Gratitudes

Moonshadow

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Gratitude List:
1. Cosmic Events
2. The community of people all enjoying the same thing
3. Mac ‘n’ Cheese
4. Sheri S. Tepper’s world-building
5. We went owl-watching today!
May we walk in Beauty!

“You have to really hug the [one] you are holding. You have to make him or her very real in your arms.. breathing consciously and hugging with all your body, spirit, and heart. Hugging meditation is a practice of mindfulness. “Breathing in, I know my dear one is in my arms, alive. Breathing out, he or she is so precious to me.” If you breathe deeply like that, holding the person you love, the energy of your care and appreciation will penetrate into [them] and they will be nourished and bloom like a flower.” —Thich Nhat Hanh

“For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.“ —William Blake

We, unaccustomed to courage, exiled from delight, live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life.“ —Maya Angelou

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” —Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.” ―Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Where there’s life there’s hope, and need of vittles.” ―JRR Tolkien

“We are the ones we have been waiting for.” ―June Jordan

“Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ―Albert Einstein

“We are all the leaves of one tree.
We are all the waves of one sea.” ―Thich Nhat Hanh

“It is respectable to have no illusions―and safe―and profitable and dull.” ―Joseph Conrad

“I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” ―Rainer Maria Rilke

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether they are worthy.” —Thomas Merton

Rilke:
God speaks to each of us as [s]he 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.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

“What if we reframed “living with uncertainty” to “navigating mystery”? There’s more energy in that phrase. The hum of imaginative voltage. And is our life not a mystery school, a seat of earthy instruction?” —Martin Shaw

The Fib

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Day 6: Write a fib.
There are two ways to write a fib poem. One is to write a lie, tell a tall tale, let loose a whopper of a fiction. Startlingly, the truth can sometimes be found in the margins of a lie.

Or, write in the form of a fib–Fibonacci, that is. In the Fibonacci Sequence, each number in the pattern is derived from the addition of the previous two numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. So in a Fib poem, the first line is a single syllable, as is the second. The third line has two syllables, the fourth has three, and so on. I usually don’t go higher than 13, and sometimes I write a second stanza and come back down to one again.

Gratitude List:
1. Chris’s Dogboys, Solly and Gabe. Gabe is such a smoochy pooch. Snuggly.
2. Storytelling and songs
3. Anticipating eclipse
4. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: BLUUUUUUUE sky! (Oy, was that ever a long stretch of grey rainy days.)
5. Quinoa salad with veggies, tahini, roasted rosemary grapes
May we walk in Beauty!

“Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. (Hope) is the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.” —Rebecca Solnit

“I am not giving up on peace, even if, right now, it is taking some heavy blows. I still believe justice will not desert the innocent. And I will always believe that truth will find its way to the light. These bedrock visions guide me into the future. They hold me up when the going gets rough. Conflict may have the upper hand now, but never count love out. The Spirit has a few surprises to offer in the days to come. Signs of hope will find us wherever we may be. I am not giving up.” —Steven Charleston

“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.” —Maya Angelou

“God invites everyone to the House of Peace.” —The Holy Quran

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.” —George Orwell

“What a pity that so hard on the heels of Christ came the Christians.”
—Annie Dillard

“The arc of history is long, and what we’re here to do is make a mark. . . . You do the work because you’re slowly moving the needle. There are times in history when we feel like we’re going backward, but that’s part of the growth.” —Barack Obama

“Each moment from all sides rushes to us the call to love.” —Rumi

“You are a co-creator of love in this world.” —Richard Rohr

“Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When we let ourselves respond to poetry, to music, to pictures, we are clearing out a space where new stories can root; in effect we are clearing a space for new stories about ourselves.”
—Jeanette Winterson

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return.” —Eden Ahbez

“Remember, the ugly, old woman/witch
is the invention of dominant cultures.
The beauty of crones is legendary:
old women are satin-skinned,
softly wrinkled, silver-haired, and awe-inspiring
in their truth and dignity.” —Susun Weed

Librarians

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

My Saturday has gotten away with me, and my head is not in a poetry place. Sigh. I wish I had done better for the librarians. They deserve more. Every time I started getting into it, I veered into rage at all the ways in which school boards and local commissioners and sanctimonious, self-righteous outrage hounds are attacking libraries and librarians these days. In my local community just a week ago, our public library received a bomb threat, and the library director received a bomb threat at her house.

