Gratitudes

Yeast

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Here are some yeast stories:

There’s something about being in isolation that makes a person want to bake. I started by trying to make hamburger buns for our first isolation birthday. The practice round was so successful with the kids, that I kept making them, and I played around with the recipe, making spiral rolls and garlic rolls. And then, just like that, I was out of yeast. And Giant was out of yeast. And Sue’s was out of yeast. No one has whole wheat flour either.

I complained on Facebook, and a friend who had just received her mail order of a pound of yeast said she would put some in the mail for me this week. What a tender gesture! I never would have let myself accept such an offer in the Before, but now, Yes, please and thank you. And such a feeling of being cared for.

My sister also ran out of yeast. As she was on a walk the other day, a neighbor who was unloading groceries from the car called out and asked her if she needed paper towels. No, my sister called from a safe distance, but yeast–now that’s a difficult thing to come by. Just a couple days later, her neighbor dropped off yeast at my sister’s door.

The sharing takes on a sacramental edge these days. And yeast. Sharing yeast is sharing something even more elemental than a cup of sugar. No matter how much I research and study what yeast is and how it (they?) does its work, it will always be something mystical, something magical, to me. Bread and wine, the elements of sacrament in more than just the Christian tradition, are both yeast-based. I once heard someone talking about the two kinds of plants–monocotyledons and dicotyledons–and how corn is a monocot and grapes are a dicot, and that the elements of bread and wine bring together those two forms of plants with the magic of yeast and fermentation. And I think I won’t try to wrap that up with a nice essayist’s conclusion. It feels like a mystery that needs to stay quietly behind the veil, hinted at, marveled at, unexplained for now.

While I await the precious gift of yeast from Joan, I have begun to capture my own wild yeasts. They say that the yeast of any place is distinctly OF that place. So these are my Goldfinch Yeasts. Is is a flock? A herd? They’ve been bubbling for days, strong and lively, and today they smell sour and yeasty. Yeast Beings, I greet you.

Capturing Yeast: I’ve done this before, but it’s been years, so I watched some videos and read some tutorials. Here’s the process I’ve been using:

In a wide-mouthed jar, I put 3 Tbsp. of flour and 2 Tbsp. of water. Mixed, covered with a special cotton cloth and rubber band (perhaps any cloth will do), and let stand in a warm place for 12 hours.

After 12 hours, I stirred. Then another 12 hours later, I added another 3 Tbsp. flour and 2 Tbsp. water. The tutorials say five days until yeast is ready for baking. This is the morning of day five for me. Tomorrow, I will find a recipe and bake. Maybe pizza dough for supper, or rolls for the boys to snack on. And some day we’ll find whole wheat flour again. Meanwhile, it’s white bread.

That’s the process. Stir every 12 hours, and feed every 24 hours. Though none of the experts have mentioned it, I suspect it might be helpful to sing to them as you stir, or to speak poetry to them. Greeting them and praising them can’t hurt.

Gratitude List:
1. Yeast
2. People who share yeast
3. Bread and wine
4. Awaiting oriole
5. The promise of a new week.

May we walk in Mystery.

“To light a candle is to cast a shadow…”
―Ursula K. Le Guin

“Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.” ―Claude Monet

“We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.” ―Malala Yousafzai

I called through your door,
“The mystics are gathering in the street. Come out!”
“Leave me alone. I’m sick.”
“I don’t care if you’re dead! Jesus is here,
and he wants to resurrect somebody!”
―Jalaludin Rumi

“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.”
―Jalaluddin Rumi

“Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.”
―Anaïs Nin

“Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn’t fear boundaries, but you should not be afraid of destroying them. That’s what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries.”
―Haruki Murakami

“All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it to those around us.” —Richard Rohr

Greeting Beings

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’ve been slowly reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass over the past few months, taking a chapter at a time and letting it deepen. Today I read her comments on the Potawatomi language (and its cousins) and how the references, even in verbs, differentiate not between animate and inanimate objects, but between Beings and non-beings (like make objects). It’s not anthropomorphism, but a recognition of the Beingness, or personhood, of so much that is not human in the world, the animacy of the Beings around us.

