.  I am listening to Flight Behavior these days, and all around me now I hear the whispers of butterfly wings.
4. The best Christmas ever.  That’s what the boys keep saying, and who am I to disagree?
5.  Dreams.  Listening.

May we walk in Beauty!

Hush

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The sun is setting out of the hollow now on this day before the the shortest night.  At about this time tomorrow (6:03 EST to be exact), we reach our furthest point on the outbreath of this trip around the sun.

Pause. Regroup.  A moment of holy hush.

These are the days for dreaming and contemplation, for listening for the messages.

What words, what images, will you glean from your dreamings to take with you into the coming wheel around the year?

 

Gratitude List:
1. The night has secrets and messages to offer.
2. Sunreturn is upon us.  I have made it to the center of another season of darkness. Now for the journey back around.
3. Anticipation
4. People believing that their work makes a difference.  It does, you know.
5. Blessings. Benedictions. Beannacht.

May we walk in Beauty.

After Strand

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Here is a poem, written after Mark Strand’s “From a Litany”:

Here in the hush before morning,
I praise the coming dawn which will push back the curtain of night.
I praise the secret shadows in the bamboo.
I praise the first brave bird to sing.
I praise the soft sighs of the cat curled beside the vents.
I praise the tang of pine entering my body through breath.
I praise the clatter of rain.
I praise the fortitude of the early-riser, driving up the hill to work.
I praise the quiet earthworms, deep in the hollows of warm earth below.
I praise the way words tumble from mouth and pen and keyboard.
I praise the thunder of words, their flood and their tempest.
I praise the silent words whispered at midnight,
I praise the tattered remnant of dreams that hover about me like a halo.
I praise the storm of the day as it approaches,
with all its wildness and adventure.

Gratitude List:
1.  Heat!  A new furnace came yesterday, earlier than projected, and we are warm again. This new one sounds different, and the house has a new winter voice.
2.  The deep, secret green of the ferns by Cabin Creek, after everything else has turned brittle and brown, this green holds on.
3.  That verse in Brian Wren’s song “Joyful is the Dark”:

Joyful is the dark Spirit of the deep,
winging wildly o’er the world’s creation,
silken sheen of midnight
plumage black and bright,
swooping with the beauty of a raven.

The whole song, actually.  In these last days before sun-return, the darkness begins to feel claustrophobic.  This keeps the darkness broad and wild and open.
4.  Being part of a community that actively practices restorative justice, and discusses it together.  I am constantly inspired by my colleagues.
5.  The delight of children anticipating Christmas.  I love being on the parental end of the holiday.

May we walk in Beauty!

Emerging

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Gratitude List:
1. All of you who are priestess/priests to me, lights in the shadowy places, warm currents in cold places.
2. The Kissing Hand–thanks to Anne for reminding me of this–it’s helping the mama as well as the littles.
3. Audio books–it’s not quite like reading a novel, but it satisfies my craving for story on the ride to school at a time when I have no time for extracurricular reading.
4. The power of the people
5. The winds of change

May we walk in Beauty!

Scandalous Grace

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Sometimes it just feels good to settle into the grumpy places, like a hen, and brood a bit. Then when the time is right, you step out into the sunshine, shake the dust out of your feathers, and run with the flock.

We live in the layers. Part of me wants to be so evolved and conscious in my living that I don’t get into the occasional grumpy snit, that I don’t lose my temper and holler at my kids, that I don’t go on a rant with no reasonable basis in facts, that I don’t buy myself a new pair of boots just for the fleeting happiness of new stuff. But there’s a paradox in there, I think. To actually embrace my humanness, to live in the layered reality of being a being in a body right now, I have to experience those bits of me that I am a little sheepish or ashamed about. Part of the mystery and the delight of being human is the life in the layers–we can be seeking to understand the deep pools of our emotions and the far-reaching paths of spirit and still, when it comes down to it, these are the clothes we wear, these human clothes, and sometimes the emotional bits get a little messy.

