Gratitudes

Beltane Eve

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I know all about rainy days and Mondays, and a long string of wet grey weather can make me sad, too. Still, a crisp and breezy drizzly morning feels to me like adventure, like sea change, like a new thing blowing in. Something in me starts to wake up on days like this.

And this is Beltane Eve, the halfway point between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. The Wheel turns. We might be living in a radically different world than we expected a year ago. But the Earth spins on. Here in the northern hemisphere, days lengthen, and despite the chilling breezes, the warm times are coming. The skies may be grey, but they’re clearer of pollutants than they’ve been for years. The waters are running clearer, too. Do the buds and blossoms of spring seem more vigorous, more filled with life force? Are the greens greener?

Beltane is about abandoning yourself to the experience of the life force that is burgeoning around you, being willing to risk losing yourself in the wild. And maybe finding yourself, too. Even if your existence is tied, these days, to a house, how can you celebrate yourself today (and this week and this season) as a being who belongs to the wild, who feels the life force within yourself as surely as the tree outside your window is feeling the sap rising from root to branch?

Gratitude List:
1. Wildness
2. Green
3. Wind
4. Energy
5. You

May we walk in Beauty! (Such, such Beauty!)

“Things aren’t so tangible and sayable as people would have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are world of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

“We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into t anew way of thinking.” —Richard Rohr

“To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.” —Georgia O’Keeffe

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal… To hope is to give yourself to the future – and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.” ―Rebecca Solnit

“The child’s hand
Folding these wings
Wins no wars and ends them all. “
―Thomas Merton

Room For You at the Table

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Last year, I got really excited about trying to use some Pixton graphics to enhance my Smart Board presentations. It took enough extra work that I sort of gave it up. Now I think perhaps I ought to try to make a couple for some of my classes to add a little interest to the online learning.

Gratitude List:
1. How poems from past Aprils come back to show me how I have grown, and what I have forgotten.
2. Wednesday is now a little Thursday, penultimate day of teaching. There is space for breathing.
3. Music
4. Story
5. Poetry

May we walk in Beauty!

“The path isn’t a straight line; it’s a spiral. You continually come back to things you thought you understood and see deeper truths.” —Barry H. Gillespie

“There is room for you at our table, if you choose to join us.” —Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred Thing

“For beautiful to happen, the beautiful has got to be seen.” —from the musical “Ordinary Days”

“You will be found.” —from the musical “Dear Evan Hansen”

“How do you become the person you’ve forgotten you ever were?” —from the musical “Anastasia”

“The universe is not made up of atoms; it’s made up of tiny stories.” ―Joseph Gordon-Levitt

To all the children
by Thomas Berry

To the children who swim beneath
The waves of the sea, to those who live in
The soils of the Earth, to the children of the flowers
In the meadows and the trees of the forest,
To all those children who roam over the land
And the winged ones who fly with the winds,
To the human children too, that all the children
May go together into the future in the full
Diversity of their regional communities.

Carl Jung: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

“Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth.” ―Rumi

“You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend, or not.” ―Isabel Allende

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy – the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” ―Bréne Brown, Wholehearted

Starve the Vampires

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I’m trying to practice non-outrage. Mindful awareness of the dangers of powerful narcissists and greed-heads, but non-outrage in the response. They feed on our outrage (and by they, I mean he).

So. Attention not to the energy-vampires, but to the quiet, dedicated ones who keep going, keep doing, keep meeting the needs. Attention to the hurting ones, to the seekers, to my own unmoored emotions.

I will no longer feed the ravenous energies of the attention-whores in the halls of power.

Starve them, I say. No more oxygen, no more yeast, no more feeding.

They prey upon our energies, these public carrion eaters, draining, destroying, getting larger and more vicious with each ounce of outrage and anxiety we place into their bowls. They howl for more. And we give it to them.

No more, I say. (At least for now. At least as long as I can stay mindful.)