I feel this most palpably with trees, though rocks also seem to have a Beingness which teaches me. And water. How would our world change if we began to consider the Beings around us not as resources to be used, objects to be mastered or owned, but as Beings with something to teach us? As neighbors and helpers and friends with whom we can companionably share a space?

Yesterday, my sister-in-law reminded her friends on social media to take at least ten strong breaths outside each day. I love that. So this morning, I went and stood on the porch, and breathed greetings to my friends and neighbors: Good morning, Sycamore! Thank you, Walnut! Why hello, Willow! Greetings, Ground Under my Feet! Such a shiny twinkle you have, Quartzite on the hillside!

I think this will be my morning practice for a while now: Breath and Greetings.

Gratitude List:
1. The song of the White-Throated Sparrow. Who am I to tell him he’s off-key, really? It’s like telling someone they spell their name wrong. He’s the master of the blue note, and it sound like longing, like desire, like all the loss and the hope in the world rolled into a ball of birdsong.
2. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s reminders. Deep noticing.
3. The ways we keep connecting even when it’s difficult. This morning was Worship Scattered (which I am beginning to call Church With Cats), this afternoon is Gang Zoom, and tonight is Family Zoom.
4. I have created my school/office space here with more clear delineation, more intentionality. It both helps me to feel that my work has a Space here, and that I can put up my little screen in front of the computer stuff and walk away. As I was setting things up, Josiah scuttled off to his room and brought his Xbox and school Chromebook own and set them up on the other end of my table. Companionability. I suppose this corner of the living room is not the Schoolroom. I should print out a photo of the little classroom that came off our porch in the little house where my mother taught me kindergarten and my brother second grade.
5. Trails in the woods. We’ve avoided it for so long because of the poison ivy, but the kid has us out there almost every day now, walking his trails, and clipping poison ivy away from the edges. There are mayapples and shelf lichens, old snags and trees with burrows and dens in the roots. It’s a gnomy sort of place. And everything is coming out in bud.

May we walk in Beauty!

“It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on earth. It is an awesome opportunity.” —Cesar Chavez

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” ―Frederick Buechner

“The words you speak become the house you live in.” ―Hafiz

“Humans are the most intellectually advanced animal on the planet and yet, we are destroying our only home. The window of time is very small, but I refuse to believe that we cannot solve this problem.” ―Dr. Jane Goodall

“Memory makes the now fully inhabitable.” ―David Whyte

“Things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance even after the physical contact has been severed.” ―James Frazer

“Which world are we trying to sustain: a resource to fulfill our desires of material prosperity, or an Earth of wonder, beauty, and sacred meaning?” — Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” —John Steinbeck

“Crystals are living beings at the beginning of creation. All things have a frequency and a vibration.” —Nikola Tesla

Wish We Were Here

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I took these photos in my classroom yesterday. I’m thinking of printing up a postcard to send to my students with one of themse,saying, WISH WE WERE HERE! I’m always a little worried about being cheesy, but maybe that’s part of my function in the lives of teenagers, to be a cheesy eccentric old person. Another option, which might be more comforting, actually, would be this one.

I should make up and order the card today so I can hopefully start sending them out next week. Maybe I’ll do both, and send the serious one to the ones that I think need that boost and the silly one to those who might need a laugh.

Gratitude List:
1. I know they’re always on here, but really that goldfinch out there is the purest yellow I think I have ever seen. He’s radiant. The grey of the rainy day makes it more intense.
2. I’m really grateful that I had a second pair of glasses in the more recent prescription. I can’t seem to fix the eye-piece on the pair I broke, so I ordered a new pair (that was one expensive bag of flour!), but in the meantime, I have these others. I even like the way they look, but they’re really heavy on the bridge of my nose, so I will be glad when the others come in the mail.
3. New things to anticipate: If I have to be home all the time for a while, I am so grateful that it is during the time that the oriole returns. I will be listening every day for his whistle.
4. Capturing yeast. I’m frustrated that we couldn’t find any in the stores we go to (and I am not going to go driving about and searching–it feels like that breaks the spirit of the rules at the moment, even though it’s technically a grocery), so I am capturing some. I’ve done it before, and it’s a great way to connect directly to the science and the livingness of the organisms we use in cooking. This is the third day, and there are little bubbles beginning to form.
5. It’s not just the gold of the finch, but the green also pops out more vividly and verdantly on certain types of grey days. Isn’t that word fabulous? Verdant. I wonder what the original German or Latin version of the word was in Hildegard’s writings. . . I guess there will be a little research in my day.

