Musings

Grounding

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s poem is a grounding liturgy. Reading David Steindl-Rast’s little poem “May You Grow Still” the other day, I felt myself returning to my morning’s grounding, growing still, finding center.  I’ve begun using those beginning words in my own daily grounding.

Grounding
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
(after David Steindl-Rast)

Draw in a long slow breath.
Pause.
Slowly release your breath.

May you grow still enough
to feel the Earth beneath you
call forth your roots to burrow deep.

Draw in another breath and pause.
Release your breath and listen:

May you grow still enough
to feel your roots push through soil
through mycelium
past bones and underwater rivers.

Draw in another breath and pause.
Release your breath and listen:

May you grow stiller yet and feel
the pulsing starfire
at the center of the Earth.

Draw in another breath and pause.
Release your breath and listen:

May your stillness bring home to her heart
where you feel your roots absorb
her fierce and tender fire.

Breathe in and listen.

May you feel that fire rising into your roots,
drawing courage into the seat of your being,
drawing love into the center of your being,
drawing truth into the crown of your being.

Breathing in and out.

Feel the energy of Earth’s fire fill you to your branches
and burst from the crown of your head,
sparkling above you and around you
like a thousand thousand stars.
Feel the life force pulsing through you.

Breathe, and breathe, and breathe.

“Healing comes in waves and maybe today the wave hits the rocks. And that’s ok, that’s ok, darling. You are still healing, you are still healing.” —Ijeoma Umebinyuo
*****
“I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, A Left-Handed Commencement Address (Mills College, 1983)
*****
“No matter where we are, the ground between us will always be sacred ground.“ —Fr. Henri Nouwen
*****
“The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.” —Gretel Ehrlich
*****
“‪The fact that these words and the jumble of lines that create their letters has no real, inherent meaning outside of a human context, yet they hum with life, is a wonderful reminder that what we imagine can easily become real and powerful simply because we decide it should be so.‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist
*****
“Writing at the library. Surrounded by thousands of books, windows into other minds. Some of these writers are living. Some are not. Neatly ordered rectangles of concentrated human life and intellect. A book is certainly a kind of ghost and libraries are pleasantly haunted places.” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist
*****
“The beauty of the world…has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” —Virginia Woolf
*****
I know nothing, except what everyone knows —
If there when Grace dances, I should dance.
—W.H. Auden
*****
“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic—the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.”
—Charles de Lint
*****
“The innocence of our childhood lives on, in each one of us, no matter how old or battered we may be. Still that original goodness, that simple goodness, remains within us. Our best nature never grows old. What the Spirit first intended us to be is still there, peeping out from wrinkled eyes, caught in a quick glance in the mirror: the laughing, shining, curious child who lives again. And again and again. For we are made of the intention of heaven, a part of the perfect life at the center of all creation. Watch for your inner self, the ageless soul, and see it smiling back at you, like a little child caught beside the cookie jar.” —Steven Charleston

Love, Laughter, and Mourning

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Even as I celebrate a deeply enriching and inspiring day of conversation and play and good food with my family, I want to also acknowledge that today is a Day of Mourning for Native Nations. The link in the previous sentence will take you to a MCUSA page with brief descriptions of some of the November massacres by US forces against Native communities that took place in the late 1800s, along with some resources for ways to educate ourselves and our communities, and to respond in helpful ways.

I tried coaxing a collaborative poem out of some of my family members gathered around a puzzle this afternoon, but we had trouble keeping focused enough to finish a thought, so my nibling Keri suggested we do an acrostic. The Old Woman of Winter had made an appearance in the first attempt, so I wrote CRONE OF WINTER down the side of the page and asked them to give me words or phrases beginning with the letters. We ended up sticking to words, and this is what happened, and I like it.

Gratitude List:
1. The thoughtful and wise and tender and hilarious conversations around the table and the puzzle and the living room today. It appears that perhaps the members of the family with the strongest executive functioning skills are under the age of 22.
2. Pie. So much pie.
3. The Turkey Trot! I walked a lot more of this one, but came within a minute of my PR last spring at the Race Against Racism.
4. Bald Eagle flying over Codorus Creek
5. The healing properties of laughter
May we walk in Beauty!

