Such a wind. Such a wild, wild wind. Corn husks spiraling down out of the sky, leaves rising in my rearview mirror like something out of a German luxury car ad, that move-along shove from behind as you walk from the house to your car.
A devil-may-care wind, a witches-are-passing wind, a scouring, powerful rowdy wind, the kind that could blow down the towers of injustice, pull kings from their thrones, and lay waste the structures built of lies. No house of cards can stand in the face of that wind.
Gratitude List: 1. The softness of milkweed fluff 2. The view from my parents’ new apartment 3. Rest 4. Smoothie for supper 5. Reminders to seek joy May we walk in Beauty!
Hiking the Chestnut Grove Trails by Beth Weaver-Kreider
It is both disconcerting and charming, the soft grassy pathways disarming the sense of disquiet, the riot of goldenrod, foxtail, and milkweed, native plants seeded along the human-formed hillsides
the wide expanse of grasses, ponds, brambles, and shrubs with scrubby trees and a diverse plantation of oaks. The smoke from farm and industry jar the view, but here too you can see the River, and an eagle gliding,
riding the thermals along the opposite ridge, can see almost as far as the bridge, and down to the dam, more emblems of how humans have transformed the landscape, bearing witness to hundreds of years
of human interference, how it all settles uneasily into these spaces of wildness and cultivation.
Gratitude List: 1. Good brisk walking on the hobbitiest of trails 2. The Susquehanna River 3. So many varieties of oak! 4. Time with a friend who understands my language 5. Cheese on toast May we walk in Beauty!
My friend Mara has challenged her online community to write a sonnet on the 14th day of the month. I will definitely try my hand at something more traditional some month, but today I was feeling experimental, and I read an interesting abecedarian today, so I thought: Half of 26 letters in the alphabet is 13, and if I emphasize the last two letters by giving them their own lines, then I’ll have the 14 lines necessary for a sonnet. Read across? Read down? Read on a downward zigzag? You choose the pathway.
Gratitude List: 1. Weekend–my energy for the work week was definitely flagging 2. A good long walk (on the treadmill, because darkness and cold) 3. One of my colleagues complimented my sweater today by saying I was rocking the 80s vibe, and I feel Seen. 4. Water–nothing like a cold drink of water when you’re tired 5. Experimentation and wordplay May we walk in Beauty!
He’s sure working hard to suppress the evidence of his presumed innocence.
What possible reason could there be, if he is guilt-free, to keep it hidden?
He’s bidden his stooges to silence, riding his sycophants for their loyalty,
expecting to be treated like royalty, trusting his privilege to keep him free
from the consequences of accountability. But the truth is circling ever closer
and he knows although he won’t admit that every century is lit up with the fires
of dictators and strongmen, tyrants and would-be kings spiralling down
to their inevitable ends, their deeds laid bare in the glare of a new-risen sun.
Gratitude List: 1. Re-establishing helpful practices, like making gratitude lists 2. The crescent moon in the sycamore tree 3. Soup 4. Tea 5. Big warm sweaters May we walk in Beauty!
Spell to Tumble the Tower of Patriarchy by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Say: We take back our agency Say: The daughters will be avenged Say: The predators have become prey Say: We predate the predators and we will rise again Say: We stand with the ancestors, the women who died on your fires the women who drowned in your waters the women you thought you had buried deep in the mouth of the Earth the same Earth who loves us the Earth who holds the dead dearly the women you set swinging in air
Say: Our mouths are filling with fire and we will burn it down Say: The water within us is rising and we will flood and we will flood and we will flood Say: We are a tremor, we are an earthquake, and we will shake down the tower of power and domination
Say: We will blow and blow and blow We are hurricane We are tornado We are the wind that they call “The Witches are Passing”
Say: The rosy fingers of Dawn rise above the new horizon Say: The ancient Goddess is returning Say: The new story is beginning
Gratitude List: 1. russet ocher burnt sienna yellow gold orange chestnut walnut 2. How sunlight in autumn opens a door to another world 3. When the poem just comes 4. ReGenAll’s Climate Summit today, knowing that people are doing the good work 5. Finding time to write May we walk in Beauty!
In the past decade, I have often thought of Uncle Mordecai’s advice to his niece Queen Esther. I paraphrase: “Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
And here, thousands of years later, are we, in the generations following the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. Here are we, who have been raised on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and his vision of the smallest and most vulnerable-seeming ones taking up the hardest task simply because it was laid on their shoulders. Our books and movies have been filled with people (often teenagers) taking stands against tyranny, fascism, Imperialism, oppression, and cruelty.
We’ve been primed and educated for the coming days.