May we walk in Beauty!

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” ―Thomas Merton

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” ―Thomas Merton

“We see quite clearly that what happens
to the nonhuman happens to the human.
What happens to the outer world
happens to the inner world.
If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur
then the emotional, imaginative,
intellectual, and spiritual life of the human
is diminished or extinguished.
Without the soaring birds, the great forests,
the sounds and coloration of the insects,
the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields,
the sight of the clouds by day
and the stars at night, we become impoverished
in all that makes us human.”
―Thomas Berry

“All acts of kindness are lights in the war for justice.” ―Joy Harjo

“We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.” ―Denise Levertov

Bloom (by a friend)

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
“Mt. Everest” by Katie Hutchison College

Yesterday, my friend Katie Hutchison College wrote a very moving piece about living in these times. I was so moved by her words that I asked her permission to post it on my blog. She graciously said I could. I used her image of “Mt. Everest” as my photo of the day.

Today’s bloom: anemone ‘Mt. Everest’. She hasn’t opened yet (perhaps later today). But this stage is beautiful, just perched on the edge.

At the end of the fourth Harry Potter movie, when it’s now clear that Voldemort is back, there’s a moment I love: the main characters are standing on a bridge, and Hermione, always able to see further ahead than the others, stops cold and says ‘Everything is going to be different now, isn’t it?’

To which, after a slight pause, Harry answers ‘yes. Yes, it is.’

The actors nail it. She isn’t fearful. Just…..wistful. Taking a moment to acknowledge what has changed. Taking a moment to think of the changes that are ahead.

He isn’t dismissive. There’s more a tone of quiet determination in his response.

It’s a remarkable moment precisely because the director had to streamline the book so much, and so many details were left out. I’m glad this small bit was included. The series is about, among other things, transitioning to adulthood, and this exchange says it all.

This sucks, and it will never be the same again, but we’re going to do it anyway.

Most thinking people understand now that this isn’t simply a weird, inconvenient two week holiday. The ramifications of this, economically and socially, are massive. And, of course, the ‘two weeks’ is long gone.

Did you ever, having messed up something or other in your life, wish for a do-it-over button? Did you ever read a story about someone who vanished and created a whole new life, and you took a moment to think hmm, yes, what would I change if there weren’t already all these pre-conceived ideas of who I am, if everyone surrounding me hadn’t frozen me into a mold? Who would I be, if I could be anything? I’m talking about the inside person, not the outside

Did you ever think “I’m trying so hard, now, not to be (insert character flaw of your choice here) but it’s impossible, because everyone’s already decided that I’m (repeat previous). And when I try to act in a new way it’s impossible, because they treat me like I’m still the old way, or they’re suspicious of my motives.”

Well! This is our moment!

People are different post-trauma. Things are different. Rules are different. Patterns are different.

While we grapple with what these changes mean for us, let’s not forget this: we can be different, too. But unlike all those other changes over which we haven’t much control, we DO get a say in our own upcoming, inevitable changes.

You have a blank sheet of paper in front of you and a nice sharp pencil with a perfect eraser.

If you know that you have always come across as cold and unable to show affection, but you don’t want to be that way – this is a once in a lifetime mulligan. Because nobody, but nobody, is going to question your sea change.

Been irresponsible? It’s a good time to shift gears. A crisis will do that to you. Haven’t been focused enough on the kids, other than micromanaging schedules? It’s perfectly understandable that this would shift your priorities. No one will give you crap for dropping out of some activities after this.

It’s a crisis, it’s a game changer, and Hermione nailed it: everything is going to be different now.

But not all of the changes will be bad.

