Musings

Protecting the Nestlings

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Mockingbird Says:
“Protect your nestlings with every ounce of courage and ferocity you can muster.  Whether it be Monsanto or a kitty cat, zip in in a whir of flashy feathers and nip them on the nether regions–just like this!  Aha!”

–Oh, Mockingbird!  Yes.  I do get your point, and so, unfortunately, does little Miss Winky.  Poor Kitty Cat.

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Gratitude List (the typical 5, plus a few bonus from an amazing weekend with my gang of college friends and their children):
1.  Lasting friendships, powerful in their intentionality and their serendipity
2.  Scott’s rock and sand collection
3.  Awakeners
4.  A happy gang of kids, riding bikes, playing games, swimming, giggling, sharing jokes. . .
5.  Being part of the cold and broken hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)
6.  Late late night conversations around the fire, sharing the bitter/sweets
7.  Walking out of the labyrinth
8.  This moment: We were sitting around in the shade yesterday morning discussing shame and the impact it has on our parenting, and how it is used in schools.  Before long three of the children had gathered with us in the circle, and they started telling us their own ideas about effective and ineffective behavior management in school, about what seems fair and right and what is a violation of their sense of self.
9.  Taking pictures of the fire with Luke
10.  Africa House, where we stayed

May all beings be blessed.

Mockingbird Says

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Mockingbird says:
“Listen well, and your own speech will be enriched.”

Gratitude List:
1.  The trees, those people who grasp the Earth between their toes and grow down toward the heart of the mother, who dream their leaves and needles and nuts and flowers and fruit into the air, who breathe for us.
2.  The spiders, those people who fling themselves with abandon into the air and drift on their own silk to a new anchoring place, who make the connections, who spin and weave.
3.  The birds, those feather people who dash from tree-branch to tree-branch or rest on a hammock of sky–treading wind currents, whose very speech is music, who range in size from the hummingbird smaller than my open hand to the eagle whose wingspan is greater than my own.
4.  Margaret Atwood, who is tearing at my heart with her book, The Year of the Flood.
5.  Fresh corn for supper tonight.

May we walk in Beauty.

I Have Been Circling

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

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The summer has caught me up in its tangled strings.  Throughout the day, ideas for my gratitude list pop into my head.  I try to grab and secure them, but someone has left the lid off the pot while making this batch of popcorn, and they zing away before I can grasp them.

I’m not too fussed about it.  This is the nature of summer.  As the cooler weather returns and daily demands of the farm settle into more predictable rhythms, I’ll get the lid back on that wanton kettle of my brain.

Perhaps I have written this before: My friend Sarah and I have talked about how perhaps something about the gratitude list ought to be a little difficult, how for those of us who live fairly closely with the natural world, it would be pretty easy to rattle off a list of five natural things every day, and this might defeat the purpose a little.  This is a temptation for me.  On the other hand, I want my gratitude lists, like poetry, to carry several layers of meaning, as I hope this one will.

Gratitude List:
1.  Hummingbird: Yesterday when I came down from harvest, I let myself drop underneath the poplar tree.  I lay there watching the sun glowing through the pollen-golden wings of a tiger swallowtail wandering among the leaves, when suddenly there she was, wings a-blur in a patch of blue between the branches.  I don’t think I’ve ever observed a hummer in flight from directly below before.  She was a double fan of pure motion and light.  A lemniscate.  No wonder the Hopi and Navajo see her as the messenger between the worlds.  If I see her again today, what message shall I send?
2.  Toad: Yesterday I was with a crew harvesting tomatoes, while Holly and Mary Jo were picking squash.  Suddenly, Holly started to whoop and holler.  A few moments later, as we were loading our tomato bins into the back of the truck, Holly came over, her hands cupped together.  I thought she was wringing out a wet rag: water was streaming from between her fingers.  Instead, she was gently holding the largest toad I have ever seen, and it was performing its natural response to being picked up by a human.  I’m still a little stunned that it could hold that much liquid inside it.  Toads have been a watchful presence in my writing this past winter, so it felt like a doubly good omen.
3.  Pears: Driving the tractor down the hill, I noticed the pears shaping up beautifully on the trees in the orchard.   I can almost taste them.
4.  Tomatoes: Tomatoes satisfy on so many levels.  I have my first six quarts of 2013 sauce on the counter ready to go to the basement shelves for the season.  Fresh salsa with cilantro and lime and hot peppers.  But right now, the thing I love so much is the wanton variety of their shapes and colors when you put them in a bin together.  I didn’t get a shot of yesterday’s bins, but the one attached to this post looks almost the same.
5.  Rilke:  “I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.”  Rob Breszny challenged his readers to write their own permutation.  Here’s mine: ” I am circling around the Core, around the Source, and I have been circling since my thousand times began, and I still do not know whether I am a watchful toad, or a wordless prayer, or a cool wind above the fields.”

