Gratitudes

The Light of Day

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

2014 January 021

Where did you go when you
walked through the veil?  Whose

candles lit your eyes?  And how
did you bear the singing of the stars,

streaming all around you as the whole
roaring cosmos rushed by?  Did you dream

of the egg of the universe?  Did you
wonder at the bright door of the moon?

When did you see it, the pathway,
the portal, the light inescapable?

And when did you become the light
that sparkles over the snowdrifts, the

breeze that stirs the soft feathers of the wren,
the murmur of the creek as it flows through the valley?

Gratitude List:
1.  Jane’s marvelous memory for poetic recitation.  She might ask me the same thing three times in five minutes, but she just might recite half of Hiawatha from memory.
2.  Brooke Gladstone’s interview with Cyndi Lauper on On the Media today.  I will always love her iconic singing voice, but today I was utterly mesmerized by her sweet speaking voice and her accent.  I kept wanting to pull the car over and write down the things she was saying.
3.  New red fish with a big blue snail.
4.  Shelter.  I admit that this one carries a great deal of anxiety, too, as I think of those who do not have the luxury of shelter on this cold, cold night.
5.  Epiphany.  The light shines in!

Come!  Walk in the light!

Cirque

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2014 January 010

Gratitude List:
1.  Reunions.  More reunions.  The college gang.  Such good, thoughtful people, these.  And we really don’t look a day older.
2.  Cirque du Ursa.  A fairy bear with wings.  A cocoon, a butterfly.  Grace.  Watching someone do aerial acrobatics makes me forget, for a few moments, how earthbound my own body is.
3.  Sunrise
4.  Rilke
5.  Warm hats.

May we walk in Beauty.

Landscape Manuscript: An Experiment

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Here is a poem that is sort of off my beaten path, out of my kilter, definitely beyond my safety zone.  I started it over a year ago.  It’s a mash-up between poetry of pure sound and a villanelle.  I abandoned it after two stanzas.  Then this week, after I heard a recording on the radio of Gertrude Stein reading some of her poetry, and realizing how the simple sounds moved me deeply, I returned to it.  Here is Landscape Manuscript:

ancient spectrum glinted speculate
responsive orphan mystery spot green
digest interpret dervish deviate

elocution wild landscape percolate
inscribe revision often sigh unseen
ancient spectrum glinting speculate

wily wonders intersperse ameliorate
and if and when and should and mean
digest interpretation dervish deviate

manuscript within divine yet designate
extraordinary rendezvous eloquent serpentine
the ancients spectral glinted speculate

resist revolve re-grow restore renovate
while verdant hallway wren careen
digesting interpret dervish deviate

rushing flitter whirr beyond palpitate
the doorway opens to a realm between
ancient spectrum glinted speculate
digest interpret dervish deviate

2014 January 018

Gratitude List:
1.  Wingprints in the snow
2.  Wind in the breast feathers of the wren
3.  Family.  The Weaver Family Reunion.  I think Grandma must have been smiling tonight.
4.  Tea with honey and ginger
5.  A veritable flood of poetry on the internet in the past couple of days.  (And bonus: the chance to use the word veritable.)

May we walk in Beauty.

Dancing on the Cliff

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mossSo here we are again, dancing on the edge of the cliffs, Fools that we are, watching the sun set on an old year and rise on a new one.  Like Janus the Roman god, two-faced, we look back at what has been and look forward to what will be, simultaneously embodying the present moment.

What amazing creatures we are, Bright Ones!  We carry within us this unbounded capacity for hope and healing, for starting again at tabula rasa, that old blank slate.  Oh, the old stuff lingers, like those lines of ancient vellum documents that re-appear after they’ve been scraped clean and re-written, ghosts of past that linger, but don’t overpower the new text.

One of my first remembered dreams of 2013 was a word rather than an image, the word Palimpsest, the term to describe those old re-used vellum texts that have given scholars the delight of being able to research two texts in one.  I won’t deny that this past year’s fresh text has had its bumpy bits, its painful plot twists at times, but there has been so much light and love, there have been so many epiphanies and mountain views, so many new friends and thoughts and ideas.

(In these twelve nights of Yuletide, I have again been listening more acutely to my dreams.  So far, the thing that stands out most clearly is something vague about The Wild Boys of Raccoon Hollow.  I’m not feeling the spiritual depth of that one just yet.  I’ll keep listening.)

Thank you, Bright Ones, for sharing the journey, for reading my lines here and there.  I wish you many bright spots of sunlight on your path, and challenges enough to make you know your true strength.  Oh, and dreams that give you vision for the next step.

Gratitude List:
1.  This phrase that someone used today: “The intimate magic of motherhood.”  Isn’t that satisfying?
2.  Joseph Brodsky, and Alex Estes’ review of his “1-Jan-65” poem.  It enlivens the literary critic within me.
3.  Knowing my work.  Refining the vision.
4.  All that we have been and all that we will be, but mostly, who we are right in this exact moment.
5.  I have said it before, but it bears repeating on the cusp of the New Year: You.  Oh, Bright Ones, You.

May we walk in Beauty!

Vigil

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Gratitude List:
1.  All those hugs tonight.  Alvarez, Alvarez, Alvarez, Johnsen!
2.  The body knows how to heal itself.  Someone I love dearly went under the surgeon’s knife today.  All will be well.  The body knows how to heal itself.
3.  Sage and witness.  Commemorating, as a community, the terrible massacre of the Conestogas 250 years ago.   Grateful for community turnout, for sage, for vigil.
4.  Have a Heart–our current version of Go Fish!
5.  Completing projects.