We have all been imprisoned by some burden that can now be lifted, because in a very real way we’ve just been handed a Get Out of Jail Free card.

Go. Bloom.

Gratitude List:
1. The great and tender wisdom of my friends
2. I slept very deeply last night. I always feel, after a bout of insomnia, that I need to re-train my body to sleep.
3. Friday
4. Dogwoods in bloom
5. Yeast. We couldn’t find it in the big grocery store or in the little local shop in town, so I am capturing my own flock. It will take a few days, but I’m glad there are options. I’ve done this before, so I’m excited to try again. During times of quarantine, so people get a new puppy to tend and train. I wrangle wild yeast.

May we walk in Beauty!

“First is the fall. Then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God.” —Julian of Norwich

“Nothing is more beautiful than the uniqueness that God has created. You don’t have to create the beauty—you’ve already got the beauty. You don’t have to create the freedom—you’ve got it. You don’t have to create the image of God in you—you have it. You don’t have to win over God’s love—you have more than you know what to do with.” — Father Thomas Keating

“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.” —Henry David Thoreau

“Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.” ―St. Francis of Assisi

“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.” ― Mary Oliver

“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.” ―Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” ―Ursula K. Le Guin

“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” ―Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who’s confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now.” ―Joss Whedon

“The world is remade through the power of fierce women performing outrageous acts of creative rebellion.” —Louise M. Pare

For the Good of Everyone

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
My poetry collaborator dreams up the next line.

The grumbling is getting louder. The anxiety is rising. People are starting to toss the words “rights” and “freedom” around. People are afraid that this is all power-plays by the leadership to cow us, subject us, hold us in our places. And why shouldn’t they be afraid? When have we ever known the (mostly) rich (mostly) white (mostly) male ruling class to work on behalf of the people, to remember their sweetly quaint little title of “public servant”? Who should we trust?

The doctors. And scientists. We can, hopefully, trust the scientists and the physicians. And the story. Trust the story. Watch how it has played out across the globe. Remember Italy. Remember China.

It’s very likely that some of the governors are working out of self-interest and electability, that some are too cautious and timid, that others are hungrily consolidating power in a time when people are vulnerable. So I will trust the leaders who seem to be trusting the doctors and the scientists and the story. It hasn’t been difficult to find an example of a leaders who isn’t trusting the science, who is inexorably manipulating the narrative to feed his own ego and his own power. And if you want to start talking about freedom and rights, let’s begin with the ways in which he has been harming the freedom and the rights of the common people since the day he took office. I’m going to cast my lot in with the governors on this one.

This doesn’t have to be an American frontier epic contest between your fear and your freedom. That’s an old and worn-out trope, and it’s a false dichotomy, a fairy tale told to us by end-stage capitalism. The governors are not Big Bart riding into town with all guns blazing, ordering the women and children to cower in their homes. In this story, we make the choice to stay home, to wait, to isolate, in order to protect the vulnerable ones among us, in order to protect our health care workers.

As far as I know, my parents and my immuno-compromised beloveds are all safe. But if we resume business as usual too soon, they may all be in danger, and those you love, too. It’s not about whether or not you or I personally fear death. It’s about whether we have the deep communal compassion to do something that protects the most vulnerable among us. Remember, this is the Exile for the Good of the Realm.

Gratitude List:
1. The Iron Lady Trail. My Project Manager says I shouldn’t call it that, that it’s still unnamed, but he initially called it the Iron Lady, and so I’m calling it that for now. Josiah is marking and clearing a series of deer trails in the woods above the pond. He calls himself the Project Manager, and her has enlisted his progenitors to assist with the cutting of poison ivy and brambles. Yesterday after our schoolwork, we cleared a side trail that links the Iron Lady (I mean Unnamed) Trail to a second entrance to the fields. This one emerges from the woods beneath a curving limb of a cherry tree. For too long, the poison ivy has kept us out of the woods. We are going to try to keep the trails maintained so we can have some passages through the woods.
2. The passion with which my kids follow their interests. It can be tiring to listen to hours of discourse on the minute differences between the Tesla models, or how to build a very detailed something-or-other in Minecraft, or the many reasons why a particularly obscure piece of technology is either illegal or shady or brilliant. Still, I love that they can be passionate about things that have near-zero interest for me.
3. Homemade oatmeal protein bars. I don’t know why I got away from making them. And of course, I have no recipe, so I have to go back and recreate it. The ones I made last night are too crumbly. But they taste good!
4. The veils of green appearing through the woods.
5. I am loving the poetry-writing process right now. It’s very much like the energy of April 2012 (I think that was the year), when I felt something click and sizzle. This is perhaps less giddy, more grounded, but it tingles. I’m especially grateful for my poet-community right now.