Let’s circle up, tell our own brilliant stories, share our laughter and our poems, plan the revolution.

Sure, we’ll poke holes in the balloons of lies and destroy the shining facades to reveal the rotting heart, but not through outrage and fear. Step into the circle. Let’s turn our faces away from the bullies who can survive only as long as we give them attention.

The bullies we contend with will not hesitate to find some small and vulnerable one to harm in order to get our attention, so let’s be ready to step in and stop harm, let’s shore up the walls of protection, but always with our backs to the bullies, our focus on the need, on healing the harm.

Gratitude List:
1. Sourdough bread for supper. My Local Flock of Yeast is getting excitable. I almost set them free yesterday, but they showed me their stuff.
2. Whole Wheat flour. I had to go to school just one more time, to find a couple things before my classroom was dismantled, so I went to Miller’s and found whole wheat flour!
3. Reminders that I am not alone. You are not alone. We are not alone.
4. The way the sun is slanting through the house at this time of morning.
5. The way trees bud in pink and orange andred before the green leaves pop out.

May we walk in Beauty!

“At the end of the day, I’d rather be excluded for who I include than included for who I exclude.” —Eston Williams

“Free me. . .from words, that I may discover the signified, the word unspoken in the darkness.” —Byzantine Prayer

“Some days, you don’t know whether
you are stepping on earth or water or air.
Place each foot carefully before you
and offer your weight gratefully to
whatever it is that holds you.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider

“Father, Mother, God,
Thank you for your presence
during the hard and mean days.
For then we have you to lean upon.

For those who have no voice,
we ask you to speak.
For those who feel unworthy,
we ask you to pour your love out
in waterfalls of tenderness.
For those who live in pain,
we ask you to bathe them
in the river of your healing.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless
sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the
world that which we need most—Peace.”
—Maya Angelou

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
—Leonard Bernstein

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.”
—Mary Oliver

“If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” —Harper Lee

Leavening

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I thought that I would give up on the Goldfinch Wild Yeast herd because the two times I tried to make something with it, it turned to weirdly textured, salty flatbread. I ignored it for two days, neither feeding nor stirring it, and finally looked at it last night. The texture was spongy and bubbly. So I fed it. This morning I decided just to use the whole lot of it, try to make something, and call myself finished, so I mixed up a dough this morning, and it was rubbery and hard. I decided that it was destined for compost, but decided to let it rise anyway.

Two and a half hours later, it was double its size, and light and fluffy. I punched it down, pulled off a one-cup portion to put back in my now-clean Yeast Corral jar, and shaped it into a loaf and some rolls.

I, too, am rather a late-bloomer. Perhaps you are, too? Maybe we will also rise with such grace and great will. Let us be leaven. (Hmm. Do we need to write some leaven/heaven poems?)

Gratitude List:
1. The Wild Herd of Goldfinch Yeast rose! Yay, little yeasts!
2. How a yoga session unknotted me this morning
3. That pretty green bush Jon planted on the bluff ten or fifteen years ago has come into its own in the past couple years, this year especially. It’s really an elegant little being. I’m so glad I failed to kill it those times when I accidentally mowed over it.
4. Digital/virtual communities–of course they can’t replace the real thing, but they do provide deep connections when the real thing is curtailed.
5. Hugging. Do trees hug back? I think they do. I think that hugging trees also encourages endorphins. (Why don’t you experiment on that for yourself?)

May we walk in Beauty!

“As truly as God is our father, so truly is God our mother.” —Julian of Norwich

“Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.” ―Anaïs Nin

“Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.” ―William Wordsworth

Forever Oneness,
who sings to us in silence,
who teaches us through each other.
Guide my steps with strength and wisdom.
May I see the lessons as I walk,
honor the Purpose of all things.
Help me touch with respect,
always speak from behind my eyes.
Let me observe, not judge.
May I cause no harm,
and leave music and beauty after my visit.
When I return to forever
may the circle be closed
and the spiral be broader.
―Bee Lake (Aboriginal poet)

“We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.”
―Joseph Campbell

“I can’t tell you why your story is important, only that it is.” ―Mara Eve Robbins

Unmixed Attention

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Gratitude List:
1. Crisp morning
2. Looking forward to family Zoom today
3. Ten deep breaths of outside air enliven me
4. Greeting the Beings of this place grounds me
5. Rain brings more greens

May we walk in Beauty!

