Musings

Rain and River

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today was bookended by two powerful stories about language, how it differentiates, how it connects.  This morning in chapel a colleague of mine spoke thoughtfully and reflectively about her own life story, about the Tower of Babel–how we build complicated structures of our lives, placing our hopes and expectations into them, and how we can be blindsided when they crumble.  Her stories were affirming of those who struggle, acknowledging the struggle, and offering the hope of transformation, not only of the pain, but of inner prejudices and stereotypes.

On the other end of the day, in Faculty Meeting, was a presentation on resilience, particularly for women (and others) who have been marginalized and excluded from leadership roles in the church and its institutions.  The framing story was Pentecost, another tale of people of many languages trying to communicate.

Language helps us to classify and analyze and differentiate.  It’s an intellectual tool.  It also helps us to connect and weave together and integrate.  It’s a psychological/heart tool.

Gratitude List:
1. The scent of the honey locust tree blossoms wafting through the window just as I am falling asleep.  Blessings on the bees.
2. Yesterday, Jon spotted a box turtle on the driveway, wandering off into the yard.  I was sort of afraid that thee’d become too rare to spot anymore, but there is at least one living on Goldfinch Farm.
3. Rain, rain, rain.  Slow and deliberate and steady.  Free of high wind and hail and flooding.
4. Chasing rainbows.  After supper we drove down to the Rt. 30 bridge to see the new girders that were just put in place last night above the highway by Wrightsville.  We have some engineers in the family who just couldn’t wait to see them.  As we reached the crest of the hill, we saw the rainbow, looking like one foot was in the hollow and another was at Sam Lewis Park, but the nearer foot kept shifting as we neared the park.
5. We parked by the River at the John Wright restaurant boat launch, and Ellis and I walked down to the water, standing between the two bridges in the rain.  I found a shining 2015 penny there on the threshold between the land and the water.
6. Language, the gossamer thread of words that we send between us like trees, our conversation the webs cast by a spider.

May we walk in Beauty!

Grace and Wind

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s gratitude list is mostly gleaned from our church service yesterday morning.  After a startlingly harsh and jangling sermon from a visiting preacher the previous week, yesterday’s service was one of healing and hope.  I felt much more called to the care and tending of souls during yesterday’s gentle and loving setting than I did during the previous week’s harangue.

Gratitude List:
1. The healing power of words, how they hold and restore.  How healing words fill a space after words have been harsh.  I am grateful for Darvin and Michelle’s words yesterday.
2. St. Hannah/Francis preaching to the birds.  “You should try this at home.”  Ellis did: he came home and stood near the feeder with bird seed in his hand.
3. Breath, air, wind: spirit.  Ruach, one of the Bible’s feminine terms for God, is also the spirit, the breath.  Whistle.  Preach to the birds.
4. Counting time in Chesters.  The oldest member of our congregation is almost 100.  About three Chesters ago, the US became a country.  Eight Chesters ago, St. Francis preached to the birds.  Chester whistles, too.
5. These two hanging ferns that my family gave me for Mother’s Day.  The house finch has been whistling in their fronds, begging his lady love to consider them as the setting for raising their family.

May we walk in Beauty!  Breathe.  Whistle.

Arise, then, Women of this Day

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

2013 April 156

Those are the first words of Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation.  It was a call to action, not just to American mothers, but to all women in all nations, to come together to create peace between our countries and to repudiate the wars and violence that were being caused and prosecuted mostly by men.

I know that this day is difficult for many people for many reasons.  The word Mother is a difficult word for may people.  Mothers can be cruel or absent or distant or controlling.  Mothers can feel inadequate, captive, unappreciated (but for one day a year), shamed.  Motherhood may be elusive or greatly desired but seemingly unattainable.  Beloved mothers may be gone too soon, too soon.  My first memory of my own experience of being a mother was the Mothers Day ten years ago when I learned that my first pregnancy was failing.

Today, if this day is difficult and painful for you, I wish you a quiet place away from all the cultural glitz and holler of the day.  I wish you healing from difficult or grief-filled memories.  I wish you freedom from the expectations that clamor about you.  I wish you people in your life who nurture you and who help you discover you how strong you really are.  I wish you at least one person in your life who believes in you no matter what, who trusts your inner knowledge and ability to succeed. I wish you opportunities to mentor and care for others. I wish you the fire and power to bring to birth your own ideas and creations, to watch your dreams and projects and plans come into being as surely as any child is born into the world.

