Musings

What’s Your Little Thing?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Near the top of my list of People to Emulate is Wangari Maathai, the biologist and environmental and women’s rights activist who started the Green Belt Movement in Kenya in 1977 to build communities–particularly among women–that would work together to address erosion and to plant trees. Over time, the GBM began to advocate with the Kenyan government for more democratic leadership, for the release of political prisoners, and for an end to land grabs that were destroying Kenya’s rich ecological systems.

“It’s the little things citizens do. That’s what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees,” she said. And that little thing turned into a big thing, a major project of change and conservation and stability for human rights in Kenya. It didn’t end the struggles. But it has made, and continues to make (years after her death), positive and sustainable change for good.

If you live in the United States in these days of national instability and cruelty, what is your little thing? What is the thing you will do to hold back the tides of cruelty? Can you find a local refugee family and be a friend and guide, someone to help them feel safe? Can you print out Red Cards–Know Your Rights Cards–and pass them out to people in your communities? Can you write letters to the editor? Call your reps? Make art that challenges the cruelty? Go to protests? Make signs for protests? Boost the signal on your social media? Join a local group that is organizing to create safe spaces? Speak up in a school board meeting? Run for office? Can you pray?

That last one, though. Some people say prayer changes things. Other people say it’s a way to get out of doing anything “real.” I pray believing that at the very least, prayer changes me. These days, in my rosary prayers, I am calling on Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is also Tonantzin, and to Ix Chel, who was the Lady long ago in regions of Central America, and to Hekate of ancient Greece who guided wanderers through the darkness. I imagine I am praying with the captives who were shipped to that mega-prison in El Salvador without due process, with the mothers and children (at least one who is in desperate need of medical treatment) who were deported to Honduras, with the university students who are experiencing the cruelty of US prisons as they wait to be released or deported. I know the Lady hears me, hears us, and I feel Her working on me, giving me confidence and courage, nudging me to act and to love more deeply. The prayer is changing me.

The Contrarian journalist Jennifer Rubin calls this administration’s barrage of destruction the “cruelty train.”

How do we stop a cruelty train? Not by sending our own cruel train after it. But by turning all our little things into sand that clogs the gears, into wrenches that break the cogs–our prayers, our signs,
our public songs, our letters, our calls, our knowledge, our commitment to democracy, to due process, to checks and balances, to separation of church and state, to the Constitution, to basic human rights, to the power of Love.

What will be your little thing? Small person that I am, I cannot stop the cruelty train simply by standing in its way with my little thing, or praying that it will derail. But together, all our little things–all our prayers, all our will, our shouting, our fierce Love–become a barrier that just might stop the train. Perhaps Wangari Maathai didn’t know that helping women to plant trees would build into a movement that would slow the train of ecological destruction in East Africa, or perhaps she guessed, but her movement is doing so.

Blessed be.

Here are some little things to try:
1. Make a list of your own People to Emulate. What got them moving? How did they step into their sense of their ability to change the world?
2. Pray. Daily. Or if prayer is not your thing, make a mantra of Courage and Confidence that you can say every day to build you up for the tasks ahead. Be ready for it to change you.
3. Make art and poetry and songs. Sing and dance.
4. Laugh together with others. Joy is Resistance. Laughter–real, deep, heartfelt, soulful laughter–frightens fascists.
5. Join a group or two–get the emails from Indivisible (your local groups), or 50501, or other local initiatives that are dedicated to science and human rights and safety for immigrants and refugees and brave spaces for trans and other LGBTQ people.
6. Call your reps. Start with once a week, if you’re anxious. Pat yourself on the back when you make the calls. Take a deep breath, and get ready to make more calls the next week, or the next day.
7. Write letters to the editors. Write op-eds.
8. Join a rally, or convene your own. Get out in the streets with signs and make some noise.
9. Love your neighbor.
10. Stay curious, even in the midst of your rage. Perhaps that aunt who repeats your uncle’s MAGA talking points is really beginning to wonder whether she’s on the wrong side. Ask her what she believes, believe in her goodness, be curious about her. Remind her that she can change her mind when she learns new information.

