Gratitudes

Seymour Dabs

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 This friend on the left appears to be a Sweetbay Silkmoth. We’ve had cecropias visit, and lunas (who always take my breath away). On the right is Seymour. On Saturday after friends visited, we found Seymour dabbing on the piano, looking mighty pleased with himself.


In the classroom zen garden: “Bury me at the bottom of the river, that my soul may flow into the sea and I may travel the world with whales.” Have I said how much I love my students?

Gratitude List:
1. What seemed unimaginable and impossible now seems possible.
2. When both cars break down at once, we have the possibility of a loaner from my parents.
3. The singers, the poets, the artists, the dancers, the dreamers. They’re rising. They’re making. They’re working. They’re resisting.
4. Pleasant weather. May it hold out for the rest of this week, so that the classroom isn’t beastly hot.
5. Turkey Hill Homemade Vanilla ice cream. It’s got five ingredients, and it’s the best ice cream this side of an ice cream freezer that I have ever tasted.

May we walk in Beauty!

Settling

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Gratitude List:
1. Longterm friendships
2. Getting company, and a day to clean house before hand, and the feeling of living in a cleaner house when all is said and done.
3. Taking a break
4. Sleep
5. Sorting and categorizing

May we walk in Beauty!

Dance

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Message in the Zen Garden: “Dance like everyone is watching, and they are all your fans.” I love my students.

Gratitude List:
1. Mountain Laurel blooming on Ducktown Road.
2. A rousing rendition of Happy Birthday in chapel this morning, the footage to be sent to our Little Guy on his birthday in the hospital.
3. Music in chapel this morning: Peniel singing in Amharic, Shadrack singing in French, and Maya and Conner singing a Blessing (was it partly in Italian?) What a gift to have that half hour in the school day that is so often filled with incredible music.
4. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It feels as though there’s a deep chasm between me and the light, but I’ll get there one way or another.
5. Breeze.

May we walk in Beauty!

Three

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Gratitude:
1. Each breath
2. brings a new moment,
3. a new chance
4. to learn
5. how to love.

May we walk in Beauty!

Balancing

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Doesn’t this just feed your soul? My mother’s windowsill. I passed it through a painting filter, which I like, but really, the beauty of the original colors is rather perfect.

This is not a joyful thing. Perhaps it is a gratitude of sorts. It’s more a simple relief. The man who caused the bus accident has turned himself in. It was an uncomfortable loose end that has been bothering me, not because I want revenge, but because it needed resolution.

In my advisory group today, one young man asked that we pray for the driver (before we knew he had turned himself in). This was the second or third time that this particular young man has asked for us to pray for someone who has done something wrong, or made a bad choice. I am moved by the layered depth of his compassion, and it leads me forward into hopeful spaces. May we all learn to love with such a sense of everyone’s humanity.

Today in an English 101 class, we were talking about the role of the Muses in the Greek pantheon, and one girl who had zoned out looked up and asked, “What about the moose?”

I think there needs to be a poem about the Moose of Poetic Inspiration.

Gratitude List:
1. Our Lady of the Flowers zipped past the window again today. I swear she paused in her humming for the briefest of moments and looked into the house at my boy in his red shirt.
2. Graces: I get teary when I talk about it, but it just needs to be said–All our children survived that accident. They likely have wounds that we cannot see, and some of them may experience flashbacks and anxiety. Others are still healing from physical injuries. But: They are alive. Every time I see pictures of that little bus on its side, I am astounded at the miracle of their survival.
3. The Administrative folks at my school. I think I have mentioned before how grateful I am for them, but today I had another chance to see the principals in action, responding to an issue with grace and firmness, holding the balances of accountability and tenderness. When there is harm, they name it, and then seek to care for those involved. They are true leaders.
4. Cobalt Blue
5. Following the pathway lit by the tender hearts of these young folks.

May we walk in Beauty!

Empathetic Hearts

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Gratitude List:
1. The Little Guy who was injured in the bus accident seems to be healing, out of most critical condition, and stable. This is a great relief. When it was announced in chapel this morning, people kept trying to applaud before the announcement was even finished. Such joy.
2. The empathetic hearts of teenagers.
3. Possibilities that come out of nowhere. Nurturing, dream-sustaining possibilities.
4. The faerie energy that surrounds a green tree in a meadow. When school is over, I want to trespass on the farmer’s meadow and sit beneath that tree. I wonder if I’d have the nerve?
5. Have I written about the buttercups in the meadow? The horses grazing among the buttercups. And an indigo bunting in the trees.

May we walk in Beauty!

The Witch’s Cottage

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This weekend, we spent a lot of time with the Legos. I decided to tear down my apartment building and build a witch’s cottage. I looked at pictures of a Lego fairy tale cottage for ideas.
      