Support your local library. Stand up and speak out when the hordes attack. Trust librarians.

Keepers of democracy, they stand
on the front lines of free speech,
offering equal access to all who
seek wisdom in the written word.
Do you need a recipe for risotto
or revolution? A book on planets
or inclined planes or things to do
on a rainy day? The librarian will
tell you where to find it, and you
just might find your sense of purpose
in the stacks, in those cathedral
corridors of shelves. You might
discover yourself in a book you
had never thought to open.

Gratitude List:
1. The River, and the sun on the River
2. The sycamores along the River
3. Librarians (Happy National Librarian Day!)
4. Rosemary roasted grapes
5. Those red, red tulips!
May we walk in Beauty!

“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.” —Terry Pratchett

The Happy Virus
by Hafez
I caught the happy virus last night
When I was out singing beneath the stars.
It is remarkably contagious—
So kiss me.

“It is our mind, and that alone,
that chains us or sets us free.” —Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.” —George Orwell

“We must live from the center.” —Bahauddin, father of Rumi

“Some days I am more wolf than woman and I am still learning how to stop apologising for my wild.” —Nikita Gill

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” —Albert Einstein

“Writer’s block results from
too much head. Cut off your head.
Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa
when her head was cut off.
You have to be reckless when writing.
Be as crazy as your conscience allows.”
—Joseph Campbell

“Ask yourself: Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world.” —Annie Lennox

“Anyone out there want to sing with me while we finish this march? I realize it may seem a little counter-intuitive right now, with so many in a somber mood, but the harder the walk gets, the more I think we need to meet its challenge with strong hearts and voices. The singing becomes our anthem, a rebuke to the powers of pain and an exaltation of the indomitable human spirit. If we must move forward against all odds, then let us do so singing. Let them hear us coming. Let them know we have only just started to hit our stride.” —Steven Charleston

Guardian

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Gratitude List:
1. All the fine, thoughtful souls at the Poetry Reading and Workshop at Radiance tonight
2. French Fries
3. Cherry trees and peach trees
4. I saw blue sky today, just a patch behind the clouds, but it was there!
5. The Guardians
May we walk in Beauty!

“We write to taste life twice.” —Anais Nin

“My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.” —Maya Angelou

“If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.” —Thich Nhat Hanh

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.

“When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and seeds of hope.” —Wangari Maathai

Ask Some Questions

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

Here is my Questions Poem:

Gratitude List:
1. Did you see the sun today? I did!
2. The tang of Horseradish
3. Weaving it all together, integrating the pieces
4. My daily morning Philosophers’ Club, otherwise known as Middle Division Reading and Writing
5. The smell of sandalwood
May we walk in Beauty!

“We cannot be grateful for what we do not notice, and we cannot honor what we fail to see.” —Marcy C. Earle

“I must have flowers, always and always.” —Claude Monet

“Nobody’s on the road
Nobody’s on the beach
There’s something in the air
The summer’s out of reach…” —Don Henley

‘Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.” —Roger Ebert

In a mist of light
falling with the rain
I walk this ground
of which dead men
and women I have loved
are part, as they
are part of me. In earth,
in blood, in mind,
the dead and living
into each other pass,
as the living pass
in and out of loves
as stepping to a song.
The way I go is
marriage to this place,
grace beyond chance,
love’s braided dance
covering the world.
—Wendell Berry
(The Wheel)

”You have to begin to tell the story of your life as you now want it to be, and discontinue the tales of how it has been or of how it is.” —Esther Hicks

Rain, rain, rain

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Here is my Rain Poem. I feel like I am starting to get back in the groove.