Is Love Really the Answer?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Perhaps you’ve been reading my posts since I began writing this blog. In that case, you may be wondering if my title suggests that I am having an existential crisis, wondering if I think I need to change my essential character in order to fight the powers that be. The answer is probably a bit of yes and no. I hope that in times of great political and social upheaval we all do the powerful soul-work of existential renovation, exploring whether our inner lives have what it takes to meet the challenges of the times. Are my core values and principles strong enough to carry me into these perilous days with courage and conviction to stand up to the soul-rending cruelty of the powermongers?

Yes, at some level, I have not changed my basic orientation–that Love is the answer, that the universe is held together by Love, that we are born of Love and borne on the wings of Love. I believe with Rhiannon Giddens that our work is to change the song of hate into a song of Love.

And. . . And I also find myself more frequently using the martial language I have long eschewed as I look at the work ahead of us. I will unapologetically speak of doing battle with hatred, of being a warrior for justice and due process and human rights. Of fighting for those who have no one to fight for them.

This feels a little too close to the Spiritual Warfare stuff I long ago turned my back on from those evangelical youth conferences of my teenaged years, so I step gingerly on this ground. Still, I feel like we are battling forces of cruelty and greed, power and hatred–psychopathic forces that have taken root in certain segments of our culture (perhaps not ironically in that very evangelical setting where I first heard the words Spiritual Warfare). So yes, these days my prayer to the Mother is that I may be one of the Luminous Warriors, courageous and confident and ready to step in and harbor those who are vulnerable to these waves of hatred and cruelty, to fight for their safety and protection with whatever means are given to me.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to start punching Nazis. But I might not be actively judging a new acquaintance who apparently did so. I’m not ready to start fire-bombing Teslas, but something in me might celebrate when I read of the ones who do. I’m not getting a gun. I’m not plotting violence. But I am also not going to sit quietly and say that Love is the Answer without putting my heart and my head and my hands and feet into the struggle to make it so.

Some people I know cringe at the words nonresistance and pacifism which have long been part of my identity, and rightly so–under certain definitions. My approach to Love as the Answer is akin to my understanding of the deep meaning of these words: Nonresistance is about actively bringing our moral truth to bear on the situation, not becoming like the hatemongers in a tit-for-tat exchange, but standing strong on the high ground, courageously ready to stand in the gap and be a witness and an example. Pacifism, likewise, is a commitment to being Present in the conflict, not turning to violence, but not cringing away either. My Anabaptist Ancestors called this a Third Way. I want to take that third path, neither reacting in violence nor reacting in fear, but intentionally bringing my Presence to the conflict.

I also believe that there are people out there who are beginning to ask questions, people who may have always been close to the fence, who are wondering how they ever got into the position where they’re defending Nazis, who are beginning to see with a little more nuance and compassion, and who need us to come at them with curiosity and questions and understanding rather than judgement and pitchforks. It’s not just Us and Them, but also the Ones Between, who may need to know it’s safe to leap the fence. How can I bring my soul force, my Love, to conversations with such people when I am burning with rage at the willingness they had to ignore the racism and homophobia and misogyny and colonialism and imperialism and authoritarianism. . .?

Yes, my MO will always be Love. It would feel like spiritual amputation to try to shift that as my grounding. And also, I need to train and strengthen my soul force, my moral force, my love force, my Mama Bear force, and get out into the fray in whatever way I am personally able to do that.

So if what you do is pray, pray fiercely and with Love. If what you do is fight, fight with honor and with Love. If what you do is stand up and speak out, do so with courage, with fervor, with fortitude, grounded in Love. If what you do is support others, bring your full Loving Presence to the act.