Gratitude List:
1. My mother, whom I would seek out as a friend were she not already my mother, who has been my guide as I find my own way into the land of motherhood, who believed I could do fly and sometimes sort of nudged me off the cliff’s edge a little, who has taught me the importance of firmly speaking truth to power, who has provided a motherly presence for so many people, who showed me how to pay attention and to look at the beauty of the world around me.  I love you, Mom!
2. The Motherline:
I am Beth Weaver-Kreider,
daughter of Ruth Slabaugh Weaver,
daughter of Lura Lauver Slabaugh,
daughter of Mary Emma Graybill Lauver,
daughter of Elizabeth Shelley Graybill,
daughter of Lydia Gingrich Shelley,
daughter of Elizabeth Light Gingrich,
daughter of Mary Dohner Light,
daughter of Anna Landis Dohner,
daughter of Fronica Groff Landis,
daughter of Susanna Kendig Orendorf Groff,
daughter of Elsbeth Meili Kundig,
daughter of Anna Barbara Bar Meili,
daughter of Barbara Biedermann Bar (born 1580 in Hausen, Switzerland).
3. All you who have been mentors and muses and fire-lighters and hearth-keepers for me.
4. My own two children (and perhaps also the two who did not come to be) and all they have taught me about who I am in the world, all the joy they bring.
5. Seed. Womb. Birth. Fire. Earth. Source.

May we walk in Beauty!

Lessons and Bright Wings

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My gratitude list tonight is a two-pointer.

First, a challenging situation this morning gave me a chance to practice holding onto my center in the midst of an extremely awkward social situation that might have once caused me either to dither and apologize when I was the one who should have been apologized to, or to get angry and stony and withdrawn.  I think I managed to keep my cool.  There are things, in retrospect, that I wish I had said, things that could have added grace to the situation, had I kept my wits more firmly in place.  Still, I was able to be present in the moment when someone was criticizing me, to let a little piece of myself sit on my own shoulder and observe my emotions, to tell myself, “Now isn’t that interesting?”  I am grateful for the chance to practice, even when the moment itself was difficult.

The second thing is this: I am in love with a bird, and today he came back to my hollow.  I heard him out there this afternoon, as I was brooding about that first item, and I ran out to see, but he was hiding high in the branches of the poplar.  Later, though, when I went out to turn off the irrigation pump at the pond, and the sun had just set out of the hollow, but the last rays were still leaking over the ridge and hitting the top branches of the sycamore, there he was, shining orange in the light.  Oriole.  I can’t describe how I love this bird, but when I hear him, when I see him, I could weep for joy.

May we walk in Beauty!

Poem a Day

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Tomorrow is the first day of National Poetry Month.  Despite the shift in my circumstances this year, I am going to try to participate in the poem-a-day process again.  After all, I really believe that part of teaching writing well is letting the students see their teachers working at the writing craft themselves.  As usual, I will be following Robert Lee Brewer’s prompts for the month.

Gratitude List:
1. The delight of a small person having a birthday
2. All those crocus: one golden flower among a field of violet
3. Striving, how we learn by striving
4. Generations: being in the middle at the moment
5. Rising to the occasion (perhaps this is a repeat of #3, but it’s actually a hope as well as a gratitude at the moment, so it bears repeating)

May we walk in Beauty!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

DSCN7864

There is much I would write this morning, so much I need to learn about myself today, if only I could write it out.  There is a prayer of sorts, waiting to find its way into the world, to cast its golden threads through the air.

There is a poem waiting too, about a mother and a daughter, about the house of the heart, about how I want to join with a village of women to encircle that house, to sing, to gather river water, to cook beans and rice, to comb their hair, to sit in silence, to hold their feet in our hands, to anoint them with precious oils.  Perhaps this is that poem.