“There are no shortcuts to wholeness. The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’” —Parker Palmer

Solace is your job now.”
—Jan Richardson

“I have noticed when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling ~ their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. To sit alone without electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights, then I start thinking about projects, demands, deadlines, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to be done, not a background to thought.” —Jeanette Winterson

Joy Harjo:
“When I woke up from a forty-year sleep, it was by a song. I could hear the drums in the village. I felt the sweat of ancestors in each palm. The singers were singing the world into place, even as it continued to fall apart. They were making songs to turn hatred into love.”

“The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.”
―Meridel Le Sueur

“I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.”
―Madeleine L’Engle

“Alas, the webs are torn down, the spinners stomped out. But the forest smiles. Deep in her nooks and crevices she feels the spinners and the harmony of their web. We will dream our way to them …

…Carefully, we feel our way through the folds of darkness. Since our right and left eyes are virtually useless, other senses become our eyes. The roll of a pebble, the breath of dew-cooled pines, a startled flutter in a nearby bush magnify the vast silence of the forest. Wind and stream are the murmering current of time, taking us back to where poetry is sung and danced and lived. … In the distance a fire flickers – not running wild, but contained, like a candle. The spinners.” —Marylou Awiakta, Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom

“Do it right, because you only got one time to walk this earth. Make it good, make it a good thing.” —Grandmother Agnes “Taowhywee” (Morning Star) Baker Pilgrim (1924-2019)

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” —Robert Frost

“I believe war is a weapon of persons with personal power, that is to say, the power to reason, the power to persuade, from a position of morality and integrity ; and that to go to war with an enemy who is weaker than you is to admit you possess no resources within yourself to bring to bear on your fated.” —Alice Walker

“The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our selves.” —Cassius, from ‘Julius Caesar’ by William Shakespeare

“Let your love be like the misty rain, coming softly, but flooding the River.” —Proverb

“Perhaps too much sanity may be madness.” —from ‘Don Quixote’ by Cervantes

Now Is the Time

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’ve been feeling like it’s been a good month, poetry-wise, this time around. I am often more consistently disappointed and uninspired by the output of a poem-a-day. I do this not because I think I will end up with thirty excellent poems, but in the hopes that I’ll get one or two that satisfy me. Ray Bradbury suggests that you write a short story every week for a year, because it’s impossible to write 52 bad short stories in a row, and I think it’s impossible to write thirty bad poems in a row. This month has given me more than one that I like so far. Today’s is lacking in energy, but I might revisit the theme again and rewrite it.

Now Is the Time
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Now is the time for web-building,
nest-making, mycelial connection.

Now is the time for shoring up
our courage, for remembering
who we are, and why we’re here.

Now is the time for listening,
for receiving our names,
for calling in the ancestors
for dreaming ourselves into the dream.

Now the time we were made for,
the time to enter all the tales
we learned in every book we’ve read,
where brave children enter the wood,
and uncertain heroes take up the quest.

Good advice from my friend Barb: “Find and wear your orange hat honey. There are 750,000 deer hunters in the yard today.”

“You have done infinitely more good than you can imagine. You may not be a worker of miracles, but you are a worker of compassion. Your kindness is reflexive. You instinctively want to help others in need. Like a first responder: you have the stamina it takes to help someone and it shows up throughout the story of your life. You have done more good than you know.” —Steven Charleston

This year I do not want
The dark to leave me.
I need its wrap
Of silent stillness,
Its cloak
Of long lasting embrace.
Too much light
Has pulled me away
from the chamber
of gestation.
Let the dawns
Come late,
Let the sunsets
Arrive early,
Let the evenings
Extend themselves
While I lean into
The abyss of my being.
Let me lie in the cave
Of my soul,
For too much light
Blinds me,
Steals the source
Of revelation.
Let me seek solace
In the empty places
Of winter’s passage,
Those vast dark nights
That never fail to shelter me.
-Joyce Rupp

“We have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. We have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. it is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, I think, to be an organ and a blade. But, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. We make horrible mistakes. It’s how we learn. We breathe love. It’s how we learn. And it is inevitable.”
—Nayyira Waheed

“Only those who attempt the absurd
will achieve the impossible.”
—M. C. Escher

Blessing for the Visitor
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

May you who wander, who sojourn, who travel,
may you who make your way to our door
find rest for your tired feet and weary heart,
food to fill your bellies and to nourish your minds,
and company to bring you cheer and inspiration.
May you find comfort for your sorrows,
belonging to ease your loneliness,
and laughter to bring you alive.