Take care of each other. Walk in Beauty!

The Soul, it sees by synesthesia
Tasting light caressed by song
A touch is like a descant fire
resonant and strong.
—Craig Sottolano

“I’m not as cooperative as you might want a woman to be.” —Carrie Fisher

“The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.” —Adrienne Rich

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
-—Raymond Carver’s Late Fragment, inscribed on his tombstone

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation.

The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last.

All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
—David Whyte

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
―Mother Teresa

“Walking. I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.”
―Linda Hogan

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

Searching for the Beloved

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This morning, I found this image that I altered a year ago. That’s another thing about Mary Magdalene: she went out actually searching for the Beloved. Like Rumi and Hafez, she followed the trail of her longing. Thomas hid, Peter went back to work, the Emmaus travelers whispered their grief. Mary went searching, asking, into the cave itself and out again into the sunlit garden.

I love this series of stories, the Mary Magdalene story, the Emmaus story, the Thomas story, the Peter and the Fish story, and anticipate them with glee every year–Jesus, the Holy Fool, going from beloved to beloved with the Easter-eggiest of Easter eggs. Surprise! It’s me! Certain surprises are deeply heart-opening. The veil is suddenly torn down. The stone explodes from the entrance of the cave and light streams in. I love how Jesus sets up the epiphanies with the exact surprise each person needs: the gardener turning into the sunlight and speaking her name, the ghost-like appearance in a room where he had not been and the physical touch Thomas demanded, the wise comforter and breaker of bread for confused and grief-weary travelers, the stranger on the beach cooking fish to challenge and reconcile Peter. Everybody got what they needed in the surprises he gave them.

Springtime brings epiphanies and surprises: the sudden glimpse of a morel in the leaf-litter (I’m still looking for my first), the flash of red on a blackbird’s wing, the bursting of bloom on the dogwood that was naked just three days ago. The new and different slant of sun on the sidewalk, the particular springiness of the breezes and winds, the warmth in the air. May spring surprise you even during isolation. May your hear the Beloved calling your name. Remember: Even as you search, the Beloved is seeking you.

Gratitude List:
1. Last year on this day, I wrote about the musical thrill when leading singing in church, of being in front of all those earnest and joyful voices. I miss that. There will be lots of singing in church in The After.
2. I have always been incredibly grateful for the way we work as a team at school—faculty, guidance, administration, staff—to support students and their families, and now, more than ever, I am deeply moved by the net that we create (we’re trying hard to create) together.
3. Mr. Redwing just puffed out his flaming sleeves from atop the feeder stand and whistled merrily.
4. While I have noticed that I am holding tension in my body in ways I never have before, I am also learning new ways to stretch and breathe in order to release tension.
5. I think today might be a grocery day. We’re trying to make the time Between last longer and longer, but these kid eat a thousand things and guzzle milk like water. And as scary as it is to send someone out and to bring things in, grocery day is a shift of the rhythm. And we’re out of yeast, just as I was hitting my stride on the baking jag, so maybe there’ll be yeast tomorrow. At least there will be more flour so I can consider starting my own yeast.

Take care of each other. Walk in Beauty!