No, I’m not going to call for a hopeful loving that believes that if we love hard enough, the cruel people will simply change their hearts. I will call on the Lady to change their hearts, to break them utterly open with compassion. And also, I will take Love to the fight. Too many people are losing their freedom and their livelihoods and their lives for me to sit quietly by, muttering sweet words. I want to call us to a fierce and fearsome Love that puts its boots on, stands in the square, raises its voice (and probably its fist), and says, “Not on my watch!”

Free the Captives!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I don’t understand. I don’t understand. Forty percent of Americans think the US administration should keep deporting people to El Salvadorian hellhole prisons despite the court order to stop. Despite the utter lack of due process. Despite the obvious inhumanity. Who are these cruel people? That’s more than a third of us! Heather Cox Richardson, trying to express the idea that poll numbers supporting the administration’s illegal kidnapping and deportation of immigrants were actually falling, said that “only 40%” are in favor of the deportations! ONLY?!? Only almost half of us? Doesn’t anyone remember history? Does no one remember reading Elie Wiesel or Anne Frank in school?

And, for what it’s worth, a truly compassionate and empathetic heart won’t be looking for that last stanza of the poem. When you see them coming for the immigrants, your heart should break, not in fear for your lonely future self, but for the inhumanity and cruelty being perpetrated by your representative government.

Feel free to post the images here on all social media, as widely and freely as you want.

Halfway Through Poetry Month

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I have been writing. Really! I just haven’t been posting here. This season, I have gotten myself into a little bit of a bind with the artistic disciplines. I’m doing #The100DayProject, making a book a day, and I’m writing a poem a day in April. These are the things that keep my mind alive and questing during the stress of the spring season at school. The quick publish/post for daily poem and book has been Instagram and Substack, and so I will post a catalogue of some of my favorite poems and books here today.

Free to Fly Again

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I know this now: It was a dangerous choice to go there in the first place. I was in danger of losing so much, constricting myself into the tiny little boxes required of those who existed in that place.

I went in with my eyes open, knowing of the claustrophobic boxes, how the language pulled toward dogma and creed. I went in with my own language, my own protective wards, kept secret in my pockets. I went, tethered to those who stood outside, who could watch for me, who could pull me back if I got stuck in the tiny places, injured by the sharp corners, the barbed words, and the lack of fresh air to breathe.

I can view my time in that place as a setback, a wrong choice, a misstep. Or I can look at how it changed me and transformed me, how it prepared me for this moment, gave me courage, made me fierce. Although it left me with wounds, it did not take my essential Self from me: I am always new, always a dragon shedding her skin to become fresh and reborn again, but always the same essential me, growing and changing and developing.

I don’t want to give those eight years power by saying I should not have taken that journey, that the breach of Self was too destructive. Because although my ego took its hits, I didn’t lose my Self. And there were gifts in this journey too. The young people who were there with me taught me so much, so much that I bring with me now that I’m out in the outer world again. Those eight years were a necessary phase of my development. They changed me forever in good and powerful ways. They too were initiation, difficult initiation. Not a break in my line of learning, not a backward step–or if a backwards step, only part of the dance.

Anytime we willingly submit to the claustrophobia of a religious institution, we put ourselves in danger of either taking on the rules for ourselves, or of losing some essential confidence and courage and forcefulness as we make ourselves smaller in order to fit inside the boxes. Me, I’m so grateful now for the ones who tethered me while I was in the land of boxes, those who held the lamps for me to see my way out when I reached the point of banishment.

I called myself an exile when I left that place.
As though it had ever been my true home.
I can laugh now looking back,
and see how even though the lines that draw my past
(for a couple generations)
ran straight through that place,
it was never my home.
I have always been my home.

And I look back today with gratitude for the expansiveness of the escape, for the fact that I can breathe, and run and explore, and call myself by my real name, and not have to look over my shoulder.

So many sacred journeys happen in three days. My sojourn was eight years. And now three years more have passed and finally I feel the new wings stretching out behind me. I am ready to fly again. Blessed be!