And when your feet find themselves again upon the road,
may they remember the way back to our door.

“A seed sown in the soil makes us one with the Earth. It makes us realize that we are the Earth. That this body of ours is the panchabhuta—the five elements that make the universe and make our bodies. The simple act of sowing a seed, saving a seed, planting a seed, harvesting a crop for a seed is bringing back this memory-this timeless memory of our oneness with the Earth and the creative universe. There’s nothing that gives me deeper joy than the work of protecting the diversity and the freedom of the seed.” —Vandana Shiva

“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” —George McGovern

At the Gallows

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I was back at school today after a day off for this bad cold. My head still feels like it’s full of rocks. So the poem today was slightly lower effort. In a little break today, I went through the first few chapters of The Scarlet Letter and pulled out words and phrases that seemed to go together in order to create a found poem.

I think I’m going to have to come back to this again and see what possibilities arise. I’m actually more pleased with these results than I expected to be.

At the Gallows
a poem found in The Scarlet Letter
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

I.
a throng of bearded men
heavily timbered
founders of a new Utopia
on one side of the portal
kept alive in history
under the footsteps
of our narrative

II.
on a certain summer morning
in that early severity
that witch was to die upon the gallows

on the summer morning the women
appeared to take a peculiar interest
they were her countrywomen

III.
make way, good people, make way
open a passage
iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine
the spectacle of guilt and shame
woman, transgress not
beyond the limits of heaven’s mercy
on this wild outskirt of earth
art thou not afraid

IV.
her sin the roots
which she had struck into the soil
the chain that bound her here
could never be broken
her shame that all nature knew

V.
a torch kindles a name
destiny had drawn a circle about her
witchcraft gathered about her
the sound of a witch’s anathemas
in some unknown tongue

VI.
the fallen woman had been
on her pedestal of shame
possessing the lock and key
of her silence

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
—Nelson Mandela
*****
For a day, just for one day,
Talk about that which disturbs no one
And bring some peace into your beautiful eyes.
—Hafiz
*****
“Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.” —Doris Lessing
*****
“Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than silence.” —proverb
*****
“All religions, all this singing, one song. The differences are just illusion and vanity. The sun’s light looks a little different on this wall than it does on that wall, and a lot different on this other one, but it’s still one light.” —Rumi
*****
The magic of autumn has seized the countryside;
now that the sun isn’t ripening anything
it shines for the sake of the golden age;
for the sake of Eden;
to please the moon for all I know.
—Elizabeth Coatsworth
*****
“. . .fairies’ gold, they say, is like love or knowledge—or a good story. It’s most valuable when it’s shared.” —Heather Forest, The Woman Who Flummoxed the Fairies
*****
“Sacred is another word for energy. Some physical spaces are sacred because they vibrate with the energy of the Spirit. Some rituals are sacred because they connect infinite energy with finite creation. Some memories are sacred because they transmit the energy of those who are now our ancestors.  Some visions are sacred because they are the energy of hope, transforming our lives, right before our eyes.” —Steven Charleston

Trans Day of Remembrance

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Trans Day of Remembrance
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Hold a lit flame in the palm of your hand
Quanesha, Strawberry, Honee
Kassim, Redd, Vanity
Tai’Vion, Dylan, Monique, Pauly
listen as the silence gathers wings around you
Kenji, Shannon, River Neveah
Liara, Jazlynn, Yella, Africa
Michelle, Tayy Dior, Reyna
their faces like wisps of smoke and mist
looking over our shoulders
Kita, Andrea Doria, Kitty
Sasha, Starr, Meraxes, Chevy
Diamond, Alex, Tee
These are just the names we know of those
who lost their lives this year to violence.

Hold your flames high and give them light,
let light shine into their memories,
let light pour through the scrim of their stories
that we may hear again their voices.
We have a right to be here.
We have a right to exist as ourselves.

Hold your flames higher still,
for their number is greater than thirty.
Hosts of beloved ones join our circle,
lives lost not at the hands of another,
but at the hands of society,
at the bitter end of despair,
caught in the crosshairs
of some preacher’s sanctimonious condemnation,
some politician’s pandering to the puritans,
some school board member’s unctuous dissembling.