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” —Rumi

“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” —Simone Weil

“You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.” —Leymah Gbowee

“God speaks to each of us as [she] makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

“I do not see a delegation of the four-footed.
I see no seat for the eagles.” —Chief Oren Lyons, Onondaga

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” —Kurt Vonnegut

“I told them we’re tired of the culture wars, tired of Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we’re for, I said, not just what we’re against. We don’t want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. We want to talk about the tough stuff—biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation, and social justice—but without predetermined conclusions or simplistic answers. We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hearts and minds behind, without wearing a mask.” ―Rachel Held Evans

Go deeper.
Past thoughts into silence.
Past silence into stillness.
Past stillness into the heart.
Let love consume all that is left of you.
—Kabir

When We All Go Marching In

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Room 206 before I took down the things from the walls and bulletin board.

This week I have been the worship leader for my church’s Sunday service, my first time to prepare the videos to open the service, to pray, to bless us at the end, and to ask others to do children’s time and scripture. It felt daunting, and it highlighted how much I miss being part of that weekly gathering. And so last night’s dream:

In the dream, I am planning worship, asking people to make videos for the Sunday morning service. The pastor suggests that we really need a saxophone solo, so I go searching for people I know who could record a saxophone solo, but suddenly it’s no longer quarantine, and we’re holding church in a parking lot in a city (on folding chairs) and it’s about to begin and I have not yet found someone to do the saxophone solo when an old friend comes walking by and I ask him, and he starts to play “Oh When the Saints Go Marching In” and everyone gets up and follows him in a dancing march around and around the parking lot, and everyone is laughing and dancing and celebrating, and no one is afraid to bump into anyone else or to touch.

And now I am crying.

The other day, Jon and I were talking about what it will mean when parts of Pennsylvania go from red to yellow, and I realized that for me, it won’t necessarily be any different. Really, in life Before, I mostly went to four places: church, school, and to visit our parents. When we go to yellow, we still won’t go to church, we definitely won’t go to school, and I don’t think we’ll be able to visit retirement communities yet. It feels pretty bleak.

I wrote that thing the other day about the After, how the time when this is over won’t be a “getting back to normal.” I like that awareness that people are putting into the world–this is a time for change and transformation, to envision what the new way will be when we are again out in the world. Still, for me, I long to get back to a normal where we can brush past each other in public, link arms, hug, dance, celebrate together without fear, when we can go marching in, joyfully, to the public places we share together.

Gratitude List:
1. Sometimes something that appears and creates stress is also really exciting. I have a week to get my whole classroom cleared (that means my thousand and one books packed, too) because it looks like construction on our air conditioning will begin in June!
2. Anticipating Oriole
3. Quiet mornings with my boy before anyone else is up
4. Good stretching
5. Dreaming well

May we walk in Beauty!

“An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times. I think that is true of painters, sculptors, poets, musicians. As far as I’m concerned, it’s their choice, but I CHOOSE to reflect the times and situations in which I find myself. That, to me, is my duty. And at this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved. Young people, black and white, know this. That’s why they’re so involved in politics. We will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore. So I don’t think you have a choice. How can you be an artist and NOT reflect the times? That to me is the definition of an artist.” —Nina Simone

“A loving silence often has far more power
to heal and to connect than the
most well-intentioned words.” —Rachel Naomi Remen

“The secret to waking up is unscrambling the word earth.” —anonymous

“I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.” ―Rachel Held Evans

“What a comfort to know that God is a poet.” ―Rachel Held Evans

“Geometry is the archetype of the beauty of the world.” —Johannes Kepler

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” —John Keating (Robin Williams in Dead Poet Society)