May we walk in beauty.

Changelings

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

To put in the Who-Are-You-And-What-Have-You-Done-With-My-Children? File:
1.  This morning, the one who looks like my four-year-old child named Joss, woke up and got himself dressed entirely by himself.  Without fussing.
2.  This evening, the Joss one ate his supper without asking me to feed him.  Without fussing.  And it was soup! (see #3)
3.  For supper I served eggplant soup.  Both of these people who look like my children said it was the best thing ever, and could I make it every evening?

All I can figure is that there must be faeries about.

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This is a photo from yesterday: Joss eating slices of raw onion.  When he was two, I left him in the market room by himself for a few minutes, and when I came back, he was sitting on the floor munching on a raw leek.  He ate at least four that day, maybe five.  He still likes raw onions, though now he needs to have a cup of COLD water handy, and he does sometimes get a little overwhelmed by them.  Today was the first that he showed an interest in eggplant.

Gratitude List:
1.  Thunder
2.  Jon Weaver-Kreider
3.  Today’s picnic lunch.  The boys decided that we were having a family picnic up at their garden, to eat what they harvested.  Hot as blazes, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
4.  Eggplant soup
5.  Thumbs.

May we walk in Beauty.

Home Again

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I wish I had had my camera.  I wish I could draw well and fast.  Instead, I’ll have to try to give you the picture in words.

It’s a really hot day on the beach.  The elements are all doing their elemental best to claim the day: sand, air, sun and waves.  You have to yell to be heard above the pounding of the surf, and the tide is rising fast, claiming sneakers and chairs and sand pails faster than their startled owners can drag them in.  One dad gets a bright idea to stave off the loss of his space by building a sea wall, and digs a fortification in front of his family’s umbrella: a deep hole with a wall on the side to the ocean.  Suddenly kids from all over have gotten into the act, digging and fortifying.

My boys ran down with their cousins to join in.  Parents came, too, and we built drip castles all along the line of the wall.  And the wall held against the tide, giving the umbrella people another forty minutes of time before the hole behind the wall filled with fresh cold sea water, and the children went from castle-builders to merfolk, dabbling in the pool they’d created and covering themselves with yellow foam.

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Gratitude List:
1.  Family time at the beach
2.  Mama Ocean
3.  Watching Joss devour every kind of seafood he could get his hands on: clams, flounder, shrimp, scallops.
4.  Coming home to Jon
5.  Myotis lucifugus, the little brown bat.  The first one to roost in the barn we called Otis because it seemed more likely that a solitary bat would be male.  The friend who was roosting with him today we will call Lucy, in hopes that they might be a breeding pair.  Fly well, small ones.

May we walk in Beauty.

Spinning Gratitude

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I can’t quite make sense of my motivations for how I want to write today’s Gratitude List.  I’m thinking too hard about thinking about it.  You see, I have been complaining all day.  Really complaining about how many things have been going wrong.  I keep it sort of light, too, whining delivered on a platter of intended humor: “I think all the appliances and motorized things on this farm have had a conference and decided to break down at the same time.”