Rise up like smoke, they tell us, their voices
like ashes caught in the arms of autumn wind,
spilling into our circles. Stand up,
step forward, speak out, so that the ones
who come after us may live.

Gratitude List:
1. Pileated woodpecker, towhee, shadow of vulture
2. The white breast of the yellow-throat catching the afternoon sun among the red leaves of the Japanese maple
3. Beginning to feel good again after feeling rotten
4. Cinnamon tea
5. How hearts reach out. Can you feel it?
May we walk in Beauty!

“Here is what the elders call a starting point. If we seek to welcome people into community, then mutual respect must be our foundational practice. We commit ourselves to respect the dignity of every human being. It does not mean agree, authorize or approve. It does mean treat others as we would have them treat us. Respect is the gate we open to all those looking for a place to belong.” —Steven Charleston

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” -Oscar Wilde

“Every minute can be a holy, sacred minute. Where do you seek the spiritual? You seek the spiritual in every ordinary thing that you do every day. Sweeping the floor, watering the vegetables, and washing the dishes become holy and sacred if mindfulness is there. With mindfulness and concentration, everything becomes spiritual.” ― Thích Nhất Hạnh

“…when women speak truly they speak subversively–they can’t help it: if you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you subvert.
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.
That’s what I want–to hear you erupting. You young Mount St. Helenses who don’t know the power in you–I want to hear you.” —Ursula Le Guin

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” —Muriel Rukeyser

“Oh to meet, however briefly, the greatness that lives under our surface. To summon enough bravery to be without armour and strategy, for the chance at meeting that irreducible power. Oh to make of our terrified hearts a prayer of surrender to the God of Love; that we remain safe in our quivering ache to be near that Otherness, even for a moment. To touch that ancient life who will never relinquish its wilderness, who lets instinct make its choices, whose knowing lives in bones and whose song is a wayfinder.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa

“The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love.”
―Parker J. Palmer

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
―Emily Dickinson

“One of my favourite teachings by Martín Prechtel is that ‘violence is an inability with grief.’ In other words, it takes skillfulness to grieve well, to grieve wholeheartedly. It requires us to bravely, nakedly come to face all that is lost, keeping our hearts open to loving just as fully again.
“When we make war, lashing out in rage and revenge, it is because we are unwilling to make this full encounter with grief. It is easy to enact the same violence which has taken so much from us―including towards ourselves―but the greater work is to let that which is missing enlarge your life; to make beauty from your brokenness.
“Whatever you hold in the cauldron of your intention is your offering to the divine. The quality of assistance you can generate and receive from the Holy is governed by the quality of your inner offering. When you indulge in fear and doubt, you are flooding the arena where love is attempting to work.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa

“Our true home is in the present moment.
To live in the present moment is a miracle.
The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green Earth
in the present moment.”
―Thich Nhat Hanh

“An awake heart
is like a sky that pours light.” ―Hafiz (Ladinsky)

“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” ―Oscar Levant

Regulating

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

It’s been a busy day. Here’s a quick poem that expresses some of the conversations I’ve had.

Regulating
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Don’t
tell me
how to feel.

Don’t tell me how to get over this.
No, wait. Tell me how to
get over this.

Tell me
how to feel
and still
keep my
spine straight.

How do I herd the twining snakes
of my central nervous system
into their regulated rhythm
while allowing the wild horses
of my feelings free range
to thunder over the plains
of my heart?

“Expressing our vulnerability can help resolve conflicts.” —Marshall B. Rosenberg

“Our original instructions are to listen to the cloud floating by and the wind blowing by. That’s poetry and prose in English, but it is wakahan in the Lakotan language. It means to consciously apply mystery to everything. Everything is alive and has its own consciousness.” —Lakota elder Tiokasin Ghosthorse

“We are so brief. A one-day dandelion. A seedpod skittering across the ice. We are a feather falling from the wing of a bird. I don’t know why it is given to us to be so mortal and to feel so much. It is a cruel trick, and glorious.” —Louise Erdrich

James Baldwin: “To be sensual is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.”

“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” —Samwise Gamgee

“When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad.” —Miles Davis

“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” —Frida Kahlo

A little story by Amrita Nadi:
At the end of a talk someone from the audience asked the Dalai Lama, “Why didn’t you fight back against the Chinese?”
The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up at us and said with a gentle smile, “Well, war is obsolete, you know.”
Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he added, “Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back. . .but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you.”