Meanwhile, two boys are on the edge of battle in the background, and I must go and open the door on my day.  Here was this moment, and now it is passing, and another is coming to meet me.  All of it is holy, perhaps, even the name-calling over there on the fringes. If only I can listen closely enough, perhaps I will begin to understand a little of the song that surrounds us.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Swans!  Yesterday I saw a small flock flying westward, toward the River, as we were driving east.  There may have been twelve of them.
2. The twist of that sycamore on the corner of Walnut and Lime, spiraling upward through the forest of city buildings toward the light.
3. Tabea’s kombucha.  She has a magic touch.  I am loving this little bubbly jarful of chai-flavored deliciousness.
4. Teachers, again: Yesterday we went to the Science Festival at the Lancaster Science Factory.  There was an exhibit there which was running two 3D printers.  We were there when they started printing out a ratchet, using the exact program which NASA sent to the International Space Station a couple weeks ago.  This caught Ellis’s attention and he stood there at the table–asking questions and watching, and telling other kids about it–for most of the hour and 39 minutes that it took to print it.  The people at the table were kind and gentle teachers, understanding his quirky obsession and blessing it, delighting in his questions, and never talking down to him.  If he grows up to be a scientist or engineer, I will credit this moment as important in that.  In the end, they gave him the ratchet.
5. Kestrel on a cornstalk, wind in her feathers.

May we walk in Beauty!

 

Language Event II

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

In this book of Native American poems and rituals, “Language Event II” is labelled  Navajo, and goes like this:

Hold a conversation in which everything refers to water.
If somebody comes in the room, say: “Someone’s floating in.”
If someone sits down, say: “It looks like someone just stopped floating.”

(Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Native American Indians, edited by Jerome Rothenberg)

That’s all there is to it.  It reads like a drama exercise or a poetry writing prompt.

I keep trying to write a poem, but none are swimming my way at the moment.  Perhaps this is one I’ll try as a verbal exercise throughout the day and see if my children notice.

Gratitude List:
1. A snow day.
2. The way those indigo afternoon shadows flowed across the snowy landscape.
3. The way snow brings every branch and twig into high relief.
4. Persephone never fails to return.  She will rise.
5. Fresh start.  Tabula rasa.  Blank pages.  Snowy fields.

May we walk in Beauty!

 

Say Dream and Mean Poem

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

2014 March 016

To celebrate the dawning of March, here is a photo from last March.  I don’t think the aconite are up just yet, but I will check this morning on the way out to the car.

Two nights ago, I dreamed that Lady Gaga and her beau were touring the school one afternoon and stopped by my room.  The Lady was enthralled by the look of the room, and told me that it must mean I was an excellent teacher.  Look at me, fishing for compliments even in my dreams.  I know where this one came from, of course.  I had been pondering, as I fell asleep, how fascinating it is that all these sober and earnest Lancaster County Mennonites (I include myself in those descriptors) are suddenly three degrees of separation away from Lady Gaga: We know people who taught Taylor Kinney, who is soon to be Mr. Gaga.  Does that make him Lord Gaga, perhaps?

This morning, I woke up in the middle of an etymological dream about the root jour, which my sleeping brain reminded me means day.  I know that journal means the record of the day, so journey, I woke up thinking, must mean the day’s travel.  Sojourn–how does that differ from journey?  I looked it up a moment ago.  The first part of  sojourn comes from sub-, which means “less than,” so sojourn originally intended to indicate a short stay, whereas journey was about the travel from place to place.  I am so glad that my dreaming mind had me clear up all that information.  Perhaps I need to plan a journey, a sojourn.

This morning’s writing exercise is the Language Event I wrote about yesterday.  I am going to try to do it as a free-write–as fast as I can–and see whether any treasures fall out of my foggy brain.

Say journey and mean day
Say blue and mean that you were out in the morning
Say wildness and mean longing
Say twilight and mean the way your soul whispers
Say birdsong and mean message
Say warning and mean that you need to move on
Say season and mean that you have become someone new
Say winter and mean that an old thing is passing
Say springtime and mean that the morning is dawning
Say morning sun and mean that you open your eyes
Say green and mean that you are nourished and fed
Say golden and mean that butterflies are returning

This has some possibility.  I feel like I might want to keep a notebook and write ten of them a day, and then compile a Shaman’s Lexicon Poem, perhaps.  If you want to do it, too, feel free.  Perhaps our poems will meet some day in the ethers of the internet.  I think I will add it to my list of poetry-writing exercises for the ninth-grade poetry unit.