“You are the Ground of all being
the Well-Spring of time
Womb of the earth
the Seed-Force of stars.
And so at the opening of this day
we wait
not for blessings from afar
but for You
the very Soil of our soul
the early Freshness of morning
the first Breath of day.”
—John Philip Newell

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” ―J.K. Rowling

Allow Yourself to Be Seen

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments
The white egret has been visiting the creek across the road since the neighbors took the bamboo down. I took a photo with my phone through the binoculars, then did some filter-work to add some mood and deal with the odd blur.

I put my mantra on a sticky note on my big computer screen yesterday:
Limber, Heathy, & Strong.
Then I added another:
Straighten your spine.
And then:
BREATHE

These were good reminders throughout the day. It was hard to keep my intention of getting up every hour–back-to-back meetings, getting caught up in the thing I was doing, forgetting to check the time. . . Today, I will try again.

Gratitude List:
1. Visiting egrets
2. I found my Spirit Voyage Sampler CD–just perfect for quiet stretching and meditating.
3. How April throws up poems from previous years in my face. Some I thought were pretty good are kind of meh, and some I was uncomfortable with are grabbing me now. Maybe in May, I’ll finally find the energy to start another collection. We’ll see.
4. Catching new rhythms.
5. So much green!

May we walk in Beauty!

“‪‪Imagine the tiny percentage of your body that is directly involved in reading this sentence. Now, consider the oversized percentage this conscious part of you occupies in your concept of yourself. So? What does this discrepancy mean? Is our “who” different from our “what”?‬‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“Where you ache to be recognized, allow yourself to be seen.” —Toko-pa Turner

“People have said to me, ‘You’re so courageous. Aren’t you ever afraid?’ I laugh because it’s not possible to be courageous if you’re not afraid. Courage doesn’t happen without fear; it happens in spite of fear. The word courage derives from ‘coeur’, the French for ‘heart.’ True courage happens only when we face our fear and choose to act anyway, out of love.” —Julia Butterfly Hill

“Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved, finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world?” —Wendell Berry

“Every country should have a Ministry of Peace” —Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire

“Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.” —Tom Robbins

“I never want to lose the story-loving child in me. A story that meant one thing to me when I was forty may mean something quite different to me today.” —Madeleine L’Engle

Limber, Healthy, and Strong

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The ferns remember. . .

I’m not moving my body enough. I can feel almost the gears and cogs gumming up, getting crochety. It’s easy to put off yoga or walking because I have one more task at the computer that MUST be done. Everything is on the screens now.

So I set the intention of getting up and moving every hour. At school, I’m at least pacing around my classroom, walking to the office (and then speed-walking back to my classroom and back to the office again because I forgot something), even walking to and from the car. Here, I can ignore the pauses “between,” miss the chances to stand up and walk around.

I’m including ten deep outside breaths every morning (as my sister-in-law prescribed), and greeting the Beings in the hollow. I need to find patience for yoga and other exercise. Walking is good, because by the time I start to thinking, “Ugh. I have so much to do on the computer,” I am half a mile away from the house, and I still have another half mile to walk back.

So. Here’s the intention: Get up and walk around the house at least once and hour–maybe us and down the steps. I’ll keep up the walking every day or two. And once or twice a day, 15 minutes of yoga.

Truth be told, the yoga has been demoralizing. For years, I have had a balance series that I did, and over the past six months, I have noticed that one of the more challenging pieces has been getting harder and harder, and I can no longer actually do it–my left hand can no longer reach behind me and grab my left foot. I love that stretch, so sometimes, I sidle up to a wall so I can push my foot into my hand. But it’s no longer the easy flow that it used to be.

I just need to redevelop a new routine, one that still challenges me, that includes some of my beloved balance poses, but one that also stretches my back and legs, one that strengthens my core, one that allows me to shift away from some of my expectations and lets me be in the moment.