“There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze.” —Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life

“Always there is something worth saying
about glory, about gratitude.”
—Mary Oliver, What Do We Know

Do your little bit of good where you are;
its those little bits of good put together,
that overwhelm the world.
—Desmond Tutu

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” —Jeannette Rankin

When we see the Beloved in each person,
it’s like walking through a garden,
watching flowers bloom all around us. —Ram Dass

“You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles. You slipped into this dimension as a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs. You blasted into this realm as a lush explosion of ecstatic gratitude. And it is your birthright to fulfill those promises.
I’m not pandering to your egotism by telling you these things. When I say, “Be yourself,” I don’t mean you should be the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and stand alone at the end of time on top of a Mt. Everest-sized pile of pretty garbage.
When I say, “Be yourself,” I mean the self that says “Thank you!” to the wild irises and the windy rain and the people who grow your food. I mean the rebel creator who’s longing to make the whole universe your home and sanctuary. I mean the dissident bodhisattva who’s joyfully struggling to germinate the seeds of divine love that are packed inside every moment.
When I say, “Be yourself,” I mean the spiritual freedom fighter who’s scrambling and finagling and conspiring to relieve your fellow messiahs from their suffering and shower them with rowdy blessings.” —Rob Brezsny

“The root of joy is gratefulness…It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.” ―Brother David Steindl-Rast

The Lost Song

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s poem began as an intellectual exercise. Perhaps I will come back to it another day and tend it with a little more care and reflection, but for now, I’m going to call it done. Here is the exercise I set for myself: to write a pantoum-like poem, but to let the first stanza be what it wanted to be, and then to modify a pantoum-form from there. So instead of four lines, the stanzas are five lines each, and the second and fourth lines are repeated as in a traditional pantoum, but the fifth line in each stanza is a repetition of the poem’s first line.

I’m intrigued by the possibilities of modifying traditional poetic forms to suit my own ends. For this experiment, I’ll declare here that I have invented the pantoumly, a variation of the pantoum. I’ll try it again sometime when my head is not so full of the grey cobwebs of encroaching winter darkness.

The Lost Song
a pantoumly poem
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

I no longer understand
the words of my mother tongue,
no longer remember the voice
that sang through my veins
in the hour of my birth.

The words of my mother tongue
in the mouth of the tyrant
(singing in my veins)
turned to poison.
I no longer understand.

In the mouth of the tyrant,
the people are reduced to dust,
poisoned
by waves of meaningless words
I cannot understand.

The people are reduced to dust,
driven to mad worship
by meaningless words,
and threats, and lust for power
I refuse to understand.

Driven to worship their madness,
they cannot escape the maelstrom
of threats, their lust for power
eating away empathy
which they no longer understand.

I cannot escape this maelstrom
but seek the still point
which feeds empathy,
and the dust rises.
They will once again understand.

Seek the still point,
hear the ancient voices
rising like dust
in the words of your mother tongue:
This you shall understand.

“Disobedience was [humanity’s] original virtue.” —Oscar Wilde

“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…
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”
—Walt Whitman

“I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful—an endless prospect of magic and wonder.” —Ansel Adams

“A tree is a nobler object than a prince in his coronation-robes.” —Alexander Pope

“We must finally stop appealing to theology to justify our reserved silence about what the state is doing—for that is nothing but fear. ‘Open your mouth for the one who is voiceless’—for who in the church today still remembers that that is the least of the Bible’s demands in times such as these?” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear. . . . Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“It is so easy to break down and destroy. The heroes are those who make peace and build.” —Nelson Mandela

“We are not lacking in the dynamic forces needed to create the future. We live immersed in a sea of energy beyond all comprehension. But this energy, in an ultimate sense, is ours not by domination but by invocation.” —Thomas Berry

Silence

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I only learned today about how the Taliban this August banned the sound of women’s voices in public places. As I searched for poetry by Afghan women, I came across this powerful couplet by a poet who went by the name Muska, a young Afghan woman of Helmand Province. In translation into English, the poem loses the syllabic and sound structures of its form, the landay, which is a 22-syllable folk poem of Pashtun women of Afghanistan. My own attempt at the syllable count is certainly no landay, but seeks to echo it in lament of Muska, who died two weeks after setting herself on fire after her brothers beat her when they discovered her poetry, and the women of Afghanistan, who have had their voices stolen from them.

