Musings

The Stag and the Hunter

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’ve decided to make a physical Dream Bundle, to collect my words and symbols in the next week and a half. I have known that the physical act of designing and creating, of touching and gathering, is part of what makes a ritual real, but it has taken me years of this annual inner process to realize that a physical element would guide the work.

Last night’s dreams: Much of the dream takes place on a front porch, children coming home from school. I’m watching for two in particular–not sure why. There’s something vulnerable about these two. I miss connecting with them one day, and my brother says to be sure to engage the one in particular on the coming day, because he needs to find out how to help the young man.

One of our relatives brings in the deer he has shot, a buck. My niece is delighted to go with him and help him to gut and skin it. She knows she can do this, even though she has never done it before, because she is a nurse skilled in anatomy. Although the rest of the dream is sunny and warm, this Hunter comes to us through snow, the Stag over his shoulders. He is clad in grey and green, with a Robin Hood-style wool hat.

It’s pretty convoluted and wispy this morning, though pieces have been coming back as I write, particularly the image of Hunter and Stag. I do get this: focused, intentional helping. Working together to identify and meet needs. Using our own skills to solve problems.

Also, there’s the Stag and Hunter. In folklore and myth, the Stag is killed for the health and well-being of the community. The Hunter, in this case, is a quiet and sensitive young man with an eye for Beauty. I am fascinated by how this felt like an incidental part of the dream, but as I wrote other pieces, the dream memory of the image has strengthened and coalesced, as if to say, “This one: This is the important piece that ties it all together.”

Gratitude:
Light and shadow.
Voices from the past and voices bringing the future.
Dreams and messages.
How the light enters.

May we walk humbly, in justice, mercy, and Beauty!

“There is more to life than we previously imagined. Angels hide in every nook and cranny, magi masquerade as everyday people, and shepherds wear the garments of day laborers. The whole earth is brimming with glory for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.”
–Howard Thurman

Marking Kwanzaa with my friends who celebrate. Today’s word is Kujichagulia. Self determination. (Even if you don’t know Swahili, it’s a fun word to roll around in your mouth. Try it. Emphasize the second and second to last syllables.)

The first people a dictator puts in jail after a coup are the writers, the teachers, the librarians — because these people are dangerous. They have enough vocabulary to recognize injustice and to speak out loudly about it. Let us have the courage to go on being dangerous people.” —Madeleine L’Engle

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.” ―Carrie Fisher

“The stories I cared about, the stories I read and reread, were usually stories which dared to disturb the universe, which asked questions rather than gave answers. I turned to story, then, as now, looking for truth, for it is in story that we find glimpses of meaning, rather than in textbooks. . . . Fortunately, nobody ever told me that stories were untrue, or should be outgrown, and then as now they nourished me and kept me willing to ask the unanswerable questions.” —Madeleine L’Engle

“We need to dare disturb the universe by not being manipulated or frightened by judgmental groups who assume the right to insist that if we do not agree with them, not only do we not understand but we are wrong. How dull the world would be if we all had to feel the same way about everything, if we all had to like the same books, dislike the same books.” —Madeleine L’Engle

“But I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children’s books ask questions, and make the reader ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone’s universe.” —Madeleine L’Engle

“So let us look for beauty and grace, for love and friendship, for that which is creative and birth-giving and soul-stretching. Let us dare to laugh at ourselves, healthy, affirmative laughter. Only when we take ourselves lightly can we take ourselves seriously, so that we are given the courage to say, ‘Yes! I dare disturb the universe.’” —Madeleine L’Engle

Gnowledge and Gnowing

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

(In these days between Solstice and Epiphany, between Christmas and Three Kings’ Day, I mine my dreams and experiences for images and words that I will use to fashion into the word or phrase or idea that I will carry as my guiding concept into the New Year. I call this process “making my dream bundle.” So far, it’s only words on a page, but perhaps today, I will write the words and find symbols so I can carry it around with me for now.)

As I wait and watch for the words and images that I want to carry into the coming year, I have stumbled back into a word cluster that has always fascinated me. Gnosis, a word rooted in ancient languages, means knowledge–particularly spiritual and mystical understanding. Deep awareness. Stand a pillar next to that, a gnomon, and you can tell the time, a gnomon being the part of the sundial that casts the shadow, or any pillar or column that allows you to interpret the time by the shadow it casts. The gnomon is the indicator, the perceiver.