Gratitude List:
1. Rain, and the hope of sun to come
2. More light each day
3. Roasted veggies
4. Naps with cats
5. People who step and do what needs to be done
May we walk in Beauty!

“Sound or vibration is the most powerful force in the universe. Music is a divine art, to be used not only for pleasure but as a path to Awakening.” —Yogananda

“Being a successful poet is a lot like being a successful mushroom.” —Poet Richard Howard

“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.” —Hermes Trismegistus

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.” —Jane Goodall

“Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.” —Henri Nouwen

“In the end, we’ll all become stories.” —Margaret Atwood

“Privilege is when you think something’s not a problem because it’s not a problem to you personally.” —attributed to many authors

Dea Ex Machina
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

What we speak
we create.
Writing,
we make meaning
into existence.

These words, cogs
and gears, shift
meaning to matter:

“Let there be. . .”
And there is.

And it is good.

quilting
by Lucille Clifton

some other where
alchemists mumble over pots.
their chemistry stirs
into science. their science
freezes into stone.

in the unknown world
the woman
threading together her need
and her needle
nods toward the smiling girl…

Make space in this house
for all of the people you are.
Make room for the schemer,
the doubter, the cynic,
but open some space
for the credulous child
and the mystic, the dreamer,
the wild one, the quiet one.

Open a space within
for the glass-half-full to dance
with the glass-half-empty,
for the monk to sing songs
of revolution with the fury.

There in those rooms,
the One may enter
and speak your many names,
saying, Peace be yours.
—Beth Weaver-Kreider

Reasons for Hope

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Here’s a quick attempt at a list poem. As always in these poem-a-day experiences, it’s raw and unrevised:

Reasons for Hope
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Peregrines nest on the Wrightsville Bridge
The prophets are filling the streets again, calling, “Peace!”
A human Wall of Love stands up to bigots, offering belonging
How purple dead nettle creates a carpet in corn stubble
Two I thought certain we’d lose are breathing and healing
Those we have lost live on, for what is remembered lives
The hollow here opens its arms like a green blanket
A student who chooses invisibility called “Hello” to me last week
There is always singing, and there will always be more singing
I am here and you are here, and you and you and you. . .

Gratitude List:
1. Poetry
2. Keeping memories alive
3. How dreams inform waking
4. Housecats
5. All the people, like you, who are doing the good work of making the world a better place
May we walk in Beauty!

“What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.” —Alain de Botton

“We are capable of suffering with our world, and that is the true meaning of compassion. It enables us to recognize our profound interconnectedness with all beings. Don’t ever apologize for crying for the trees burning in the Amazon or over the waters polluted from mines in the Rockies. Don’t apologize for the sorrow, grief, and rage you feel. It is a measure of your humanity and your maturity. It is a measure of your open heart, and as your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal.” —Joanna Macy

“We should have respect for animals because it makes better human beings of us all.” —Jane Goodall

“Let yourself be silently drawn
by the strange pull of what you love.
It will not lead you astray.” —Rumi

“If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.” —Harriet Tubman

“The little grassroots people can change this world.” —Wangari Maathai

“Some form of the prayer of quiet is necessary to touch me at the unconscious level, the level where deep and lasting transformation occurs. From my place of prayer, I am able to understand more clearly what is mine to do and have the courage to do it. Unitive consciousness—the awareness that we are all one in Love—lays a solid foundation for social critique and acts of justice.” —Richard Rohr

“You don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to.” —Anonymous

“The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.” —Julian of Norwich

“Water flows over these hands.
May I use them skillfully
to preserve our precious planet.”
—Thich Nhat Hahn

“At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realise I am fighting for humanity.” —Chico Mendes, Martyred Brazilian environmentalist

“It is everyone’s business is to connect with their ancestors, and to be in wholeness and peace. To know your true authentic self, it is required that you know your ancestors.” —Annette Mendoza-McCoy

Another Month for Writing Poetry!

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I’m hoping to create a daily prompt again this month.