May we walk in Beauty!

Rocks and Light

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Gratitude List:
1.  Necessary Conversations: Heavy, beautiful, powerful, sad, life-giving
2.  Music with the Family: Val’s fiddle, “Helpless and Hungry” behind “What Child is This?”, Isaiah’s clear voice singing “No Wind at the Window,” and “The Lord Bless You and Keep You”
3.  Maklubbi.  However it is spelled, it was a delicious Christmas dinner.  And wonderful wine.   And the figgy pudding.  Always the figgy pudding.
4.  Dutch Blitz.  I am getting so slow.  I need to practice, if I am to keep up with these young people.
5.  You.  You.  You.

May we walk in Beauty.  And Light.  So much Light.

Oh, and rocks.  #6 is Rocks.  Susquehanna’s rocks.  Hezza’s rocks.  Goldfinch’s rocks.  The Apache Tear that I wear at my heart.

Illumination

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Tanka

The fields are open
to the moon and falling snow,
an old, well-worn book
the moon reads through shadows
before she drifts off to sleep.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Sharing lists of favorite books
2.  Mary Oliver’s Red Bird
3.  That garlicky guacamole my mom made–if that doesn’t send this cold running, I don’t know what will
4.  Moments of illumination
5.  Fairy Tales

May we walk in Beauty

The Marker

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

(on the day of the massacre of the people of the Conestoga 250 years ago)

Come with me now, Bright Souls
and we’ll sit in a circle together.
Silently a while.  Then we talk.

Light six candles
for the people of the longhouse
who died that wintry dawning.

The air is filled already
with too many words.
The day carries so many mutterings
on the wind, on the wings
of the vulture, drifting
above the broken fields.

Sheehays, Wa-a-shen,
Tee-kau-ley, Ess-canesh,
Tea-wonsha-i-ong,
Kannenquas.

If we are to keep awake,
to live in the place
where the heart stays open,
then perhaps we must look
into the teeth of the story.
Together we gaze at those shadows.
Together we speak their names.
Together we listen for the sparrow’s call.

At the place of the great stone
I did not speak their names.
I left my shell there at that place
in the glittering sun.

Some days I cannot bear the darkness,
but I will close my eyes and sing
while you keep vigil near me.
And when you falter, too,
I will have found the strength renewed
to witness the tale while you sing to me.

Perhaps you will not believe me
when I tell you: As I drove
that road toward the River,
six deer ran across blue shadows
cast by afternoon sun on snow,
over the fields to the road.
They paused a moment to watch
the golden fish of my car approach,
then slipped across Indian Marker Road
and were gone, past the still pond
and into a fringe of wood.

2013 December 105

Gratitude List:
1.  Deer running through blue shadows on a snowy field
2.  The winter slant of light, sparkling on snow
3.  Roasted Brussels Sprouts, and radishes and turnips and potatoes and carrots
4.  Snails.  Who would have thought I would love snails so?  Now that the fish has died, the snails provide much more entertainment than I would have expected.  The big blue one has doubled its size in two weeks’ time.  Their antennae are swirly.
5.  Learning to listen, to wait

May we walk in Beauty.

Motherline

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

2013 December 087

Gratitude List:
1.  The light will return, the light will return, the light will return.
2.  Vegetables harvested from right out of the snows
3.  Nate Willing’s hot sauce.  I think this is an appropriate time for an O.M.G.  Sublime.  On scrambled eggs for breakfast and quesadillas for supper.
4.  So much love.  So much light.
5.  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).  Thanks for starting up the conversation again, Sarah Preston.

May we walk in Beauty!

Resistance and the Giveaway Gnome

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Before I had children, no one told me how sneaky I would have to become as a parent.  How, in order to keep the house from folding in on itself from all the doodads and detritus and general junk accumulated at an alarming rate by the wee ones I would need to make regular trips through the house when the children are away or asleep in order to gather up bits and pieces and odds and ends to toss or give away.  How the sound of that sweet little wonder-filled voice in the breezeway next to the giveaway boxes would strike frustration to the core of me: “Oh!  I remember this!”  This being a hard plastic Garfield tchotchke with a head that rotates on some sort of spring mechanism, only the spring part is broken, and the nameplate on the base has begun to wear off, leaving the letters “arf.”  (Please don’t dig any deeper in that bag, please. . .)

So what a surprise today when we were cleaning and tidying, and all of a sudden my gadget-obsessed seven-year-old was handing me his entire collection of broken calculators, and the four-year-old gave away all the Angry Birds kitsch he scored at a birthday party two weeks ago.

These kids are so often little walls of resistance, using every tool they can create to define their own parameters, to make their choices their own.  I am finding that there’s an exquisite balance here–to nurture and bless their autonomy while also giving them the boundaries they need in order to thrive.  Sometimes my refusal to budge creates greater walls, creates defiance.  And sometimes their resistance is simply rote reaction, and all they need is a little push from me.

I don’t like to be forced to give up my stuff either, but occasionally I would be glad of a little gnome wandering through my house at night and packing off a handful of projects that haven’t seen the light of day for months or years.  She just needs to get them out of the house before I wake up and see them: “Oh!  I remember this!”

Gratitude List:
1.  Being considered for the job, even if it’s not my skill set.
2.  Cleaning out
3.  Clearing up
4.  Seed Catalogs
5.  Nothing is Written in Stone

May we walk in Beauty.