Now add another of my favorite words: gnome, a word coined by the philosopher/physician/alchemist Parcelsus in the early 1500s, meaning “earth-dweller,” to refer to the archetypal being of earth. Whimsical, perhaps, and also powerful, as archetypes so often are. It also has a homophonal cognate relationship to gnosis, and some writers assume that Paracelsus saw the earth-dwellers as keepers of deep knowledge as well.

I’ll tuck Gnowledge and Gnosis, Gnomon and Gnome, into my dream bundle, along with the heightened dream images, the bald eagle that sat in the tree outside my window, the stump that wears a ruffly skirt of oyster mushrooms, even in the frigid days of winter. Mycelium, the secret network, the fungal source of the mushrooms that are simply the above-ground visible flowers of the mycelial web. Web, network–put them into the dream bundle.

Maybe I’ll slip gnu in there, too, just for whimsy’s sake.

I should have known that the book I am reading with my Themes in Lit class (The Zookeeper’s Wife) would invade my dreams. In last night’s dream, I am running from the Gestapo, trying desperately to keep hidden. A friend hides me in her massive house. I hide in the attic. I hide in tiny rooms. Finally, as they’re closing in, I slip into the pool, and hide beneath a raft. The Gestapo give up and go away.

As I was running from room to room, listening for their footsteps, and finding claustrophobic little hiding places, I kept thinking about how I was endangering the lives of all of the people in the house, knowing that if I were to be caught, everyone in the house would be shot on the spot.

Because it’s such a direct correlation to my reading, I wonder if it belongs in the dream bundle, but it’s really become part of my inner life in the past month, this story of people who chose the dangerous path of saving people’s lives at the risk of their own. Thousands of Poles in WWII risked their lives to create a vast network that created false documents, hid Jewish people and resistance fighters, and sent them to safe places in the countryside or out of the country. I think this belongs in the dream bundle. I already put Network into the mix. I’ll add resistance, and risk, and doing good because it is the thing to do.

Gratitude:
1. My brain and heart are beginning to settle. Yesterday’s quiet and rest, almost-boredom, was a necessary grounding. I received a set of wisdom cards yesterday that I am exploring. The archetypes are rich and meaningful , and a helpful tool for meditation. Settling.
2. This cat Sachs, who is lying next to me with his front paws on my right arm, purring, purring, and occasionally singing to the birds who come to the suet block on the balcony. Makes it hard to type, but he’s good companionship.
3. Chocolate. And flaming figgy pudding. And grapefruit.
4. Zoom. It’s not a hug, nor is it the long, slow, hanging out with beloveds. But it will do in a pinch.
5. Sunshine and snow.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with Beauty!

Joyful Kwanzaa to my friends who are celebrating the first fruits: Today is Umoja, or Unity. With you, I will reflect on ways in which we can bring unity in divided situations in the coming year.

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” —Mary Oliver

“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” ―Susan Sontag

“People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped; by influence, by power, by us.” —Wendell Berry

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

“When you understand interconnectedness, it makes you more afraid of hating than of dying.”
—Robert A. F. Thurman

“It’s quiet now. So quiet that can almost hear other people’s dreams.” ―Gayle Forman

“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” ―Thich Nhat Hanh
“There is still a window of time. Nature can win If we give her a chance.”
—Dr. Jane Goodall

“By virtue of the Creation and, still more, of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. On the contrary, everything is sacred.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“I am as conscious as anyone of the gravity of the present situation for [hu]mankind. . . . And yet some instinct, developed in contact with life’s long past, tells me that salvation for us lies in the direction of the very danger the so terrifies us. . . . We are like travelers caught up in a current, trying to make our way back: an impossible and a fatal course. Salvation for us lies ahead, beyond the rapids. We must not turn back—we need a strong hand on the tiller, and a good compass.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Fragments and Anxieties

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

So many random dream images from last night. They’re fragmented, but they all seem connected somehow.

Josiah and I buy sandwiches in some sort of sunny outdoor courtyard. People are setting up for some sort of event, so we put together a couple of chairs and sit down. One of the custodians from school makes a chair for himself and eats with us.

Jon and I are in a classroom. I think we’re back in elementary school. We’re ahead of the class, so we get to sit near the back and read the next material on our own. The class is finished with the work, but the teacher can’t find the test. I have little plastic animals set up all around my desk and on the windowsill behind me. I’m a little claustrophobic in the space, worried I’ll send my little animals tumbling if I move.