Here are some of the things I am telling myself: 1. Limit your news intake to a few trusted sources. 2. Unplug as much as possible, especially from the dire and angsty and shrill. 3. Post and share images and stories–actual and fictional–of people resisting Empire. 4. Watch the inauguration or don’t watch the inauguration–do what your heart needs and don’t apologize to anyone for the choice you feel is right for you to make. 5. Differentiate between thoughtful satire and unkind snark. 6. At least, don’t punch down. Punch up. And keep it classy. 7. Express your feelings. 8. Listen to others expressing their feelings. Don’t minimize or explain them away. 9. Commiserate without contributing to negativity and panic. 10. Keep reaching out to your friends. Keep checking in on your friends. 11. Build larger and larger circles of community so no single person has to have the burden of holding you together when you fall apart. 12. In a time of destruction, create things. 13. In a time of cruelty, be inexplicably kind. 14. In a time of rampant lies, speak truth from your heart, and honor integrity. 15. Who do you admire? Emulate them. 16. Breathe, and breathe, and breathe. Stretch and breathe. 17. Use your power and privilege to shield and protect those with less. 18. Stand in the gap. 19. What are you willing to put on the line for others? 20. Do not let your voice be silenced. 21. Do not give money a voice. 22. stay grounded. Every day, meditate or pray or make a magic spell that goodness and peace will prevail.
Gratitude List: 1. Such a beautiful snowstorm (hmmm-I accidentally write snowstory, and I want to make that an official word, please) 2. So many circles of dedicated souls ready to stand up and speak out 3. Tea 4. I have finally found a tool that is helping me with task initiation and task completion. I am feeling so satisfied, and much more full of energy 5. Great horned owls calling through the darkness last night. May we walk in Beauty!
“Things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” —Pema Chödrön
“How will we ever reconcile with those from whom we feel so estranged? How will we forgive the wrongs we believe have been done? How will we be able to trust one another again? Those are the kinds of profound questions that many of us need to have answers to…but the hurts are so new, the pain so fresh, we are not sure when or how we will ever come to a point of healing. To be honest, I do not have answers to any of these questions, not right now, but that does not trouble me. Why? Because I know, over time, the Spirit will bring us to the answers we need. She will show us paths to healing we never imagined. I am confident she will slowly guide us to wholeness in a manner that is most just and most empowering for us. Therefore, I do not feel anxious about how I will forgive or rushed into relationships I am not ready to embrace. I may not be able to trust others yet, but I do trust the Spirit, and that is enough for now. I will follow where she leads and when she leads, knowing that what I cannot comprehend now, I will understand later.” —Steven Charleston, 2021
“The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words. Words can be used thus paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a symbolic or metaphoric usage. (They also have a sound—a fact the linguistic positivists take no interest in . A sentence or paragraph is like a chord or harmonic sequence in music: its meaning may be more clearly understood by the attentive ear, even though it is read in silence, than by the attentive intellect.)” —Ursula LeGuin
“Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings. Move within, but don’t move the way fear Makes you move.” —by Rumi (Barks)
“I think pleasure is really the gateway to feeling connected and inspired.” —Dreamwork with Toko-pa
“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” ―Mary Oliver
“Now is the time to resist the slightest extension in the boundaries of what is right and just. Now is the time to speak up and to wear as a badge of honor the opprobrium of bigots.” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“Our lives are a partnership with Spirit. We can choose to be active in this partnership or passive. We can opt out at any time, but we can also increase our involvement. We can grow, change and learn. We can do more good than we ever imagined possible. The key is in the relationship we have with our partner.” —Steven Charleston, 2025
“A common woman is as common as a common loaf of bread, and will rise.” —Judy Grahn
“The plan, a memory of the future, tries on reality to see if it fits.” —Laurence Gonzalez
“I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing that like being for the first time see, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells un-flamed and disappeared. I was still ringing.” —Annie Dillard
“When you walk a path you love, there is something deeper calling you forward on it, like a beautiful question that can never be answered.” —Toko-pa Turner
“A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.” ―Lisa Kleypas, A Wallflower Christmas
“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism” —Martin Luther King Jr.
“Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles. Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances. Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it. Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.” —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“We are all silent witnesses to the drama of our own lives. We see behind the curtains. We know the origin of our story, the characters who fill its pages, and the main events that have carried us over perilous seas to where we find ourselves today. Only a small fraction of this saga ever gets told, even around the firelight of family, but we keep it in our hearts the way books were once written by hand. The story lives within us and finds its completion through us. We carry it forward in sacred procession, not knowing when our own role will end, but bound by faith to take our part for as long as love allows.” —Steven Charleston
“How will we ever reconcile with those from whom we feel so estranged? How will we forgive the wrongs we believe have been done? How will we be able to trust one another again? Those are the kinds of profound questions that many of us need to have answers to…but the hurts are so new, the pain so fresh, we are not sure when or how we will ever come to a point of healing. To be honest, I do not have answers to any of these questions, not right now, but that does not trouble me. Why? Because I know, over time, the Spirit will bring us to the answers we need. She will show us paths to healing we never imagined. I am confident she will slowly guide us to wholeness in a manner that is most just and most empowering for us. Therefore, I do not feel anxious about how I will forgive or rushed into relationships I am not ready to embrace. I may not be able to trust others yet, but I do trust the Spirit, and that is enough for now. I will follow where she leads and when she leads, knowing that what I cannot comprehend now, I will understand later.” —Steven Charleston
A new Netflix show that makes me want to walk in the treadmill (’cause that’s when I watch shows)
Layers: colors, clothes, ideas
Challenges: Can you read X number of books in a year? Can you consciously eat your five servings of fruits and veggies in a day? Can you up the amount of time you spend moving your body every day?