Also, when I am creating intentions to move more and exercise more, I have a tendency to fall onto the tracks of the weight-loss train. This is a danger zone for me. I need to want this for my health and my strength and my mobility and not for my weight. Somehow that sneaky little trick always happens and I find myself starting to pull out the scales, starting to plan another dietary tactic. So the spiritual/emotional discipline in this will be to keep my focus on keeping limber, healthy, and strong. There’s my mantra.

Gratitude List:
1. My yeast came! Thanks to my friend Joan, who sent me yeast in the mail. This morning I set another dough to rise with my wild yeast (the last attempt, on Tuesday, resulted in a chewy flatbread), and this afternoon, I am thinking of making a dough with Joan’s yeast for a calzone or something for supper. The wild yeast needs me to let it be experimental for now and not have too high an expectation
2. Cats in the classroom. Cats are good people to have around.
3. Poetry. This month has been another period of poetic breakthrough for me, and I am grateful. I think my writing deepens when I’m fighting my way through the woods of anxiety and grief. Also, an accountable writing community helps.
4. Intentions.
5. Watching the green appear, and anticipating oriole.

May we walk in Beauty!

“‪Good morning. There is a small, but meaningful thing you could do today in the service of your long term goal. Do that thing and then celebrate your progress with wild abandon. This is how we cultivate our dreams with a gardener’s gentle diligence.‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“Most lives are not distinguished by great achievements. They are measured by an infinite number of small ones. Each time you do a kindness for someone or bring a smile to his face, it gives your life meaning. Never doubt your value, little friend. The world would be a dismal place without you in it.” —Lisa Kleypas

“Decide to rise.
Lean in. Listen up. Closely.
It’s your soul speaking and she says,
Get UP! I need you. I want you. I am you. Choose me.
Lean in. Listen up. Closely.
Decide to rise.” —Danielle LaPorte

“What you are comes to you.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Poetry, indeed, has always been one of humanity’s sharpest tools for puncturing the shrink-wrap of silence and oppression, and although it may appear to be galaxies apart from science, these two channels of truth have something essential in common: nature, the raw material for both. To impoverish the world of the birds and the bees is to impoverish it of the bards and the biologists.” —Jane Hirschfield

“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.” —Helen Keller

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
―Jalaluddin Rumi

“We Are…
our grandmothers’ prayers,
we are our grandfathers’ dreamings,
we are the breath of the ancestors,
we are the spirit of God.”
―Ysaye M. Barnwell

Happy Earth Day!

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“The earth, the air, the fire, the water: Return, return, return, return. . .” –Libana song

Contemplative Research Journey for Earth Day:
Contemplate the earth you walk, right in your yard, your neighborhood, your town.
If you can, put your bare feet on earth today.
Think about the people who were here before your, and before them.
Do you know who were the indigenous peoples who lived on and hunted and farmed and fished on the land where you stand?
What do you know of the soil and the rocks and minerals of your place?
What feeds the life of the place where you are?

Contemplate the plants of your neighborhood.
Can you name three trees? Five? Twenty?
Who is in bud now? Who is in bloom?
There is so much more than grass in the grass. Do you know the names of all the plantfolk who provide the green carpets you walk on?

Contemplate the wingfolk and the four-footed people who share this space with you.
Can you tell one shining bird from the other?
Can you differentiate their calls?
Can you see evidence of the night wanderers?
Who might be visiting your yards and gardens and alleyways while you sleep?
And the tiny insect people that try so hard to live inside our houses.
Have you watched them make webs, tend to their own business, seek the dark spaces?

What about the waters of your place?
Where does it come from and where does it go?
If you have wild water running near you, take some time today to trail your fingers through it.

Touch earth. Touch water. Touch bark.
Listen for the messages in birdsong.
Smell the rising spring.
Breathe wind. Take ten deep outside breaths.
Greet the Beings of your place with love and gratitude.