(I learned about Muska and the landay here: The National Poetry Foundation, Poetry journal.)

Silence
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

I call. You’re stone.
One day you’ll look and find I’m gone.
—by the Afghan poet Muska (Zarmina) of Helmand Province, who set herself on fire in 2012 after being beaten by her brothers when they discovered her poetry

Her laughter drifts no more like jasmine
over the garden wall and into the marketplace.

Who will sing the songs of the women
whose voices lie hidden at the bottom of the well?

The moon is rising over the wall
silently as the woman sitting in the courtyard.

“Through a process of perpetual discernment and “prayer unceasing” we may dive into the well of each faith and emerge with the treasure that connects us all.” —Mirabai Starr

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” —Carl Sagan

“If the Rhine, the Yellow, the Mississippi rivers are changed to poison, so too are the rivers in the trees, in the birds, and in the humans changed to poison, almost simultaneously. There is only one river on the planet Earth and it has multiple tributaries, many of which flow through the veins of sentient creatures.” —Thomas Berry

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” —Kurt Vonnegut

‪”So much of bird flight is really expert falling, slipping into that delicate space within the argument between gravity and air resistance. That natural alchemy transforms a plummet into a glide. Someday, I hope to learn to fail like birds fall.‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“Reading and writing cannot be separated. Reading is breathing in; writing is breathing out.”

“For a Star to be born,
there is one thing that must happen;
a nebula must collapse.
So collapse.
Crumble.
This is not your Destruction.
This is your birth.” —Zoe Skylar

Mysteries of the Dark

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today is the last of my three days of posting reflections on the Mysteries of the Dark Novena for Way of the Rose. Here are my thoughts:

Mysteries of the Darkness Novena

Day 41. Sorrowful Mysteries:

Walking in the Dark.

I have always felt compelled towards shadow work, looking deeply within, trying to understand my impulses and compulsions, my vices and my rages, the way desire flows and obsession grows.

Mystery, mysticism, paradox, counterpoint, magic, surrealism—that which is beyond the ken of daylight sight. Like the way you have to look to the side of the Pleiades to see them clearly.

When I was a teenager, if I was the last person downstairs at night, I used to hate those seconds after I had turned off the light before I got to the top of the stairs. The darkness behind me was too overwhelming. But today, when I get up in the night, I like to find my way through the dark house by feel, sensing where I am in the room, honing my dark-sight.

Even so, I struggle with the encroaching darkness of the last few weeks before the Winter Solstice. I just can’t make my peace. My energy flags with the dying day, and my brain gets dull and fuzzy. In a season when grades need to be updated for students and Thanksgiving plans made, and then Christmas and Yule, I want to emulate the bears, go underground, feel the quiet rhythms, be still and silent. And so instead I groan when the day dies early, when the light has left like the wild geese for the south.

I need to keep giving myself pockets of intentional retreat, hours here and there where I step out of the bustle to write and reflect, to say the rosary slowly—savoring every word instead of the daily push to make sure it gets done in the schedule, walk or bike on the woods trail, stand under the stars. It’s a form of self-care—spiritual self-care. Not down-time for down-time’s sake (though that is absolutely essential to my mental health), but unlike other forms of self-care in which the intent is to disconnect, the intent here is to re-connect to something beyond myself. Dark-time self-care is about keeping an intentional inner focus amid the outer distractions.

How do you do spiritual self-care in tumultuous times?

The Heart’s Desire Prayer I have been praying during this novena is:

Oh Antlered One who calls me home to live within the garden of myself,
help me to find the still point in the maelstrom of my anxious fears,
to follow where the sacred tug of grief and rages
will guide me to the wisdom I will write upon the pages
of these my croning years.