Here’s my attempt at a topsy-turvy two-stanza poem. As happens during these months of a poem-a-day, this one’s pretty unfinished and unrevised, but the point is to loosen up and not get caught in my desire for perfection:

You know how it is,
how you amble down that dusty road,
scramble over rocks and stones,
and it becomes a game to name
the turnings on the winding way?
You know, like the story of the children
stumbling through the woods
who laid a trail of breadcrumbs
so they could find their way home.

You could say
it’s all a part of the part you play,
the scene you’ve been assigned,
the way the play’s designed–
one act follows another, but what if
the old woman was saving the brother,
cold as he was from walking in the wood,
and what if the sister got the story twisted,
or the townspeople insisted
on telling the story their way?
Who’s to say?

Gratitude List:
1. A work day at school. It’s nice to have a day when the students aren’t around, just to catch up and catch my breath.
2. A thousand shades of green
3. Flamingos and ostriches. They really do seem sort of impossible, which makes them doubly charming
4. Grounding. Every day, I do a grounding meditation. Since my trip to Tanzania, I can feel my roots spread out so far, so far.
5. The Springtime dawn bird chorus has been filling out a little more each day.
May we walk in Beauty!

Words for the Day of the Holy Fool:
“Let’s be April fools in the Shakespearean sense of fools. Time to be insightful and speak truth to power.” —Jarod Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. “ —Emily Dickinson

“The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.” —Julian of Norwich

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” —Carl Jung

“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, High Tide in Tucson

“When you do not know you need mercy and forgiveness yourself, you invariably become stingy in sharing it with others. So make sure you are always waiting with hands widely cupped under the waterfall of mercy.” —Richard Rohr

“All four gospels insist that when all the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene does not run. She stands firm. She does not betray or lie about her commitment to Jesus—she witnesses. Hers is clearly a demonstration of either the deepest human love or the highest spiritual understanding of what Jesus was teaching—perhaps both. But why—one wonders–do Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell the story of Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady and unwavering witness of Magdalene is passed over—not even noticed? How would our understanding of the paschal story change if instead of reflecting upon Jesus dying alone and rejected if we were to reinforce the fact that one person stood by him and did not leave? For this story of Mary Magdalene is as firmly stated in scripture as the denial story. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feeling of ourselves? How would it reflect upon how we have viewed, and still view, women in the church? About the nature of redemptive love?” —Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal Priest

“When I feel this fog rolling in on me, I light fires of affection in the hearts of others. I tell them in tangible ways how the life they live makes me live mine differently, how precious and important they are to the rest of us. That fire then becomes like a beacon which burns through the grey and which I can sail towards.” –Toko-pa Turner

It’s good to leave each day behind,
like flowing water, free of sadness.
Yesterday is gone and its tale told.
Today new seeds are growing.
—Rumi

Integrating

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View of Engitati Hill, the Round Table Hill, in the Ngorongoro Crater.

A week ago, I returned from a trip to the town of my early childhood–Shirati, Tanzania–and several days in game parks. One of my words for the trip, and for the current phase of my life, is INTEGRATION.

How do I integrate the layers of my life: the past, present, future selves?
How do I integrate the sense of myself in a safe and loving childhood in a beautiful and tender community, with the awareness of how mission and religion has been an agent of colonialism in the world?
How do I integrate my deep connection to the Jesus story with my adoration of his mother, with my universalism and witchiness?
How do I integrate the activism and the contemplation, the magic and the prayer, the wildness of spirit with the deepening wisdom of middle age?

Within a day of our return, I received word that a beloved friend, a former student, had died. Now, how to integrate the bliss of my Tanzania Trip with the deep welling grief of losing someone I loved and admired? How to integrate my own grief with that of the many circles of community who loved him?

I’ve been going back through some of our text and message threads to find the poems and songs and kind thoughts Ash sent me over the years, revisiting some of the writings we shared with each other, the ideas we hatched, integrating those with the memories people have been posting to his Facebook page.

