Gratitudes

My Christmas Wish

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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It’s been a while since I have seen a fox. At least a year, I think. My Christmas wish is that sometime in the next week while I am at home, I will see another fox.

Gratitude List:
1. Long, long friendships
2. Strangers working together to help a frightened dog–we stopped on busy Route 30 this afternoon to help a German Shepherd who was running back and forth between the lanes. She was terrified, and didn’t know what to do. Eastbound traffic stopped, but the westbound folks couldn’t seem to get it together. When she saw me coming toward her, her ears perked up and she ran to me, but even so, Jon and I had to sort of herd her off of the road, she was so scared. Two other cars stopped, and they called the vet number on the tags and one very level-headed woman who lived nearby took her home until she could get in touch with her owners.
3. Making Christmas. Making Yule.
4. All the goodness that is being born into the world
5. Highway hawks, the sun on their feathers

May we walk in Beauty!

What Shall We Bring to Birth?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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What shall we bring to birth? What shall we draw into the physical world from the wild and tangled forests of our imaginations?

I never seem to know what I want, what I really want, not exactly. Today my vision is coming clear, forming a picture of what my heart desires, with more crispness and definition than I have been able to muster for quite some time.

I think I will write it down, set it on paper, give it a timeline, an expectation, watch for it, like Advent.  Name it. Let these short days and long nights of Solstice-Christmas-Epiphany offer me images and words to carry with it. Perhaps I will write it on a stone and throw it in the River, or tie it to a feather and throw it to the wind.

Begin. Begin. Begin.

Gratitude List:
1. Long sleeps
2. Interesting dreams
3. Inspiring meditations
4. Time out of time
5. Silence

May we walk in Beauty!

Long Naps and Dreamtime

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solstice-morning-sun solstice-spirits
One of the perks of having people riding with me to school in the morning is that I can ask someone else to take pictures of the Solstice sunrise over the bridge. The picture on the right has been sent through a filter–I like what it did with the visual rhythm of the old bridge.

During these long nights after Solstice, I try to stay particularly aware of my dreams. This evening after supper, I fell asleep on the recliner. I can’t remember the whole dream. I remember a sense of feeling like I was sort of an outsider in a group of people at some sort of resort, but the image that strikes me was of a mountainside across a bay. There were large areas of woody hillside covered in blue and purple shadows, but the sun was shining down on one bit that was bright emerald green. When I conjure the image in my head, it’s like a piece of painted art rather than a physical landscape, but in my dream, I desperately wanted to get a picture of that little green patch of sunny green.

Last night, I had planned to spend some time working on a meditation I had just read. I thought I could work my way into the space of the meditation, and then gently fall asleep, but I couldn’t get past the first moment of focus on the candle flame. Every time I woke up in the night, I would go back to the flame, and start with orienting myself in space, and then I would be asleep. Perhaps it would be good to have something like that for the insomnia moments.

Gratitude List:
1. Christmas Caroling and Singalong Chapel. The men’s chorus singing “Twelve Days of Christmas” was one of the funniest Christmas carol moments ever. The women’s chorus was beautiful, and Javon’s final song, “Peace on Earth” gave me the chills.
2. Cloud-shadows on the sky
3. Fred’s Christmas routine. He can no longer jump up to sleep on the Nativity scene like he used to. Now every morning he goes under the little table, beneath the table cloth, and waits for someone to toss his mouse to him. Then he goes and plays shark hockey with the sharks that Josiah sets with his Lego world. He still has a lot of kitten in him.
4. Chocolate
5. Long naps and dreamtime

May we walk in Beauty!

Sunreturn

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light-returns
How the Light Returns.

Breathe deep the light-filled air.
Feel how the new sun touches you.
Remember the stars that circled you
through the long hours of darkness.
Sit within the circle of the dwindling dark
and feel the way it bathes you with memory.
Walk the bridge between dream and daylight.

These are the nights of the dreamtime. The tender new sun is born into the hush of midwinter, and we can hold the quiet light within us as we walk, careful step by careful step, out of the labyrinth. The inward journey into the darkness has stripped us of our crucial identity, piece by painful piece. And now, as we step outward, the darkness offers us new gifts, images that come in dreams. As the days gradually lengthen, and the dark nights wane, what words and images will the journey offer you to put into your pockets for the coming year?