“Let me tell you what I do know though…
I know mountains grow because of their fault lines. I know lakes turn that gorgeous shade of turquoise because of their silt. I know jewels are formed under pressure. I know trees can grow through rocks, and rivers can break canyons.
I know there are 120 crayola crayons to choose from, so you can color yourself any which way you like.
I know the earth smells fabulous after a hard rain, and I know she breathes. I know out of the destruction of forest fires, new and stronger ecosystems can emerge. I know there is life in the deepest depths of the ocean and her tides can soften stone.
I know there can be no shadows without light. I know the passion is in the risk.
I know time heals, and most things will be okay eventually. I know you are made of the star stuff, and I know out there somebody loves you; exactly the way you are, even if you haven’t found them yet.
I know all these things, and tell them to you — in case you forgot to remember.” —Jacquelyn Taylor

“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” —James Baldwin

“We have tried to create a watertight social system so that mercy is not needed, nor even attractive. Mercy admits and accepts that not all problems can be solved by our techniques, formulas, and technology. The ‘superfluous’ opening of the human heart that we call mercy is essential for any structure or institution to remain human and humanizing.” —Richard Rohr

“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”
—Anne Lamott

“Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends.” —Hafiz

“Now I see the secret of making the best person, it is to grow in the open air and eat and sleep with the earth.” —Walt Whitman

“Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.” —John Muir

“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.” —Roald Dahl

“A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as she is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things she would not have thought of if she had not started to say them.” —William Stafford (but I have changed the pronouns to feminine)

“America stands for exactly what Americans will stand for. History doesn’t write itself. It must be lived and practiced.” —Jesse Williams

In the After

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments
My wise sycamore tree friend.

There are the people who keep saying, “When things get back to normal.” I hear the sense of loss, the sense of things thrown out of kilter, in that–the longing to be able to be back with the people we loved, to go to the places we have come to love, to play and interact, to look people in the eye. I hear, and feel, the terrible anxiety of the livelihood losses created by a world on pause. Yes, I too eagerly anticipate the time when things get back to that normal.

There are the people who are critiquing the privilege in that statement. Getting back to what normal? they ask. I need to keep interrogating this for myself. I respect this critique. I want the new normal that comes when all this is over to open doors for more people. I don’t want to go back to a normal that privileges capital over humanity, that privileges the makers of abstract capital over the creators of actual necessary things, and the ones who make society flow smoothly.

There are the people who are celebrating this abnormal as a breathing time for the environment. Less pollution of all kinds–less particulate matter in the air, less noise, fewer lights–offers wildlands and wild creatures a chance to rebound, to heal. We are seeing the Mother’s graceful ability to heal herself. It’s happening before our eyes. There is hope. I don’t want to go go back to a normal that mindlessly plunders and destroys the Mother for capital gain.

I’ve begun thinking about it as The After. What do we want the world to be In The After? How can we honor the deep desire for a “normal,” a stability, a rhythm and routine that so many are expressing, and also strive for a new way of being? Can we make the kindnesses and the mutual aid a matter of course? Can we make the idea of everyone working together for the safety of our most vulnerable one of the established standards of the After? Will we find ways to walk the Earth with more respectful silence, so as not to disturb Her children? Will we give up plunder and competition in favor of sharing and co-existence? Perhaps now, the voices of the ones who have always striven for justice and equality, for kindness and ecological awareness, will be heard above the clamor.

What is the world you want to live in? We have been living in a pause, the world on hold, but there will come a time when we begin to move again, when we step out of the pause into a new something (a new normal, perhaps). Let’s commit to making The After a more just, more tender, more egalitarian, more eco-conscious world. Speak up now. Tell your ideas now. This is the gestation period, the time to be forming and visualizing and developing the normal that is to come in The After.

Gratitude List:
1. Visionaries
2. Dreamers
3. The people who implement ideas
4. Kindness
5. Hope

May we walk in Beauty!

“Grief is normal. It’s not like you’ll have a life someday with no grief. Life is all about loss, but grief is the medicine for that loss. Grief is not your problem. Grief is not the sorrow. Grief is the medicine. The people that have grief cultural awareness are always turning all of their losses into beauty in order to make more life instead of just trying to get through it and then forget about it.” —Martin Prechtel

“The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn.” —Bayard Rustin

“My turn shall also come: I sense the spreading of a wing.” —Osip Mandelstam, Russian poet and essayist

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” ―Washington Irving

“Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a-priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.” ―David Whyte

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.