I’m in a Victorian sort of house with two other young women. It’s the next class (after the one in the previous paragraph), and we’re reading a Shakespeare play together. The one woman gets bored and wanders off. I am helping the other to read the parts. It sounds more like Jane Austen than Shakespeare. The other woman tires out, but we’ve been reading for half an hour, so we quit.

I am frantically calling people and trying to find out where my baby is. Someone took him and said they’d bring him right back, but I can’t get in touch with anyone.

I’m on a sort of courtroom, and the proceedings have been going on for hours. I’m bored. Suddenly I notice that the one lawyer is terribly sick. His eyes are red and puffy and he’s sneezing. No one else seems to notice, but I am frantic about finding my mask and putting it on. I move to a corner of the room near a window.

I find a telephone and try to remember how to dial my parents’ number to tell them about the missing baby. This never goes well in dreams, but this time when I pick up the old-fashioned receiver, my mother is right there, on the other end of the line! I think that perhaps everything is going to be okay.

I decide to rid my bike through the countryside to get home to my parents. This is common in dreams for me. I get to a place that is familiar to my dream-self, except that the corn has grown up on all the corners. Someone has placed blankets on the corn all around, as if they needed somewhere to hang a thousand blankets to dry. The road to the right should be the right way to go, but it seems to curve up ahead in a way that it isn’t supposed to. I ride several yards up toward the curve, but it actually turns back upon itself in a loop and ends up heading back the way I have come. Someone has planted their corn across the road! Just as I decide to ride back the way I have come, I wake up.

The odd thing in the waking up was that I thought I was hearing people speaking, so faintly it could have been my imagination (which it probably was). I thought maybe one of the kids was up really early, listening to a video somewhere in the house. But there’s no sign of anyone. Maybe it was the heat coming on that sounded in my dreambrain like people talking.

This set has a lot of little anxieties: the lost child, the inability to get to my parents, the unprepared teacher, the claustrophobia, the coronavirus, the confusing pathway home. So many of these are my dream-tropes for lostness and confusion. In each one, I am just going along, trying to muddle through each scene the best I can, which is what Jon and I are doing here, trying to make the best of this strange year. This will be a lovely introverts’ holiday, all of us together here, but we also need our people, and we can’t quite see how the road ahead will lead us to them. It seems to be recursive, bending back upon itself.

If there’s a message here, it’s to tend to my anxieties, to notice how the worry affects my choices.

Gratitude:
1. The messages of dreams
2. Quiet holidays
3. Loving hearts, even at a distance
4. There will be an end to this
5. All the people who are working to keep us safe, and to bring an end to this.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

Someday soon, we all will be together, if the Fates allow. . .”

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. . . .get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” —Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

“From the halls of power to the fortress tower,
not a stone will be left on stone.
Let the king beware for your justice tears
every tyrant from his throne.
The hungry poor shall weep no more,
for the food they can never earn;
These are tables spread, ev’ry mouth be fed,
for the world is about to turn.
My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears,
For the dawn draws near,
And the world is about to turn.”
—Rory Cooney, from “Canticle of the Turning”

Making the House Ready for the Lord
by Mary Oliver
Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice–it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances–but it is the season
when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.

“I am a hole in a flute
that the Christ’s breath moves through
listen to this music
I am the concert from the mouth of every creature
singing with the myriad chorus” —Hafiz (Ladinsky)

“May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful.” ―Mary Oliver

“We’re all just walking each other home.” —Ram Dass

“I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple—or a green field—a place to enter, and in which to feel.” ―Mary Oliver

Deep Sleep and Fleeting Dreams

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Last night’s sleep was deep and dreams were fleeting.

Gratitudes:
1. Deep sleep
2. Yesterday I saw a bald eagle, right here at the house
3. Baking
4. I’ll see my parents today, if fleetingly
5. All of you, candles and stars, lights twinkling in your own particular constellations, bringing the light.

May we walk in Beauty!