Pretty lame, actually, but that’s the place where you’re supposed to groan with  empathy, and pity me my breakdowns:  Poor woman can’t keep her food cold or drive her car, and her lawn’s turning to jungle.  But I don’t think I am looking for pity, really.  Well, perhaps a little commiseration.  That’s such a great word, such a great idea.  Let’s be a little miserable together at the unfairness of the world, and it will all seem a little easier to bear.

I have been making an internal list today (not necessarily intentionally) of all the things that have gone wrong.  If I twist that list into my gratitude list in some artful way, I will have had my chance at a rant.  But is that really gratitude?

I think it is.  Yes, because this business of writing a gratitude list is not only about finding the wonderful things that do happen; it’s also about putting the brokenness into perspective, about spinning the story into something positive.  Not for spin’s sake, but for gratitude’s sake.  For the sake of centeredness and peace of mind.

In Pronoia, Rob Breszny talks about how when something goes wrong, we focus on that one or two or five things that aren’t working instead of the hundreds of things that are working.  It’s about where you place your focus.  The clocks still work.  Gravity continues to hold me to Earth.  The plants grow.  The children laugh.  The stovetop cooks my morning egg to perfection.

Today I am a Spin Doctor.  Not in search of pity, except as it comes with a little good mojo for all my motorized things to work.

Gratitude List:
1.  My father’s car, and his gracious sharing of it while Roxanne Buick is having herself repaired to pass inspection.
2.  A new (to us) fridge being delivered this week, and the old one taken away with no extra effort from us.  And working substitutes in the meantime.  We’re so fortunate that we have the farm store fridge to tide us over until the new one comes.
3.  The string trimmer works again.  We can at least keep the edges tidy.  And sometimes keep your edges tidy is just the thing.
4.  Spinning.
5.  Perspective.

May we walk in Beauty.

A Blessing and Two Gratitude Lists

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

First, a Blessing for You, if Today Hurts:
I acknowledge that this can be a challenging day.  If a father in your life is lost or absent, inadequate or terrifying, Father’s Day has to be difficult.  If this is part of your story, my wish for you is that you will find surrogate fathers in your life, people (men and women, even yourownself) who fill the gaps you feel, who support and hold and mentor you, who tell you jokes and honor you for who you are.

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Gratitude List for my Father:
1.  . . .who taught me the delight of the Wing-People, how to look for the flashing color of an oriole in the treetops, or the leaf-green flick of a warbler through the wood, how to distinguish the minute differences between hairy and downy woodpecker.  He taught me to listen for their voices.  My aural memory will never be as powerful as his, but he helped me to hone my ear to listen for the sharp whistle of oriole, the whiskery whisper of a blue-gray gnatcatcher, the cluck of a cuckoo.  He keeps the feeders at Goldfinch Farm clean and filled.
2.  . . .who balances heart and head, who values strong thinking and reasoning, scientific thought and processing, but who keeps his heart open to the hearts of others.
3.  . . .who is an example of being flexible and open to new ideas, new people, new learning.  He holds firmly to his ideals, but is not afraid to change his mind.
4.  . . .who treasures his grandchildren.  He thinks about how to honor and bless all their individual differences and gifts.  He teaches them to use their bright thinking minds and their quick, artful hands, to follow their caring hearts.  And always, how to listen for the birds:  “Did you hear that?”
5.  . . .who values his friends.  I’m not sure that our culture has many models for deep and trusting and sharing friendships between men.  I love to observe the intentionality with which my father has carried his friendships, going all the way back to high school, how he continues to build his relationships with others.

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Gratitude List for Jon:
1.  . . .who is a patient and involved father to his children.  Who takes the time in the middle of a busy day to spend ten minutes playing Legos on the floor.
2.  . . .who starts to plot how to make Christmas and birthdays exciting for his children weeks and months in advance.
3.  . . .who respects the bright minds of his children, carefully engaging them in learning–planting and caring for their garden, using tools, building and fixing, drawing and planning.
4.  . . .who makes us all laugh.  Often.  Who loves to see his children laugh.
5.  . . .who enthralls and enchants his children with bedtime stories.