Before I went to Tanzania, I created a journal for the trip, an altered book made from an old copy of Birds of East Africa. True to Bethie form, I ended up taking notes not only in the journal, but in two of the Poetry journals I had taken along, and in the Notes app on my phone. This week, I hope to spend my Spring Break making sense of the various notes, sorting through photos, and integrating the sense experience with memories and scraps of poetry that have been filtering through. Somehow even the fact that I must weave together the various threads of my note-taking feels like part of the bigger process of sorting and integrating joy and grief and memory.

Ash was one of the editors of the literary magazine I directed at the high school where I used to teach. The magazine’s symbol was the flamingo, and I had promised Ash I would send him pictures of flamingos when I returned. I never had the chance. Here, Ash, are some flamingo pictures for you.

Check in on your beloveds. Remind them they are loved. And when hope seems far away, hold on for one more day. The morning, as they say, is wiser than the evening.

Gratitude List:
1. The beautiful journey. Return, belonging, joy, wildness, friendship, beauty
2. The privilege of knowing Ashton Clatterbuck, whose life touched so many, whose activism will continue to inspire and light the way, whose sense of justice will push me to stand up and speak out, whose courage knew no bounds
3. The birds of Goldfinch Farm and Skunk Hollow
4. The house lions: Erebus, Thor, and Sachs
5. The process of integrating heart and mind, memory and sense, grief and bliss, dream and reality
May we walk in Beauty!

“Our capacity to create must overwhelm their capacity to destroy.” —Occupy Movement Quote

“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”
—C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

“At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey. ” —Lemony Snicket

“Scared is what you’re feeling. Brave is what you’re doing.” —Emma Donoghue

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.” —August Wilson

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

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” —William Faulkner

“For one human being to love another is the most difficult task, the ultimate, the last test and proof. It’s the work for which all other work is mere preparation.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

Teilhard de Chardin said: “Some day after we have mastered the winds, the waves and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, humans will have discovered fire.”

Emma Goldman: “The most vital right is the right to love and be loved.”

“Everything I understand, I understand only because I love.” —Leo Tolstoy

“If you do not love too much, you do not love enough.” —Blaise Pascal

“Who I was meant to be was a breaker of some stories and a maker of others.” —Rebecca Solnit

“You are not required to set yourself on fire in order to keep other people warm.” —Anonymous

“The job — as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy — of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.” —Dani Shapiro

“Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.” —Parker Palmer

“For education among all kinds of [people] always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.” ―W.E.B DuBois

“The phoenix must burn to emerge.” —Janet Fitch

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” —Ken Robinson

“When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.” —Ellen DeGeneres

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” —Thomas A. Edison

“Geometry draws the soul towards truth.” —Plato

“In which of the fairy tales does this wandering stream appear? Perhaps a golden trout swims through here every morning at dawn, or the three riders who pass Baba Yaga’s courtyard stop here to water their horses. A frog beneath that brightest mossy rock awaits your kiss. Just beyond your vision, through those trees, is a little cottage made of gingerbread and candy. An old man appears each day at dusk to sit on the tallest rock and ask you for a favor when you approach the stream for a drink.” –Beth Weaver-Kreider

Of Love
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
(after Mary Oliver)

It’s a process repeated everywhere you look:
the way the beech tree catches and holds the wind in her hair,
the way the meadow grasses gather around the tentative feet of the fox,
the way the hands of the clay hold and guide the flow of waters.

What is attention, but a kind of loving?
Living in awareness is a constant tumble into loves.
The way your eyes twinkle when you tell a story.
The way your listening hands reach outward.
The way a new thought is born in your eyes.
The hearty abandon of your laughter,
the caress of your voice,
the shine that surrounds you.

Wishes and Intentions

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I know. No posts for weeks, and then two posts in two days.
Yesterday, I wrote in my gratitude list about how difficult January is. I should clarify that it’s not entirely spent in a burrito on the couch scrolling through my phone. There is definitely more of that than I wish for myself, but there are also small bursts of energy in the Tunnel of Tired, usually in the context of those strategies I listed. January is definitely not all bad. It’s just a slog.