Christmas Eve Ponderings:
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
—Omar Khayyám

“In our heart and soul we are each like Mary, holding the possibility for a birth that can change the world.” —Llewellyn Vaughan Lee, Quote from A Prayer at the Winter Solstice (2012)

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
but let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune but do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.
—Max Ehrmann 1927

Merry Misty Solstice

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I do not need to see the sun to know that it is there. The morning rose in fog and mist, everything cloaked and veiled, emergent, in the swirling ensorcelling mist. No matter the dusky veil of the day, today is the first day of Sunreturn, and we celebrate once again the walk through the labyrinth, the beginning of the journey outward into light.

What dreams (both night messages and day visions) lead you forward into the light of the coming year? What stories are you part of, and how will you play your part?

Josiah and I are reading Bruce Coville’s Magic Shop series together right now, and we’re in the middle of Juliet Dove, Queen of Love. As she accidentally steps across a particular threshold, crosses a line into the mists of magic, Juliet’s companions tell her there is no going back when you have stepped into a story. The only way out is the way through.

What is your way through the story in which you find yourself? How will you prepare yourself for the encounters with messengers and guardians and fellow travelers?

Blessed Solstice to you, Beloveds.

Gratitudes:
1. Sunreturn
2. Walking the labyrinth. Although we journey alone, each following our own twists and turnings, it is a comfort and a joy to know we walk together in our knowing.
3. The magic of fog and mist
4. Cookies
5. Oyster stew: I think I need to stop and get some oysters on my way home this afternoon–I have a craving

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“No matter what they ever do to us, we must always act for the love of our people and the earth. We must not react out of hatred against those who have no sense.”
―John Trudell
*****
May you grow still enough to hear the small noises earth makes in preparing for the long sleep of winter, so that you yourself may grow calm and grounded deep within. May you grow still enough to hear the trickling of water seeping into the ground, so that your soul may be softened and healed, and guided in its flow. May you grow still enough to hear the splintering of starlight in the winter sky and the roar at earth’s fiery core. May you grow still enough to hear the stir of a single snowflake in the air, so that your inner silence may turn into hushed expectation.
―Brother David Steindl-Rast
*****
“When someone mentions the gracefulness of the night sky, climb up on the roof and dance.”
―Rumi
*****
“Be who you were created to be, and you will set the world on fire.” —St. Catherine of Sienna
*****
“How the Light Returns
Breathe deep the light-filled air.
Feel how the new sun touches you.
Remember the stars that circled you
through the long hours of darkness.
Sit within the circle of the dwindling dark
and feel the way it bathes you with memory.
Walk the bridge between dream and daylight.

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

Paxtang Boys and Proud Boys

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Today is a weighty day, a day with heft.

  • Here, in PA, we’ve got a wintry mix, clouding the sky and filling the air, adding a mood both festive and anxious.
  • Here in the US, we are rolling out a hopeful new vaccine for a viral pandemic that is currently killing more of us daily than the number killed on 9/11.
  • Here in the US, our Electoral College will cast their votes for a new president in an election more volatile than any since that of Abraham Lincoln.
  • Here in the US, many of us are still gasping in the wake of a seditious attempt by several states, the sitting president, and 126 elected House Republicans to destroy our democracy, an attempt thwarted by our judicial branch, in a display of the importance of multiple branches of government creating checks and balances on the abuse of power.
  • Here, on the planet, we gaze in awe at meteor showers and planets in conjunction, and a total solar eclipse visible from our southern hemisphere. Some of us are even now commemorating the stories and legends of sky-portents in the days of the coming of the Child of Light.
  • Here in PA (and in the US), we remember the murderous ride of the Paxtang Boys at dawn on this day in 1763, when they massacred six of the last remaining Susquehannock people in cold blood.
  • Over the weekend, we watched their heirs and legacies–Proud Boys and others–bellowing in the streets of our capital, attacking historically Black churches and desecrating Black Lives Matter flags. Will we stand up to them, this time?

Here is something I wrote last year about the Paxtang Boys’ ride and the ways in which we have loosed them again upon the innocent. Today, when the Proud Boys are marching, it feels more grimly apt than ever. At the end, I’ve included a poem I wrote after visiting the site of the massacre on this day in 2013:

On this day in the walk through the December labyrinth, I mark the death of six people in a small village fifteen miles from here on the other side of the river. On December 14, in 1763, a group of angry white men from the Paxtang area of Harrisburg saddled their horses in the darkness and rode to Conestoga, to a small village a couple miles from the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County, where they burned the houses of the few remaining members of the Conestoga group of the Susquehannock people, and brutally murdered the six people they found there.