Bōchord: The Art of Book(mak)ing

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Book. Proposal—

For #The100DayProject, artists choose an artful activity and do it every day for 100 days, recording their work, and posting about it every day. The project begins on February 23, and I decided to begin my Substack life by posting my daily creations here.

What is a book?

Is it words on pages between covers?
Is it a box, a basket, a vessel of words and images?
Is it a kit for your imagination?
What makes a book a book?
And what is the line between book and not/book?
Or is there even a line?

One of my students, when I posed the question to a class, said,

Perhaps a definition isn’t so much about
what a thing is as about how it is used.”

Wise young person.

My aim for #The100DayProject is to explore the spaces between what is “book” and “not/book.” I aim to make some traditional (though whimsical) books in the form of pages between covers, and some boxes, baskets, vessels of words and images, photographs, to expand the definition of what a book is, and explore how it may be used. . .

Can I create one book a day for 100 days? Perhaps I will have some days when I record the process of making one book over several days. I cannot let this work interfere with my daily work, so I give myself permission to make quick little zines on busy days, to call anything a book, and to create junk.

I will make a bōchord (library in the old English), a BOOK HOARD, a library of sorts.

bōc as Vessel
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

The leaves of the beech
quiver in the winter wind,
rustling whispers,
so many stories to tell,

Etymology: bokiz or bece
to bōc, to book.
Bark and leaves, cover and spine,
the line of words across a page.

It is written in the trees, you see,
not just cellulose and pulp,
but in the very essence of the word:
seeds of ideas, leaves, and bark.

Not only Goths but Gauls too
saw forest as library.
Livre from librum, the tender
inner bark of the tree.

When he was a child,
my father carved his name
into the soft grey
of the household beech.
I found the letters there,
the book of his childhood,
the story of branches
shading the quiet balcony,
the pious lives, the quiet joy,
the industrious aunts,
and some words allowed to be spoken
only by the whispering leaves.

Once there was a guardian beech
watching over the river and the valley,
serpent branches
spreading shadows across the hill.
But insects burrowed her barky pages
until the book of her began to die.
We honored her story, you and I,
the best we could; we read
the book of her until the end.

Here in the pages of my palms
I cup this small wooden bowl
you turned from the branch
of the serpent-beech,
a new vessel to contain magic
much as the tree herself
held her secrets, the livre,
the living library,
still here, alive.

Happy 500th Anniversary, Anabaptists!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment
Art Credit: “In the home of Felix Manz’s mother”/Plain Values Magazine

On the wintry evening of January 21, 1525, as a group of religious resisters gathered in a home in Canton Zurich, Georg Blaurock decided to commit himself to the path that he and his friends had been discussing for some time, the idea that baptism ought to be a choice instead of something done to infants, automatically making the child a member of the state church. Blaurock turned to his friend Conrad Grebel and asked him to baptize him, and the circle proceeded to baptize each friend in turn.

This wasn’t just a spiritual whim. The act of baptizing adults was a statement that they no longer saw their allegiance to the church, which was an arm of the state. They knew that to take this bold step would make them enemies of the state, and being discovered could mean imprisonment, exile, or torture and death. But they went ahead, following the dictates of their consciences.

May we today be as willing to resist Christian Empire and follow our consciences over unjust and harmful laws.

For Such a Time as This

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

In the past decade, I have often thought of Uncle Mordecai’s advice to his niece Queen Esther. I paraphrase: “Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

And here, thousands of years later, are we, in the generations following the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. Here are we, who have been raised on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and his vision of the smallest and most vulnerable-seeming ones taking up the hardest task simply because it was laid on their shoulders. Our books and movies have been filled with people (often teenagers) taking stands against tyranny, fascism, Imperialism, oppression, and cruelty.

We’ve been primed and educated for the coming days.