Today is the last day of November’s Poem-a-Day. As always at this point, I am ready to be free of the daily discipline of poeming for a little while. And today was long, filled with beauty and good family time celebrating the life of my Aunt Gloria, and many hours on the road. So I’m happy to finish the poem process today.
Tomorrow, however, I will begin a new series, suggested by the Advent materials we received at church last week. Every day for the next 25, we have been given a word (one each day) to meditate on and to illustrate with a photograph. So I might post some or all of those here.
Here is today’s poem: First Lesson of Poeming by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Grasp the idea, I mean the corncob, firmly, but not so firmly that you harm the tender kernels inside, and pull it firmly, but ever so gently, downward and away from the stalk.
Holding it in your palm like the golden treasure it is, begin to pull away the layers of husk. Some people tear the husk down in two or three neat strokes, but you should take your time, noticing the way the tough and weathered outer husk gives way to tender green beneath, the way the silk shifts with each layer you remove, the grass-sweet corn smell released, and finally, the rows of sweet kernels, golden and waiting.
Gratitude List: 1. Cousins and aunts and uncles 2. Aunt Gloria’s wise words: “Go with the flow.” 3. Cousin Karen’s wise words: “Stay curious.” 4. Traveling with my parents to the Shenandoah Valley, on a golden day. 5. Cherry Delight May we walk in Beauty!
“I don’t always feel like I belong, or like I understand the unwritten rules of certain groups, even though I think I am a pretty good observer of human nature. So when I am in a group whose rules accept everyone’s awkwardness and oddness unconditionally, which loves each one not in spite of our oddities, but because of them, then I feel safe. Then I feel belonging. I am especially grateful to those of you who know how to extend unconditional welcome in ways that make everyone believe they belong.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
“To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine voice. Our primary need for the various life forms of the planet is a psychic, rather than a physical, need.” —Thomas Berry
“All through your life, the most precious experiences seemed to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience. This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret.” —John O’Donohue
“The next time you go out in the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people—in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones—just wish for them all to be happy and well. Without knowing anything about them, they can become very real, by regarding each of them personally and rejoicing in the comforts and pleasures that come their way. Each of us has this soft spot: a capacity for love and tenderness. But if we don’t encourage it, we can get pretty stubborn about remaining sour.” —Pema Chodrun, From her book Becoming Bodhisattvas
“Quiet the mind enough so it is the heart that gives the prayer.” —Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
“People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.” —Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Creative acts of social justice constitute life’s highest performance art.” —Rebecca Alban Hoffberger
“If you will, you can become all flame.” —Abba Joseph
“Become all shadow. Become all light.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
“You cannot use someone else’s fire; you can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe you have it.” —Audre Lorde
“The first duty of love is to listen.” —Paul Tillich
“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith. The opposite of faith is certainty.” —Paul Tillich
“When you go to your place of prayer, don’t try to think too much or manufacture feelings or sensations. Don’t worry about what words you should say or what posture you should take. It’s not about you or what you do. Simply allow Love to look at you—and trust what God sees! God just keeps looking at you and loving you center to center. ” —Richard Rohr
“People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.” —Charles Fort
“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t.” —Shakespeare, The Tempest
Even as I celebrate a deeply enriching and inspiring day of conversation and play and good food with my family, I want to also acknowledge that today is a Day of Mourning for Native Nations. The link in the previous sentence will take you to a MCUSA page with brief descriptions of some of the November massacres by US forces against Native communities that took place in the late 1800s, along with some resources for ways to educate ourselves and our communities, and to respond in helpful ways.
I tried coaxing a collaborative poem out of some of my family members gathered around a puzzle this afternoon, but we had trouble keeping focused enough to finish a thought, so my nibling Keri suggested we do an acrostic. The Old Woman of Winter had made an appearance in the first attempt, so I wrote CRONE OF WINTER down the side of the page and asked them to give me words or phrases beginning with the letters. We ended up sticking to words, and this is what happened, and I like it.