Perhaps it’s also partially a function of the Swiss/German DNA that I carry in my human clothing. Even while I am having a rant or a snit, some small voice in the back of my head is saying, “Now is that reasonable?  Is that proper?” Perhaps for me, diving more deeply into the layers, exploring the depth of my humanness, might mean stilling that voice, letting myself have at it, not worrying whether my current rant is grounded in verifiable facts like a college research paper, whether I am going to sound sulky or whiny.

I think that what I am saying is that reason and philosophy and spiritual seeking are all good and useful tools, but that a life too focused on being reasonable and rational can divorce us from the emotional part of our fully human selves. Emotions aren’t reasonable. Like any art supply, they’re messy. But they’re colorful, too. Here’s to the art of living in the layers!

Gratitude List:
1. Getting home in the dark and getting out of the car to the hooting of the Great Horned Owl in the bamboo. They’re really active right now. About a week ago, one night as we were putting the boys to bed, the owls were having a regular hootenanny out in the woods–there must have been at least three of them, and they weren’t leaving their usual thoughtful pauses between comments.
2. I finished all my coursework for my class:Building Caring Communities. It has been a wonderful class, and I have found much that I can apply directly to my classroom, so I am grateful for that. But I am weary and eager to have a little less on my plate for a while, so I am grateful that it is over, too.
3. Family time over the holiday. Crazy Uno games with both sides of the family. Thoughtful conversations. Hugs and snuggles and sharing delicious food.
4. Tender justice and scandalous grace.
5. Revolutionary poetry.

May we walk in Beauty!

The Scrooge of Thanksgiving

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

Everything I write today feels like it needs a qualification behind it.  I feel as though I should be a sort of priestess of Thanksgiving, carrying my gratitude practice into this day like it is my High Holy Day.  Instead, I feel more like the Scrooge of Thanksgiving this morning.  I start to write “Happy Thanksgiving!” but I feel like I need to discuss that in terms of the history of genocide in the US and in terms of the weight I am feeling about racism and injustice at this particular historical moment.  I want to write about how grateful I am for the unaltering yearly shift from growing season to harvest and then to winter’s rest, but I feel like I need to discuss that in terms of climate change and the anxiety I feel about human alteration of the planet’s weather.  I want to write about how excited I am to spend time with my family, but I am still caught up in the whirlwind of papers to write and plans to make and the sense of guilt that rides me about how I am neglecting my own children.

I’m not depressed.  Just grumpy and out of sorts.  I had a moment this morning when I thought, Maybe it’s time to give up the Gratitude Practice and pick up a different tool for a while.  Maybe it’s time to pick up the practice of the Flaming Sword of Justice again.  Perhaps it’s time to become a Holy Curmudgeon, giving the world a good hearty dose of Harsh Reality.  (Yes, I realize it’s too late–I’ve already done so here.)

Here is the part of the short, thoughtful essay where the writer is supposed to take a sense of ick and discomfort and turn it around into something thoughtful and witty, something hopeful and positive and enchanting.  I don’t have that to offer you today.  Not quite.  Just this: that today, of all days, is not the day to give up this work of Gratitude.  That today, of all days, is the day when I need it most of all.  Perhaps on some sunny spring morning when I cannot bear to write only five things, when my heart is overflowing with gratitude, perhaps that is the day that I can say I am ready to move on to explore another practice.  And of course, I won’t ever actually abandon this tool.  I’ll keep it in my box, along with the Flaming Sword of Justice and some of the other tools I have worked with over the years, and bring it out on days like today when I need it most.

So here is my attempt at today’s gratitude list, unqualified by doom and general grouchiness:

Gratitude List:
1. Coffee
2. Coats
3. Chocolate
4. Children
5. Already the gloom is lifting.  Already the energy of the day begins to enter.  Already the sense of possibility begins to shine over the shadow of too-much-to-do-in-too-little-time.  Already the medicine of this practice begins to do its work.  You don’t know, sometimes, if you’re going to get there until you get there.  And sometimes that is the story that needs to unfold.

May you have a moment of peace today.  May we walk in Beauty.

So here, qualified as it is by a thousand things, from the depths of my curmudgeonly soul: Happy Thanksgiving! (And I mean it this time.)