May we walk in Beauty.

And in Memory of Ellis Kreider,
Jon’s kind and gentle father.

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The Busy Season Has Begun

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Farm season has begun.  I am exhausted, and falling asleep in the recliner in the evenings.  But it’s the best kind of exhausted, the kind that comes from good hard work out in the elements, working with great people, and hanging out with our customers.  It will mean that I will not be posting as regularly, likely only a couple times a week.  I’ll keep working at gratitude, keep formulating poems and ideas.

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Gratitude List:
1.  Harvesting conversations, working our way down a strawberry patch.
2.  Share days.  Those are the days when the shareholders come to pick up their weekly produce.  I love to sit and chat, to talk with people about food and recipes and children and education and spirituality and Reiki and growing older and growing up. . .
3.  Providing beauty and nourishment for people.
4.  Sandra and my parents: I always know that someone is seeing to the needs of my children on these mornings when I am seeing to the needs of the farm.
5.  Jane Peifer, Mim Book, and whoever comes next.  Cycles, giving space for grieving, welcoming the next chapter in the story.

May we walk in Beauty.

Bhutan’s Happiness, Poetic Conversations, and Strawberries

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Gratitude List:
1.  My dear friend Carol told me today that Bhutan calculates the GNP of Happiness.  I thought she was being poetic.  She told me she was serious, and I looked it up.  Bhutan monitors its GNH: Gross National Happiness.  This gives me intense satisfaction.
2.  Here’s the link to my interview with Carla Christopher, York’s Poet Laureate and all-around amazing person.  It was such an incredible honor.  I could have taken up the whole hour just to keep talking with her, thinking out loud about poetry together.  My part is near the beginning, just after Carla’s own amazing poem, but don’t stop there.  There are other really great poets and artists and musicians coming up after.
3.  We are ready.  Tomorrow morning the curtain will rise on season 2013 at Goldfinch Farm CSA, and we are ready to go.
4.  Picking strawberries in the rain.  Really.  It was a blast, and the crew is such fun, and you have to eat the seconds as you go until you get a stomach ache, but you can’t stop eating strawberries because the season is so short, and you have to stock up on strawberry goodness for another whole year.
5.  Finding myself at home in my own heart.

May we walk in Beauty!

Doves in the Rain

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It’s a little grainy, I know, but I like the way it captures his concentration.  Yesterday afternoon when it was starting to pour, Jon made this little city for the boys, out of a packing insert.  The hours of delight and play and more drawing on the part of the children that has ensued has made this rainy day special.

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Gratitude List:
1.  The way my poets shatter my heart and put me back together again.  I cannot find the reference at the moment, but there is a myth of a goddess who was rent into pieces and then put back together.  It always disturbed me.  Now I think I understand it a little better.  And yes, they are my poets.  I claim them.  Thank you, Leigh and Mara.
2.  The way the mourning dove raises her wings to the rain.  I remember one day in Tanzania when the rains had come late, so painfully late, and the resident flock of doves sat on the packed earth in the new rain and rolled on their sides, each with a wing pointed skyward, letting the water soak them all the way to their wingpits.
3.  All the surfaces in the Market Room are clean and ready.  The curtain will rise in just a few days on the 2013 season of Goldfinch Farm CSA!
4.  A clear-headed day with no sniffles, no sneezing and easy breathing.  This is SUCH a big deal to me, it is worth listing it on a gratitude list.
5.  Watching Jon relax and take a well-deserved farmer nap this afternoon.

May we walk in Beauty.

 

Yesterday’s List–
Gratitude List:
1. Scent of honeysuckle
2. Deep, soaking rain
3. Making new friends
4. A clean house
5. Catbirds

May we walk in Beauty.