Gratitude List:
1. Those really super-bright stars at evening and morning. Sometimes you get those news reports that THIS star or THIS comet is going to appear fifty times bigger than usual, and I look and I can’t discern any difference. But that star in the west last evening, and one in the east this morning were so incredibly large and bright. I wonder if it’s a function of my aging eyesight? No matter. It’s compelling.
2. Driving into the Solstice sun this morning. The sky was like a gentle watercolor painting.
3. Waiting quietly in this space at the edge of the void, a moment between moments. Stepping into time outside of time.  Walking over the Dreamtime Bridge.
4. Approaching a time of rest.
5. The people who get it. Today I read a Jan Richardson poem to my classes, and I posted a picture of Richardson on the Smart Board that included a statement about “Seeking the thin places that exist between heaven and earth.” One of my students, who has some learning struggles, got really wide-eyed and said, “I like that poem-thing you have up on the board there. It’s like when you go to a place with a lot of history, like caverns, that you know have been there since before people were around, and it feels like heaven is right there.”  What a wise, intuitive boy.

May we walk in Beauty!

Crows and Sunset

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Winter tree reflected in the basement window.

Gratitude List:
1. Class discussion today. It was one of those days when the whole period got hijacked by a conversation. Students were curious about each other, asking questions about how they see their governments, how they celebrate holidays. We’ll get Julius Caesar read–just not today.
2. Student musicians. The band and orchestra concert tonight. We have some world class conductors and some fantastic musicians.  What a pleasure to listen.
3. Settling into the darkness.
4. A thousand thousand crows flying in front of an orange sunset.
5. Yummy snacks. Today was JW’s annual Faculty Christmas snack. And a low-key, but delicious Faculty Party after school. There’s something about the special treats on these last days before break.

May we walk in Beauty!

Last Days into Darkness

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One more step into the quiet darkness
One more step into the night
One more step toward the winter
One more step toward the coming of the light

One more step into the labyrinth
One more step to play your part
One more step toward the daybreak
One more step toward the Mother’s heart

Stand within this dusk-bright moment
Feel the heartbeat of the waiting Earth
Hold your head high, listening for starsong
Be still and silent, ready for the birth

Gratitude List:
1. Endarkening. My friend Michele gave me this word today, and I treasure it. I am grateful for people willing to talk me through the dark time. I am waiting, listening, being enfolded in the darkness. Hush.
2. How, even in times of silence and stillness, there is work being done beneath the surfaces of things. Crystals forming beneath the earth. Seeds coming undone.
3. Walking the labyrinth into the very center. Inanna had to relinquish something of herself at every turning. I, too, am being stripped of that which no longer serves me.
4. Sharkey finally lost that tooth today, brave boy. The big tooth has come all the way in behind it, and the baby tooth stuck straight out from the gum for weeks, making him look slightly vampiric. Tonight he pulled the thing right out, and then for good measure, he pulled the splinter out of his foot.
5. The people who let their hearts be broken by the pain of the world. All together now, we break open, and we pray, and we call for peace, and we hope, and we stand up, and we shout, and we sing, and we dance.  It is time to be who we have been becoming.

May we walk in Beauty!

Antidotes

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lightreturnYes. It’s the same photo as yesterday, melded with a different filter. I like this one, because it emphasizes the interplay of light and darkness.

In his blog post of last Thursday, Robert Reich lists The 4 Dangerous Signs of Passivity in the Face of Trump Tyranny: Normalizer Syndrome, Outrage Numbness Syndrome, Cynical Syndrome, and Helpless Syndrome.  I’ve been thinking about what the antidotes might be, because other than the Normalizer one, I have fallen victim to the others, and to their sister, Outright Despair Syndrome.

Here are some Antidotes to the Four Dangerous Signs of Passivity:
1. Practice Deliberate Kindness: You don’t have to look far to see the acts and words of meanness that have erupted in the wake of the election. In such a climate, deliberate and pointed acts of kindness are revolutionary, a way to say, “We will not be party to this.”
2. Be an ally: To everyone. When you witness meanness, stand in the gap. Be the one who asks if you can help. Be canny. When you think someone is being bullied, become Present in the situation. Make sure the bullies know they are being watched and held accountable for their behavior. Make it clear that bullying will not be tolerated.
3. Speak Up. Tell the stories of kindness that you witness. Share the stories of meanness, too, and strategize how to better respond the next time.
4. Laugh. A lot. And not just at the cynical things. Find good healthy things that make you laugh. Try to make other people laugh. Share delight.
5. Believe in the Goodness. The last few weeks have made it harder than ever to believe in the basic goodness in people. How could so many people not let the racism and xenophobia and misogyny NOT be a deal-breaker? It’s tempting to make the next sentence be something about how people really are selfish and racist and xenphobic and misogynistic. Maybe some of them are, but most people also have a lot of goodness in them. Even Anne Frank, in hiding from the Nazis, said, “Despite everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” If she can see it, maybe I can at least try.
6. Gratitude. It’s been really hard for me lately to do this particular spiritual job. Everything seems the same. I feel as though I have run out of gratitude lately. Still, it’s a muscle I want to keep flexing, especially when it’s hard. And I think it’s a powerful antidote to despair and her passive sisters.