But now to the point of the post. Here are two items from my journal in the past year:

This is a tarot reading I did for myself on 12/22/22. When you draw the 9 of Cups in a reading, you make a wish. I highlighted mine.
This was a month later, 1/23/23, as I was thinking through what would be my heart’s desire petition for the coming 54-day novena. This was one of four.

Usually my wishes and heart’s desires, when I write or speak them with intention, are fairly internal or safe things that I can be pretty sure that I can help create. Wishing to return to Tanzania in such an intentional way (it’s been my constant internal wish/heart’s desire since my last trip 36 years ago) has always felt risky because I didn’t want to deal with the disappointment of not having my wish granted. It was okay as long as it was basically unstated, or stated wistfully, and I knew that it was just a “wish.” Then the disappointment of it not happening would be less intense. But here I was, saying it out loud. Putting it out there. And the novena concluded, and the year began to wane, and I let myself forget my magically spoken wish. Making a trip to Tanzania hasn’t been something I could logistically or financially plan, hard as I looked at it, so I figured that it just still wasn’t time, or that it was unlikely ever to happen.

But last November, my brother and sister-in-law asked me if I might want to accompany them on a trip to Tanzania. They’d made the plans already. I’m getting some help in the financial area. Our tickets are bought. Shots in order. Willing and capable substitute procured for the classroom. In just three weeks, we’re making a dream trip back to the place where we spent our early childhood. My heart’s desire.

I’d forgotten that I had made these clear intentions in written form, and was looking through my journal a couple days ago when I stumbled across them. Feels like a miracle. At the very least, it’s a sparkling synchronicity.

I worded the heart’s desire as a “sacred journey.” This is a good reminder that I don’t go entirely as a tourist or as a home-goer (both of which have problematic edges, and which have been part of my uncertainty about returning), but as a vessel, to receive what is meant for me to receive, to give what is meant for me to give. To find the strands that are woven into this web. To keep my heart open, to allow the jittery excitement to give way to a quiet sense of purpose and intention, receptivity. To delight in everyone and everything.

Gratitude List:
1. Three-day weekend. Breathe in. Breathe out.
2. Anticipating seeing actual flamingos in a few weeks
3. Generosity, how it grows and expands as it is given
4. How the big birds–the hawks and vultures and eagles and crows–catch the wind and whirl above the ridge
5. Puzzles
May we walk in Beauty!

“I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.” —Audre Lorde

“Your crown has been bought and paid for. Put it on your head and wear it” —Maya Angelou

“If you’re not angry, you’re either a stone, or you’re too sick to be angry. You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger, yes. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.” —Maya Angelou

“History has never been kind to those who have sided with voter suppression over voters’ rights. And it will be even less kind for those who side with election subversion.” —Joe Biden

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” —Robert Frost

“I am always doing what I cannot do yet
in order to learn how to do it.” —Vincent van Gogh

“Have you been to jail for justice? Then you’re a friend of mine.” —Anne Feeney

“Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.” —Naomi Shulman

“‎The desire to reach the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise and most possible.” —Maya Angelou

“Begin with something in your range. Then write it as a secret. I’d be paralyzed if I thought I had to write a great novel, and no matter how good I think a book is on one day, I know now that a time will come when I will look upon it as a failure. The gratification has to come from the effort itself. I try not to look back. I approach the work as though, in truth, I’m nothing and the words are everything. Then I write to save my life. If you are a writer, that will be true. Writing has saved my life.” —Louise Erdrich

“Love the earth and sun and animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others…
Re-examine all you have been told
at school or church or in any book;
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul;
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”
—Walt Whitman

“In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves. We deny the importance of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our lives. Or we use one piece of the past or present to screen out another. Thus we lose faith even within our own lives.
“The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire.” —Adrienne Rich

“Art is here to prove, and to help one bear, the fact that all safety is an illusion. In this sense, all artists are divorced from and even necessarily opposed to any system whatever.”—James Baldwin, in “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity.”