Tools for the Resistance

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

This was Fun! And a lot of hard work! A few days ago, I asked friends on Facebook to offer their tools for the resistance as we work to meet the challenges of the coming days. I was unprepared for the magnitude of the response. I received 119 comments on the thread. Some comments included several ideas which I unwove into different lines. Others echoed each other, and I wove those together as I could. I decided to let the actual phrasings stand as written in as many cases as possible, though I often only pulled out shorter phrases from longer sentences to make the points succinct. I printed out four pages of about 110 lines of poem, sliced the lines apart, and arranged them in a flow that felt good to me. Here is the finished poem, with great gratitude to my beloved community:

Tools for the Resistance:
A Crowd-Sourced Poem
by Beth Weaver-Kreider and friends

Strengthen yourselves for what is to come.
Set your boundaries, clearly and effectively.
Strengthen your resolve.
Practice resilience.
Stay visible.
Wear black.
Harness that bone-deep disappointment to determination.
Mourn. Invite people to mourn with you.
Scream. Invite people to scream with you.
Use the tool of your voice. Use reason.
Pay attention. Prepare yourself for when you will be needed.
Resist tyranny.
Don’t hide. Don’t obey in advance.
Teach the history of non-resistance and civil disobedience.
Do civil disobedience. Push back.
Refuse to follow unethical instructions.
Carry forward our history of resistance.
Mobilize the angelic warriors.
Get your cell phone camera ready.
Get your boots on the ground.
Put on your pink hat. March!
Find joy in action!

Gather facts and information, knowledge and experience.
Read. Research and read.
Think critically.
Practice intelligence.
Practice bravery.
Educate.
Make sure people know how the system works.
Teach the privileged to be allies.
Unlearn the whitewashing of history.
Disempower ignorance.
Tell the truth. Share it boldly and without rancor.
Confront your elitism and privilege.
Stop recycling old arguments.
Examine your assumptions.
Be humble.
Be an active ally: Say, “What can I do?”
Come alongside. Check in. Hold space.
Greet the ones others look away from.
Actively love the disenfranchised.
Actively listen to them, and follow the marginalized ones.
Follow the directions of the young ones.
Walk with your elders.
Connect. Coresist.

Boycott. Buy local. Buy independent.
Vote with your money. Know where your dollars are going.
Volunteer.
Gather folks who care.
Create adaptable support systems.
Teach basic skills.
Teach people to make things for themselves.
Grow the movement. Draw people in.
Share ideas and plan actions.
Look to your sisters.
Learn the value of true friendship.
Hold on to each other.
Give care to those in your sphere.
Practice breathing together
Share your gentleness.

Aid in the collective healing work.
Midwife one another.
Extend gifts of listening. Listen selflessly.
Listen to and hear each other’s stories.
Tell stories of hope and resistance
Have hard conversations.
Make eye contact.

Make music. Send sound soaring to the heavens.
Make music without words.
Memorize music and poetry.
Sing songs about equity, freedom, and democracy.
Sing songs of peace with children.
Teach music to children.
Use humor: Humor has always been a tool of resistance.
Have fun! Be creative!
Make art, make art, make art.
Dance!

Walk with friends.
Walk in the woods. Sit by streams. Gaze at the stars.
Find stillness in nature. Soak in the beauty.
Save seeds. Share seeds and plants. Plant seeds. Find new seeds.
Plant community gardens.
Use herbs and words together to incant and pray and sing.
Find wisdom from the flowers.
Take inspiration from strong sturdy trees.
Grow your community of trees.
Remember the roots that connect us all.
Keep your eye on beauty instead of disorder.
Keep your eye on peace, standing shoulder to shoulder.
Practice courageous kindness.
Hold onto hope.

Practice resistance as a spiritual act.
Practice gratitude.
Practice radical self-care.
Practice slowness, enchantment, being, and noticing.
Upgrade consciousness.
Meditate. Be fully present in the moment that is.
Practice reflection.
Recharge.
Use magic. Cast spells.
Hold sacred circles.
Create the Yes.
Pray: “Love, make me an instrument of your peace.”
Continue to show up for mercy and peace and justice
Continue to show up for kindness and compassion
Continue to show up for wisdom and safety
Remember: You are not alone.
Let your little light shine. Shine it into the shadows.
Be a beacon of light and hope.

Gratitude List:
1. Co-poeming
2. Taking a group of students to a nursing home today to interview their elders. Beautiful interactions. I am incredibly proud of these young people.
3. Self-care. I had been neglecting my careful lunch creation in the past week (a bit depressed, I think), and so spent some good time this evening cooking a pot of grains, sauteing kale and carrots, and roasting soybeans for the rest of the week.
4. How the little pothos cuttings grow roots, and then push out new leaves.
5. Good stories.
May we walk in Beauty!