What other Antidotes do you suggest?

Gratitude List:
1. People who help to talk things through.
2. Joyful is the Dark--I think this is my favorite song in church, especially the second verse, about the Raven. Every year we sing it at Advent, and it always comes just I have begun to lose hope that the light will return. The Dark is important. As Jan Richardson says, “Darkness is where Incarnation begins.”
3. Antidotes
4. Visualizing the best things
5. Loving and Being Loved. Belovedness. Remember, always, that you are Beloved.

May we walk in Beauty!

Learning Chess

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

sunrise

Gratitude List:
1. Playing Chess. I am so bad at it. I think of myself as being fairly intelligent, but I am miserable at chess. I do dumb things. But I am loving playing, and loving being schooled by my ten-year-old.
2. Crawling out from under the rock.
3. Long sleeps.
4. The light will return. The light will return. The light will return. Wednesday at 5:44, to be precise.
5. The Great Horned Owl calling in the bosque.

May we walk in Beauty!

****

I’m not sure where I am going with this story. I may take more time off. I seem to have shifted out of the voice in which I began it, and it’s becoming tedious to write it without that initial fire. Perhaps its next steps will have to happen during summer vacation.

****
Deep in the lower ring of the city, where the bustle of the market lasted from early in the morning to late in the evenings, where the fruit and vegetable vendors set up their brightly-colored stalls along the main street out to the gates, where the shops of the bakers and the butchers lined the ancient walls in a rumble-tumble fashion–there where the press of humanity was greatest, in the back of the shop of Bilhah the Baker, there grew up a secret school for women and girls.

While educating females was expressly forbidden by law, many families saw fit to “teach” their daughters to read and write and do simple sums in order that they might help with the family businesses.  As long as no one pushed against the law and tried to send their daughters to school, the spirit of the law could be bent for the good of the family economy.

In recent years, however, the generals had begun to take a firmer hand. King Astra Djin, they whispered secretly amongst themselves, was soft. He wanted easy living, fine wine, gentle and docile women, and lots of gold. His hardest edges were reserved for the collection of taxes, which he raised in greater amounts with each succeeding year.  The generals believed, to a man, that the city-state of Zammarqand needed a heavy-fisted rule. The king could have his cushy life, and the generals would keep him content, fat and happy, while they set about the careful enforcement of law and order in the city.

Simply Gratitude

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

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Gratitude List:
1. It’s not Lyme Disease. I asked for the blood test because I did pull a little tick off my neck last week. But the test was negative.
2. Sore throat is going away
3. Friday nights mean long sleeps
4. Reminders that I am in charge of my own story
5. Amazing student musicians. The choral concert this weekend is going to be incredible.

May we walk in Beauty!

Depleted

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in-prints

I did not write yesterday. This flu/cold/encroaching darkness has been a little soul-sapping. I’m not suffering, not falling apart. Just extremely weary. The last days before Winter Solstice are always harder. It’s like the cave in the dream–you know that for every step you take inward, you’ll have that many more steps to take to get you out again. And in this one, you don’t get to choose–you just have to keep going into the darkness, one more step each day until you get there. I managed it last year, and the year before that. I will manage the final week this year, too. Somehow this year seems grayer, darker, more menacing. My physical malaise of the past week is just a perfect metaphor for the psychological/spiritual/political malaise of the moment.

Goodness. I should re-iterate that I am not falling apart here–just living the season. I love the lights and the songs and the way the children anticipate the holiday. I love peppermint things and the extra chocolate and lots of citrus. The sky is still beautiful many mornings and lots of evenings. My colors are still rich. People are still working for justice, still letting their hearts break for the pain of others, still trying to make the world a better place. All of that is intact and hopeful. It’s just that I’ve seen the nastiness more closely and clearly this year, too, so the need to find the balance is ever dearer.

I want to get back to writing my story, but it will probably be a few days before my head settles out of the fog of flu and winter. I need to be extra careful with where I place my energies in the coming week or two.

Gratitude List:
1. Full moon in the morning, setting over the ridge.
2. Warm cat on my lap
3. Peppermint things
4. New snuggly dresses
5. Hot lemon tea with honey

May we walk in Beauty!