The front of the cottage, looking out toward the swamp, where the gang is birding and boating and enjoying the day. And the rear of the cottage, with the requisite spiderweb (it IS a witch’s cottage).

           
The sides. Yes, there’s a rat in the flower garden. The baby dragon, an owl, and Michael Birdboy live on the roof.
     
Jasmine and Robin have tea in the dining room and discuss their morning bird sightings. Raine and Marie and Midge warm up by the hearth

Gratitude List:
1. Kings: The Kingbird that flew beside us all the way past the cow meadow at the top of the hill, and the Kingfisher that swooped across the street and into the sycamore tree today.
2. Hannah’s quilt in front of the sanctuary these last few weeks. I love the way her grandmother used straight lines to suggest curves.
3. Tender-hearted people
4. Two more weeks
5. Three weeks until the beach. Five weeks until my Solitude Retreat. I am trying something different this year. Last year, I was serendipitously there at the same time as a friend, and we finished our time there with a long chat. This year we are intentionally going at the same time, and planning some processing time together.

May we walk in Beauty!

Reliving Gratitude

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This is simply a reprint of last year’s list on this day, with a slight update to number 3. It still holds, and I am feeling a sense of reconnection to the first and last points in particular.

Gratitude List:
1. I guess I am grateful for the crunchy things, too.  I’m trying, anyway, to find that space where I can say, “This will make me wiser.  This will make me stronger.  This will make me more compassionate, when I have reached the other side.”  I must find the courage for the hard conversations, find the space between outrage and complacency, where the powers of heart and reason meet.  Yes, I am grateful for the crunchy things, too.
2. Archetypes.  I love the way our stories–across cultures and across times–share so many of the same archetypal elements: tricksters, shining children, witches (in many forms), heroic characters, wise mentors. . .
3. <2017 update: Only two more Fridays in this school year. I love that Friday feeling–just not enough to want it to last all year.> Friday.  After today, only one more of these this school year.  I love the closure of a Friday, and I love anticipating Friday morning hymn sings, which I will miss this summer.
4. Plugging away.  Keep the tractor moving down the row, and eventually you get to the end.
5. Poetry.  The way people respond to a poem, even when they say they hate poetry.  Give them the right one, and you can see the Aha dawn in their eyes.  Maybe there’s a poem out there for everyone–you just have to find out which one is for you.  Some of us are greedy and think that every poem is somehow ours.  Forgive us.  We’ll share.

May we walk, each day, in Beauty.

Allergy Haze

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I am a little obsessed with capturing the magic of this portal pathway. This filter begins to approach it for me.

In a few extra minutes in class yesterday, I had my English 101 kids choose a character from the Odyssey. Here’s mine. I chose Polyphemus, the cyclops. It’s not a perfected and revised poem, just a toss-off.

I see it now, too late,
what Nohbdy could see before me,
how we fell into our fate
like pawns of the gods
tossed upon the sea.

Oh, now I see, too late,
blinded as I walked into the trap:
how Fortune threw me from my state
low down and tricked
by that cunning chap.

But though I saw too late,
I found the words to curse
that scheming wily pirate.
My fate was terrible, but in the end
his was worse.

Gratitude List:
1. Hot tea
2. The geese and their four babies have apparently returned to the creek and pond area. Jon and Joss saw them walking across the road this afternoon.
3. This one might come off as a complaint, but I don’t mean it that way: The allergy crisis didn’t happen until school was over. Hopefully tea and tonic and air conditioning will help.
4. Summer’s coming. (“Sumer is i-cumen in”–need some madrigal action)
5. Always, the web which connects us all

May we walk in Beauty!

Webs

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Here’s a filtered photo of our little deer trail into the woods.

There are times in my life when I have thought I could almost tangibly feel myself on the web of prayer and well-wishes. In the past two days since the bus accident the sent over a dozen kids from my school into the hospital, I feel like I could reach out and touch that web. We’re so grateful for the fact that so many of them have been released from the hospital. If all went well today, all the high schoolers will be out by now.

We’re still worried about the “little guy,” as our principal refers to him in community prayers. The news reports are that he is stable, but still critical. And my heart is with the bus driver, who loves his kids.

Gratitude List:
1. Two of my students who were in the bus accident were back in classes today, subdued but all in one piece.  Several more performed in the band and orchestra concert tonight. I am so grateful for their safety.
2. The web. Thanks to so many people who prayed, who wrote notes, who held us all in the light.
3. That concert tonight! Orchestra, concert bands, jazz bands. These teachers draw such good music out of their students. Such incredibly talented folks.
4. Meadows filled with buttercups.
5. That hawk that sits in the top of a locust tree on Burgs Lane to catch the morning sun.

May we walk in Beauty!