Fourteen residents of the village were away at the time, and escaped to Lancaster City, where they requested protection. Officials placed them in the county workhouse/jail on Water Street in the City for their protection. Two weeks later, just after Christmas, on December 27, the murderers broke into the jail and massacred everyone, men and women, elders and children.

The Paxtang Boys, as they were called, gathered reinforcements over the following days, and rode to Philadelphia, intent on murdering Native people taking refuge there. Only the forceful eloquence of Benjamin Franklin, who confronted them outside the city, kept them from continuing their murderous rampage. As far as I know, none of the men ever had to face justice for their murders. And in my research, I have found no account of anyone who tried to protect the villagers, either in their village or in Lancaster’s jail. Other than the cold comfort of locking them inside a jail cell (which proved in the end no protection at all), no one was able to offer the last remaining members of the Conestogas safe harbor.

One of my deep shadows this December is a fear of how we have let the Paxtang Boys out to ride again: white people’s rage, racism, privilege, a sense of entitlement to power and economic security, greed and grasping, fiercely protective anti-otherness. I need to keep probing this shadow, exposing my fear of today’s Paxtang Riders, so that I can be ready to stand against them, to stand between them and the vulnerable people they are intent to destroy.

Today, so many who have been seeking safe harbor within the borders of my country have been denied that safety, have been turned away to wait in squalid camps where they are in danger of looting and rape and kidnapping and murder, have been separated from their parents/children by my government and thrown into cold cells, have been forced to hide for fear of deportation. I cannot escape the irony of the modern-day name of the road where the stone marker memorializes the Paxtang Boys’ massacre of local indigenous people: Safe Harbor Road.

How shall we prepare ourselves to be Safe Harbor in days when the Paxtang Boys are riding again?

Here is a poem I wrote in 2013, after I visited the site of the stone marker at the place where the massacre occurred, at the corner of Safe Harbor and Indian Marker Roads. The names of the six who died on this day are in the poem.

Come with me now, Bright Souls
and we’ll sit in a circle together
silently a while. Then we talk.

Light six candles
for the people of the longhouse
who died that wintry dawning.

The air is filled already
with too many words.
The day carries so many mutterings
on the wind, on the wings
of the vulture, drifting
above the broken fields.

Sheehays, Wa-a-shen,
Tee-kau-ley, Ess-canesh,
Tea-wonsha-i-ong,
Kannenquas.

If we are to keep awake,
to live in the place
where the heart stays open,
then perhaps we must look
into the teeth of the story.
Together we gaze at those shadows.
Together we speak their names.
Together we listen for the sparrow’s call.

At the place of the great stone
I did not speak their names.
I left my shell there at that place
in the glittering sun.

Some days I cannot bear the darkness,
but I will close my eyes and sing
while you keep vigil near me.
And when you falter, too,
I will have found the strength renewed
to witness the tale while you sing to me.

Perhaps you will not believe me
when I tell you: As I drove
that road toward the River,
six deer ran across blue shadows
cast by afternoon sun on snow,
over the fields to the road.
They paused a moment to watch
the golden fish of my car approach,
then slipped across Indian Marker Road
and were gone, past the still pond
and into a fringe of wood.

Shouldn’t Be Surprised

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Why am I surprised? Why am I always surprised?

After four years of watching people I thought were philosophically and spiritually interested in wisdom and truth and justice cast off their moral and ethical clothing, shed their philosophical and ideological grounding, I shouldn’t be shocked at the callousness and cruelty, the active denialism and cult-like disengagement with humanity. But I am. I expected people to be better, and I keep holding out hope that the cruelty and denialism have just been glitches.

But I don’t think so.

People who railed against the “holocaust” of children represented by the seed of life in a zygote have been shrugging their shoulders when born children are torn from their parents’ arms and locked in cages–ill-fed, cold, untended, subject to sexual abuse.

People who spoke fervently and passionately about a fertilized egg’s right to life are actively fighting against programs which offer health care and living wages to the families of born children.

People who called themselves pro-life, who dogmatically claimed to stand for the tiniest little possibility of living humanity in a fetus, saying, “It’s only old people who are dying.” Refusing to wear a mask because it somehow infringes on their rights, when wearing that mask could be the difference between life and death for someone they expose.