“The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling—their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

“Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
―Arundhati Roy, War Talk

“And this brings us back to the Hen Wife—that figure of magic who dwells comfortably among us, not off by the crossroads or in the dark of the woods; who is married, not solitary; who is equally at home with the wild and domestic, with the animal and human worlds. She is, I believe, among us still: dispensing her wisdom and exercising her power in kitchens and farmyards (and the urban equivalent) to this day—anywhere that women gather, talk among themselves, and pass knowledge down to the next generations.” ―Terri Windling

Mary Magdalene

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
Artists, left to right: Owen Couch, unknown, Robert Lentz, Richard Stodart, unknown
(If you know the makers of either of the unknowns, I would be grateful to learn.)

She has always been one of my favorite characters from the stories of Jesus, along with Photina, the Woman at the Well. Women who lived raw and wild, undomesticated and on their own terms. There always seems to be something more, something deeper, something I can’t quite hear or understand, like a powerful dream that’s just fading before I can remember the details, or a word that sits on the tip of the tongue without finding its way into the open air. Mary Magdalene holds a Mystery that is always one step deeper into the veil of mists, one more curtain to encounter, one more step into the wilderness.

All the attempts to nail down her mystery, to put words to it, always leave me a little cold, compelling as they are: Maybe she was Jesus’ wife or lover. Maybe she was the real writer of one of the canonic gospels. Maybe she is the Holy Grail. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Mary Magdalene sits, like the High Priestess, before the curtain of mysteries, and only as I gain wisdom will I be granted the clue or the code or the shaft of golden sunlight that will admit me to the next stage of understanding. Like all the deepest mysteries, like the Deep Self, she lives in the realm of image and symbol, offering egg and thunder, grail and alabaster jar, skull and hair and tears. Best understood on the level of a dream. Best spoken in poetry, perhaps.

That moment of Mary’s epiphany is the mirror of every moment of yearning and longing and ache. Deep grief gives way to confusion and an intensification of grief: Where have they taken the body? And then the moment when the Beloved calls her by her name. I can never write that without getting chills and tearing up. Thomas, Peter, The Emmaus Travelers–those surprises are all coming, all delightful. But this one moment of sunlight in a garden and the sound of her/my name in the voice of the Beloved–it needs no pinning down, no explanation.

Gratitude List:
1. Wind. Yes, it’s scary, and I don’t really need more anxiety right now, but it’s so beautiful and powerful. After the big winds, I always think, “Wind-shriven,” the world scoured clean.
2. This long weekend. I have not yet gotten my lagging work completed, but I have had three marvelous days of baking and sewing and trail-work and playing with the family.
3. The story of Mary Magdalene. I need her Mystery and Epiphany now, perhaps more than ever.
4. Making plans even in the midst of this uncertainty. Putting programs and ideas and lesson plans into online formats is so much less than ideal, but I feel myself growing and thinking in new ways. In the after, I will be informed by the ways my brain has been forced to adapt in these months, and hopefully that will contribute to a glorious new normal instead of a return to an old normal.
5. Martin Prechtel’s ideas about Grief and Praise. I am going to have to buy some of his books.

May we walk in Beauty!

“I pray to the birds. I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day—the invocations and benedictions of Earth. I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.” ―Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” ―Emma Lazarus

“Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.” ―Ernest Hemingway

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” ―Robert Frost

“What I have seen is the totality recapitulated as One,
Received not in essence but by participation.
It is just as if you lit a flame from a live flame:
It is the entire flame you receive.”
―St. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022)

“We love the things we love for what they are.” ―Robert Frost

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.” ―Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” ―Sarah Williams

“Resist much, obey little.” ―Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.” ―e. e. cummings

“If we do not mean that God is male when we use masculine pronouns and imagery, then why should there be any objections to using female imagery and pronouns as well?” ―Carol P. Christ

“Subversive language, however, must be constantly reinvented, because it is continually being co-opted by the powerful.” ―Carol P. Christ

The Impossible Truth

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

May you feel your spirit rise today,
rolling away the stone from the entrance
and bursting forth into the shining garden.