Complicit

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I have been brooding today about Bill Cosby. Does it really matter whether a farmer/schoolteacher/mother/poet forms an opinion about the Bill Cosby rape story? I can just ignore it all, say it’s none of my business, and move on. It’s a mark, perhaps, of our shallow culture that we get wrapped up in the lives of celebrities to the point that uncovering a celebrity’s history of sexual predation would throw me, would cause me such a sense of intermingled fury and grief. Perhaps. Still, I think when someone is lively or delightful or thoughtful or beautiful in the wider culture in which we participate, we do feel a connection that goes beyond the merely mundane. I wept when violinist Isaac Stern died, when the poetic voice of Maya Angelou passed on, when Robin Williams left us with only memories of his laughter. So I supposed this response isn’t preposterous.

But there’s another piece of it that’s really bothering me today, and that is that when this recent part of the story broke this past week, I had a moment of deja vu: “Oh yeah.  Wasn’t there something about this a few years ago?”  As I began to read the account of Scott Simon’s questions and the stories of more and more women coming forward, I remembered that I had read earlier–and damning–accusations a few years ago. Why did I forget?  Why did I put that out of mind and go on accepting Bill Cosby as America’s Mr. Funnyman?  America’s Everydad, as Mark Morford called him. And that’s the thing that bothers me, because that’s a hallmark of rape culture–that the predator can so often minimize his crimes in the face of his power or celebrity or general congeniality that people either don’t believe the stories of his victims or they participate in the minimization, ignore the true implications of the accusations, and go on living as though nothing has happened, and the victim gets violated again, this time by the world’s refusal to acknowledge her story. Again, why does it matter what I think? Why should I bother to form an opinion on the matter? It troubles me, though, that something in me would have minimized the earlier stories, would have lived in denial that someone who brought such delight and wonder into our homes could be cavalierly destroying people’s lives. I feel complicit in the culture of denial. Sullied.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Hiking at Sam Lewis State Park. Every time I go there and climb on the rocks with the kids, I am more and more aware of how old I am getting, how clambering over the big rocks is getting harder and harder. Still, it’s worth the scramble up to the top of the rocks pile, to look through the trees to the River, to imagine what it must have been like for the First People who walked here to stand perhaps on the very same rocks looking out to the River.
2.  Sharing the awe. Yesterday in my last class, I mentioned something about the morning’s sunrise, and suddenly three or four students were all talking at once, clamoring to tell their experiences of watching the sky that morning.
3.  I don’t have to figure it all out.  I don’t have to be perfect for every moment.  I just need to be Present.
4.  The last assignment in the course I am taking was to watch a video on renewing energy, on play and flow and working joyfully.  And then to go play for an hour.  I took that seriously, and we all spent most of the day with the Legos, sorting and building and playing.  It is very satisfying to be assigned to play.  My children loved that.
5.  Colcannon

May we walk in Beauty!

Reminders

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Gratitude List:
1.  All my Facebook friends who write gratitude lists, which reminds me to do my own.
2.  The bolt of magenta that flowed upward from the morning’s tangerine sunrise onto an indigo belly of cloud.  Sounds a little over-done to read it like that, but that’s kind of how it is with these morning sunrises.  Show-offy.  I’m not complaining.
3.  The same tangerine and magenta in the sunset today.  My life feels a little closed in these days, driving into sunrise on my morning commute and into sunset on my evening commute, and indoors for the hours between.  But hail and welcome, Winter, anyway.  And thank you for the colors.
4.  There’s this thing about the crows.  I can’t quite figure out how to work it into a poem.  I want to say that I am a row of bare white sycamore trees with crows in my hair, crows like thoughts above me.  Perhaps it’s crows and sunset.  Crows and sunset and bare trees.  What is the riddle that keeps asking to be noticed when the crows fly?  I love them so.
5.  And sundogs.  Also in the crows and sunset train.  Still, their own thing.  They way they settle gently on top of a cloud.  How they brighten the sky directly outside their arc.  How they suggest a full circle spectrum around the sun.

May we walk in Beauty!