Gratitude List:
1. The guarddogwoods are beginning to bloom. Even though I no longer hang poetic laundry on their branches, I always feel like poetry itself is blooming when they start to throw pink at the sun.
2. Wangari Maathai, Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall, Greta Thunberg, Berta Caceres–and all the fierce and joyful activists around the world whom they represent.
3. The many Beings of Skunk Hollow. The shine and the flutter. The wafting and the whoosh. The verdancy. The brilliance.
4. Golda’s Lake and Goldfinch Creek and Ezilie’s Spring and Cabin Creek and the Susquehanna River, and the Chesapeake Bay.
5. The promise of a new way. The hope of change.

May we walk, so joyfully, in Beauty!

Earth Day Words:
“The world is, in truth, a holy place.” —Teilhard de Chardin

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” —Henry David Thoreau

“You are your own cartographer now.” —Ralph Blum

“If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.”
―Rainer Maria Rilke

“Every creature is a word of God.” ―Meister Eckhart

“The forest for me is a temple, a cathedral of tree canopies and dancing light.” ―Dr. Jane Goodall

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not.” ―The Onceler (Dr. Seuss)

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.” ―Rachel Carson

William Stafford: “I place my feet with care in such a world.”

“A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy.” ―John Sawhill

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” ―Rachel Carson

“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full or wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later year…the alienation from the sources of our strength.” ―Rachel Carson

“Few words are so revealing of Western sexual prejudice as the word Goddess, in contrast to the word God. Modern connotations differ vastly from those of the ancients, to whom the Goddess was a full-fledged cosmic parent figure who created the universe and its laws, ruler of Nature, Fate, Time, Eternity, Truth, Wisdom, Justice, Love, Birth, Death, Etc.” ―Barbara G. Walker

“Our vitality is inextricably bound up with creativity. Like a tree whose expression is fruit, giving our gifts is what keeps life pushing through our veins. It’s what keeps us feeling alive. As anyone who has strayed too far from their creativity knows, without it every corner of one’s life can fall prey to a terrible greying spread. As Kahlil Gibran writes about trees in an orchard, “They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.” —by Toko-pa Turner

Words and Wilds

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I’m getting a late start today, and I need to go get ready for school in a moment. This morning, first thing, I took a cup of my wild yeast, mixed in a cup of water, a Tbsp. of salt, and then added flour until I had a good kneadable dough. It’s rising now, covered by a damp cloth, for six hours. Then I’ll knead it again and form it into a loaf or two, let it rise another two hours, and see what happens!

Gratitude List:
Words I am grateful for today.
1. Winsome: curious, dreamy, innocent, fool-ish
2. Wild: untame, free, safe, creative
3. Weird: eccentric, magical, fate, unpredictable
4. Woods: inscape, numinous, serendipitous, shining
5. Windy: scouring, shriving, re-vivifying, inspiration

Walk Wildly!

“Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession. . .but about securing a portal.” —Laura Miller

“I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.” ―Shannon Hale

“I can promise you that women working together―linked, informed, and educated―can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.” ―Isabel Allende

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” ―John Muir

“When we went to jail, we were setting our faces against the world, against things as they are, the terrible injustice of our capitalist industrial system which lives by war and by preparing for war.” ―Dorothy Day

“What is not acceptable is silence in face of oppression. Boycott if you want, or participate if you want. But do not remain silent in face of injustice.” ―Omid Safi

“When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.” ―John O’Donohue

“Beauty is an experience, nothing else. It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is something felt, a glow or a communicated sense of fineness. What ails us is our sense of beauty is so bruised and blunted, we miss all the best.” ―D. H. Lawrence

“Poems are maps to the place where you already are.” —Jane Hirshfield

“Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quiet desperation. The choice is to draw the blinds and shut it all out, or believe.” ―Barbara Kingsolver

“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.” ―Hermann Hesse