Gratitude List:
1. Grandma Weaver’s afghan and old plum-colored recliner.  Nothing says comfort to me quite like sitting here like this.  Come to think of it, the white and blue quilt that is folded over the back of the chair right now was made by Grandma Slabaugh.  (Say grandmother’s blanket and mean enwrapped by love.)
2. A clean house.  (Say clean house and mean quiet mind.)
3. This sea-foam-colored scarf.  (Say aquamarine and mean contemplation.)
4. Playing violin with Ellis on the cello yesterday afternoon with the winter sun sparkling through the windows. (Say music and mean my heart is dancing.)
5. The shenanigans of a silly five-year-old. (Say shenanigans and mean shenanigans.)

May we walk in Beauty!

Language Event

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

A friend of mine gave me a book of poetry a few months ago. Titled Shaking the Pumpkin, it is a rich and careful compendium of traditional poems from Native North Americans, edited by Jerome Rothenberg.

Several of the poems are simply rituals recorded verbatim and translated into English. They appear almost more as linguistic research than actual poems, and magically, it is in this almost lab-like recording of the words that they begin to take on some of their poetic power for me.  Here, for instance, are selected lines from my favorite poem in the book:

Language Event 1
Eskimo

Use the language of shamans.

Say 	the leash				& mean	the father
“ 	a road 					“ 	the wind
“ 	soup 					“	a seal
“ 	Big Louse 				“	a caribou
“ 	what makes me dive in headfirst 	“	a dream
“ 	what cracks your ears 			“	a gun
“	a jumping thing 			“	a trout
“	what keeps me standing 			“	your clothes
“	the person with a belly 		“	the weather
“	the person with a belly getting up 	“	the morning
“	the person with a belly goes to bed	“	it's nightfall
“	the little walker 			“	a fox
“	walker with his head down 		“	a dog
“	a person smoke surrounds		”	a live one
“	a floating one 				“	an island
“	a flat one 				“	a wolf
“	a shadow 				“	a white man
“	another kind of shadow 			“	a person
“	the shadow-maker 			“	the shaman
“	he turned my mind around 		“	he told me something

I had planned to write my own this morning before the children woke up, but it’s too late for that now, because I took so much time trying to figure out how to format the poem. Meanwhile, I learned a tiny little thing or two about HTML formatting, so there’s that, and I’ll work on my Language Event poem another day.

Gratitude List:
1. I just found out that the monarchs are on the move in Mexico.  Spring is on its way, and the cycles of life continue for this year again at least.  We’ll set the table with all the local milkweed we can manage.
2. Labyrinths
3. Messengers, guides, crows
4. Markers, maps, cairns
5. Lent, the contemplative season

May we walk in Sunshine.

Happy Villaintine’s Day

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Some kid-stories from the weekend:

–On a walk with a Small Boy, we were walking along the hedgerow, and I noticed that deep musky base-note odor and said, “Do you smell the fox?”  Boy blinked, grinned, and said, “No.  That was just me.”  Getting more and more like his dad every day.

–Yesterday, someone was running around the house, yelling, “Happy Villaintine’s Day!  I’m a Villain!”

Gratitude List:
1. Crocheting.  I love this business of taking a piece of thread/yarn/ribbon/string and giving it a form and a shape.  It means something more than it means, you know?  It’s one of those meditative activities that brings clarity and focus to my brain.  Threads of thought, threads of emotion, threads of conversation get twisted and knotted and formed into something tangible.
2. Putting puzzles together with my parents.  Playing Uno with my kids.  Gathering around the table to delight in each other.
3. Wind!  Oh, that wind!  Little snow devils twisting and twirling over the fields.  Wild gusts and squalls whooshing through the hollow.  Wind makes me feel feral, makes me want to fly with the rebel crows, makes my bones ache with longing to travel. (Maybe this is why I need the grounding and centering action of crochet right now.)
4. Transformation.  Transfiguration.  Metamorphosis.  Change.  Shift.  Revolution.
5. So many shades of green.

May we walk in Beauty!