May you sense the impossible truth today.
As you huddle in your anguished grieving,
may you hear the Gardener call your name
as you turn into the light.

Gratitude List:
1. A shining morning
2. Making things: clothing and poems and bread
3. All the colors out there: flashes of red and yellow in the trees, blue and green
4. Courage
5. Sunlight in the hollow

May we walk in Beauty!

“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” ―Rumi

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ―Buddha

Some words on my River, from Robert Louis Stevenson:
“I have been changed from what I was before;
and drunk too deep perchance the lotus of the air,
Beside the Susquehanna and along the Delaware.”
―Robert Louis Stevenson

“. . .and as I saw, one after another, pleasant villages, carts upon the highway and fishers by the stream, and heard cockcrows and cheery voices in the distance, and beheld the sun, no longer shining blankly on the plains of ocean, but striking among shapely hills and his light dispersed and coloured by a thousand accidents of form and surface, I began to exult with myself upon this rise in life like a man who had come into a rich estate. And when I had asked the name of a river from the brakesman, and heard that it was called the Susquehanna, the beauty of the name seemed to be part and parcel of the beauty of the land. As when Adam with divine fitness named the creatures, so this word Susquehanna was at once accepted by the fancy. That was the name, as no other could be, for that shining river and desirable valley.” ―Robert Louis Stevenson

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” ―Elie Wiesel

Rob Brezsny:
Plato said God was a geometer who created an ordered universe imbued with mathematical principles. Through the ages, scientists who’ve dared to speak of a Supreme Being have sounded the same theme. Galileo wrote, “To understand the universe, you must know the language in which it is written. And that language is mathematics.”

Modern physicist Stephen Hawking says that by using mathematical theories to comprehend the nature of the cosmos, we’re trying to know “the mind of God.”

But philosopher Richard Tarnas proposes a different model. In his book “Cosmos and Psyche,” he suggests that God is an artist—more in the mold of Shakespeare than Einstein.

For myself―as I converse with God every day―I find Her equally at home as a mathematician and artist.

Get Outside

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Note to Self:
Go outside! Feet on earth, hands in water, hands on bark. Fresh air in the lungs.
Take a quick moment to notice your body. Are your shoulders up there beside your ears? Breathe in. Breathe out, and let them settle back to where they belong.

Here’s a poem from The Song of the Toad and the Mockingbird:
Bridge

Walk barefoot on Earth.
Walk, knowing your very being
is Her being.
Her rocks are your bones,
Her rivers your blood,
Her Living Soil your muscles and skin.
Be a living bridge between Earth and Sky–
Earth marries sky within you.
Your spine is a conduit.
Walk, open and aware.
Walk, electric with knowing.

Gratitude List:
1. The dogwood tree is beginning to bloom. The two dogwoods stand on either side of the driveway. I call them my guard-dogwoods. I haven’t hung poems on the one closest to the house for years, but I still think of it as the Poet-tree. It will always be the Poet-tree.
2. Yesterday I walked back to myself. The sadness is still there, but I think now it is riding with me instead of me riding it.
3. The Helpers. You are one. And You. And You.
4. Resilience.
5. And still, that violet. That blue.

May we walk in Beauty!

“We have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. We have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. it is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, I think, to be an organ and a blade. But, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. We make horrible mistakes. It’s how we learn. We breathe love. It’s how we learn. And it is inevitable.” —Nayyira Waheed

“To me, it’s all right if you look at a tree, as the Hindus do, and say the tree has a spirit. It’s a mystery, and mysteries don’t compromise themselves—we’re never gonna know. I think about the spiritual a great deal. I like to think of myself as a praise poet.” —Mary Oliver

“When you hold a child in your arms, or hug your mother, or your husband, or your friend, if you breathe in and out three times, your happiness will be multiplied at least tenfold.” —Thich Nhat Hanh

“I stuck my head out the window this morning, and spring kissed me BANG in the face.” —Langston Hughes

“In the morning, wonder and be generous like the sun.
In the evening, meditate and be kind like the moon.”
—Debasish Mridha

“There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven.” —Meister Eckhart

“Every spring is the only spring—a perpetual astonishment.” —Ellis Peters