Gratitude List: 1. The thoughtful and wise and tender and hilarious conversations around the table and the puzzle and the living room today. It appears that perhaps the members of the family with the strongest executive functioning skills are under the age of 22. 2. Pie. So much pie. 3. The Turkey Trot! I walked a lot more of this one, but came within a minute of my PR last spring at the Race Against Racism. 4. Bald Eagle flying over Codorus Creek 5. The healing properties of laughter May we walk in Beauty!
“There are no shortcuts to wholeness. The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’” —Parker Palmer
Solace is your job now.” —Jan Richardson
“I have noticed when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling ~ their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. To sit alone without electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights, then I start thinking about projects, demands, deadlines, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to be done, not a background to thought.” —Jeanette Winterson
Joy Harjo: “When I woke up from a forty-year sleep, it was by a song. I could hear the drums in the village. I felt the sweat of ancestors in each palm. The singers were singing the world into place, even as it continued to fall apart. They were making songs to turn hatred into love.”
“The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.” ―Meridel Le Sueur
“I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.” ―Madeleine L’Engle
“Alas, the webs are torn down, the spinners stomped out. But the forest smiles. Deep in her nooks and crevices she feels the spinners and the harmony of their web. We will dream our way to them …
…Carefully, we feel our way through the folds of darkness. Since our right and left eyes are virtually useless, other senses become our eyes. The roll of a pebble, the breath of dew-cooled pines, a startled flutter in a nearby bush magnify the vast silence of the forest. Wind and stream are the murmering current of time, taking us back to where poetry is sung and danced and lived. … In the distance a fire flickers – not running wild, but contained, like a candle. The spinners.” —Marylou Awiakta, Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom
“Do it right, because you only got one time to walk this earth. Make it good, make it a good thing.” —Grandmother Agnes “Taowhywee” (Morning Star) Baker Pilgrim (1924-2019)
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” —Robert Frost
“I believe war is a weapon of persons with personal power, that is to say, the power to reason, the power to persuade, from a position of morality and integrity ; and that to go to war with an enemy who is weaker than you is to admit you possess no resources within yourself to bring to bear on your fated.” —Alice Walker
“The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our selves.” —Cassius, from ‘Julius Caesar’ by William Shakespeare
“Let your love be like the misty rain, coming softly, but flooding the River.” —Proverb
“Perhaps too much sanity may be madness.” —from ‘Don Quixote’ by Cervantes
I remember me when in the company of women who sigh when they hug, who throw their heads back and laugh, who pause in the middle of a story to look you in the eye and shake their heads at the ridiculousness of it all, at the crazy way it all falls apart, and all comes together.
Gratitude List: 1. Making art with others 2. Telling stories with the help of tarot cards 3. Yogurt-covered pretzels 4. Woodpeckers: this morning, downy, hairy, and red-bellied were all at the feeder at the same time 5. Watching the herd of deer in their dark winter coats crossing through the bosque this morning–I’m pretty sure two young ones are the twins I saw throughout the summer May we walk in Beauty!
“The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.” —John Muir
“Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls. ” —Ursula Le Guin
“The mother tongue is language not as mere communication but as relation, relationship. It connects. It goes two ways, many ways, an exchange, a network. Its power is not in dividing but in binding, not in distancing but in uniting.
It is written, but not by scribes and secretaries for posterity: it flies from the mouth on the breath that is our life and is gone, like the outbreath, utterly gone and yet returning, repeated, the breath the same again always, everywhere, and we all know it by heart.” —Ursula K. Le Guin
“Who would I be if I didn’t live in a world that hated women?” —Jessica Valenti
“The heart is right to cry even when the smallest drop of light, of love, is taken away Perhaps you may kick, moan, scream—in a dignified silence, but you are right to do so in any fashion…until God returns to you.” ―Hafiz (Ladinsky)
“All water is holy water.” ―Rajiv Joseph
“The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all.” ―Arundhati Roy
“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.” ―Scott Adams
“You know what breaks me, when someone is visibly excited about a feeling or an idea or a hope or a risk taken, and they tell you about it but preface it with: “Sorry, this is dumb but—.” Don’t do that. I don’t know who came here before me, or who conditioned you to think you had to apologize or feel obtuse. But not here. Dream so big it’s silly. Laugh so hard it’s obnoxious. Love so much it’s impossible. And don’t you ever feel unintelligent. And don’t you ever apologize. And don’t you ever shrink so you can squeeze yourself into small places and small minds. Grow. It’s a big world. You fit. I promise.” ―Owen Lindley
“The bond of our common humanity is stronger than our fears and prejudices.” ―Jimmy Carter
“The reality is we have more in common with the people we’re bombing than the people we’re bombing them for.” ―Russell Brand
“Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe. ” ―Arundhati Roy, Public Power in the Age of Empire
Mockingbird Chronicles 