Here are some of the things I am telling myself:
1. Limit your news intake to a few trusted sources.
2. Unplug as much as possible, especially from the dire and angsty and shrill.
3. Post and share images and stories–actual and fictional–of people resisting Empire.
4. Watch the inauguration or don’t watch the inauguration–do what your heart needs and don’t apologize to anyone for the choice you feel is right for you to make.
5. Differentiate between thoughtful satire and unkind snark.
6. At least, don’t punch down. Punch up. And keep it classy.
7. Express your feelings.
8. Listen to others expressing their feelings. Don’t minimize or explain them away.
9. Commiserate without contributing to negativity and panic.
10. Keep reaching out to your friends. Keep checking in on your friends.
11. Build larger and larger circles of community so no single person has to have the burden of holding you together when you fall apart.
12. In a time of destruction, create things.
13. In a time of cruelty, be inexplicably kind.
14. In a time of rampant lies, speak truth from your heart, and honor integrity.
15. Who do you admire? Emulate them.
16. Breathe, and breathe, and breathe. Stretch and breathe.
17. Use your power and privilege to shield and protect those with less.
18. Stand in the gap.
19. What are you willing to put on the line for others?
20. Do not let your voice be silenced.
21. Do not give money a voice.
22. stay grounded. Every day, meditate or pray or make a magic spell that goodness and peace will prevail.

Gratitude List:
1. Such a beautiful snowstorm (hmmm-I accidentally write snowstory, and I want to make that an official word, please)
2. So many circles of dedicated souls ready to stand up and speak out
3. Tea
4. I have finally found a tool that is helping me with task initiation and task completion. I am feeling so satisfied, and much more full of energy
5. Great horned owls calling through the darkness last night.
May we walk in Beauty!

“Things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” —Pema Chödrön

“How will we ever reconcile with those from whom we feel so estranged? How will we forgive the wrongs we believe have been done? How will we be able to trust one another again? Those are the kinds of profound questions that many of us need to have answers to…but the hurts are so new, the pain so fresh, we are not sure when or how we will ever come to a point of healing. To be honest, I do not have answers to any of these questions, not right now, but that does not trouble me. Why? Because I know, over time, the Spirit will bring us to the answers we need. She will show us paths to healing we never imagined. I am confident she will slowly guide us to wholeness in a manner that is most just and most empowering for us. Therefore, I do not feel anxious about how I will forgive or rushed into relationships I am not ready to embrace. I may not be able to trust others yet, but I do trust the Spirit, and that is enough for now. I will follow where she leads and when she leads, knowing that what I cannot comprehend now, I will understand later.” —Steven Charleston, 2021

“The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.
The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
Words can be used thus paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a symbolic or metaphoric usage. (They also have a sound—a fact the linguistic positivists take no interest in . A sentence or paragraph is like a chord or harmonic sequence in music: its meaning may be more clearly understood by the attentive ear, even though it is read in silence, than by the attentive intellect.)” —Ursula LeGuin

“Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings.
Move within, but don’t move the way fear
Makes you move.” —by Rumi (Barks)

“I think pleasure is really the gateway to feeling connected and inspired.” —Dreamwork with Toko-pa

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
―Mary Oliver

“Now is the time to resist the slightest extension in the boundaries of what is right and just. Now is the time to speak up and to wear as a badge of honor the opprobrium of bigots.” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Our lives are a partnership with Spirit. We can choose to be active in this partnership or passive. We can opt out at any time, but we can also increase our involvement. We can grow, change and learn. We can do more good than we ever imagined possible. The key is in the relationship we have with our partner.” —Steven Charleston, 2025

“A common woman is as common as a common loaf of bread, and will rise.” —Judy Grahn

“The plan, a memory of the future, tries on reality to see if it fits.” —Laurence Gonzalez

“I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing that like being for the first time see, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells un-flamed and disappeared. I was still ringing.” —Annie Dillard

“When you walk a path you love, there is something deeper calling you forward on it, like a beautiful question that can never be answered.” —Toko-pa Turner

“A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.”
―Lisa Kleypas, A Wallflower Christmas

“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism” —Martin Luther King Jr.

“Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles.
Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.
Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it.
Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?
Expediency asks the question, is it politic?
Vanity asks the question, is it popular?
But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“We are all silent witnesses to the drama of our own lives. We see behind the curtains. We know the origin of our story, the characters who fill its pages, and the main events that have carried us over perilous seas to where we find ourselves today. Only a small fraction of this saga ever gets told, even around the firelight of family, but we keep it in our hearts the way books were once written by hand. The story lives within us and finds its completion through us. We carry it forward in sacred procession, not knowing when our own role will end, but bound by faith to take our part for as long as love allows.” —Steven Charleston

“How will we ever reconcile with those from whom we feel so estranged? How will we forgive the wrongs we believe have been done? How will we be able to trust one another again? Those are the kinds of profound questions that many of us need to have answers to…but the hurts are so new, the pain so fresh, we are not sure when or how we will ever come to a point of healing. To be honest, I do not have answers to any of these questions, not right now, but that does not trouble me. Why? Because I know, over time, the Spirit will bring us to the answers we need. She will show us paths to healing we never imagined. I am confident she will slowly guide us to wholeness in a manner that is most just and most empowering for us. Therefore, I do not feel anxious about how I will forgive or rushed into relationships I am not ready to embrace. I may not be able to trust others yet, but I do trust the Spirit, and that is enough for now. I will follow where she leads and when she leads, knowing that what I cannot comprehend now, I will understand later.” —Steven Charleston

Dreaming

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

In the dream, I find five tiny creatures, all rodent-like. They’re all different species, and all at different stages of development, but they’re all extremely vulnerable, and need someone to take care of them. I am afraid even to pick up the smallest ones, because they’re so tiny, I am afraid the pressure of my fingers will harm them.

I find a terrarium-type of container, and I am really gratified to see them eating and drinking, even the tiniest one, which is like a tiny ball of fuzz. Even so, I am uncertain whether the littlest ones can possibly survive.

The scene shifts, and I am checking on the tiny creatures the following day. Today, however, they are frogs. In the way of dreams, they’re the same creatures, but frogs. One of the older ones is swimming in the water on its back, cradling the tiniest one in its arms. The others have all grown, and they’re looking healthy and satisfied. Even as frogs, it’s clear that they’re different species. I am incredibly relieved that they’re going to survive, and amazed that they are taking care of each other.

I used to have dreams about taking care of lost kittens or gerbils or hamsters that kept getting away and into danger. This one was very like those, but with the difference that there was a resolution of their safety at the end.

I’ve been using a new motivational app the past week (called Finch). It’s been so much more effective than my various methods of to-do lists that always seem to get lost or ignored. I feel like the tiny animals are about the tasks and goals I set for myself. Finally, for the first time in a long time, I am feeling like I have the focus and energy to manage the basic details.

I was hesitant to try it because it felt like just one more thing to do, and nothing else seemed to work to motivate me or give me energy, and why would adding one more thing be helpful? Somehow, this particular thing helps to motivate me in ways other systems have not. The app is very game-like, giving energy to a little bird every time I complete a task. I’ve begun to feel very tenderly about my own vulnerable little learning self as I tend to the needs of this little creature by keeping up with my tasks. No wonder my dreamlife is giving me tiny creatures to nurture.

Awaken Me to Love

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’m going to finish this visual series on Epiphany or the day after. I realize that daily accountable disciplines keep me working creatively, even (especially) when my energy is low, like now. They tell me that a time comes when you walk through the other side of this stage of Menopause, and the energy returns, and the daily aches are a little less intense. I’m trying to eat and to move my body in ways that help that process along. In the meantime, I’m focusing on getting my work done, and on keeping alive daily disciplines that will feed my creativity.

Soon, the #100DayProject will begin, and I am hoping to join that in order to keep some creative discipline alive. Sometimes I feel like I’m choosing between the words and the crafty creativity, so I’m hatching a project that will use both.