People who seemed like educated, thoughtful adults absolutely denying the science and the demographics and the numbers of a disease that is killing thousands of people every day, actively passing on the outright lies.

People who talked about a gospel of “Good News” for all the world, ignoring the suffering of a world in the grip of a global pandemic. Laughing at people who take it seriously, scoffing at mitigation efforts, actively encouraging others to behave in dangerous and irresponsible ways.

I have known that there were nominal Christians who fought for power and wealth and white supremacy instead of Goodness and Love and Peace. That’s nothing new. And there are plenty of Christians who are acting like they care about Jesus, who are standing for justice and caring about life. I guess I just thought there would be more who, when confronted with real life-or-death situations–with a global pandemic, with a profane president, with a world of suffering–would actually decide to walk humbly with Jesus, to do justice, and to love mercy.

“The Dwarfs Are for the Dwarfs”

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

Re-reading Lewis’s Narnia series is a struggle for me today. There are thealogical implications and structures that make me cringe, and racist and xenophobic stereotypes that offend me deeply. Still, often when I am trying to sift meaning out of events and experience, Lewis’s analogies appear into my consciousness to help me make narrative sense of what seems to be senseless. I know I have used this analogy before, have written about the bone-headed refusal of the dwarfs in The Last Battle to See the new reality, to engage with the truth of what was right in front of their faces, because they simply could not accept the truth that their eyes presented to them, but so often these days, I see similar intellectual acrobats who are unable to make sense of the reality they face because they cannot find their way out of the reality they have created for themselves.

In The Last Battle, at the moment of the very end of the world, everyone enters the door of the shack, expecting to see Aslan or his opposite (serious thealogical cringe). When the dwarfs enter, all they see is the dark interior of the shack. With the sounds of thousands rushing past them into eternity, the dwarfs sit down in a circle and talk amongst themselves about how deluded everyone else is, how everyone else has allowed their imaginations to run away with them. Griffle and his friends cannot see the reality that is in front of their faces because they have created a reality that they refuse to interrogate, and so they are stuck in the shack.

All along the way, the dwarfs, clannish and tribal, can only see the interests of themselves and those like them. Lewis gives them more range than he does his specifically evil characters. You’re allowed to like them, to wish–along with the children and Prince Tirian–that they would let themselves See beyond the structures of reality that they have created. But in the end, they’re imprisoned–as Aslan points out–by their own false reality.

I keep thinking of the dwarfs these days as I read bits and pieces of the rants from people who believe this virus is a hoax meant to line the pockets of Bill Gates and his cronies. They’ll give you web sites and articles and Youtube videos that explain how the virus is really not a thing, how it’s played up by Big Pharma because: insert merger here, only old and weak people are dying [really, I am still hearing this], Bill Gates, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. . . They write whole essays in the social media threads. They sound like college professors. Or the Unibomber. Or evangelists. They’re the mansplainer of mansplainers, although some of them are women. They will explain to you in great detail how none of this is happening, how some nebulous cabal has created this whole thing in order to rule the world [cue super-villain laughter]. They’re not going to be fooled again, they tell you.

“You must think we’re blooming soft in the head, that you must,” said Griffle. “We’ve been taken in once and now you expect us to be taken in again the next minute.”

(The Last Battle)

Instead of the shaggy golden face of Aslan, however, the image we behold in the space we have entered today is a life-threatening virus, and it’s overwhelming hospitals and taking lives at an increasingly rapid pace. And for some unfathomable reason the maskless masses continue to sit in their circle saying, “The dwarfs are for the dwarfs,” refusing to see the danger that is right in front of their faces. I too have little faith that the pharmaceutical companies have more interest in public health than in their own wealth and power. I don’t believe that corporations are capable of basic altruism. Still, the global goal at this point is to eradicate this virus to the greatest extent possible, and public health requires a vaccine, requires mitigation efforts. Please don’t sit in the circle with Griffle and Diggle and their friends, denying the reality of what is around you.

Gratitudes:
1. Belonging: This is something I wrote in previous years, but still rings true today–
“I don’t always feel like I belong, or like I understand the unwritten rules of certain groups, even though I think I am a pretty good observer of human nature. So when I am in a group whose rules accept everyone’s awkwardness and oddness unconditionally, which loves each one not in spite of our oddities, but because of them, then I feel safe. Then I feel belonging. I am especially grateful to those of you who know how to extend unconditional welcome in ways that make everyone believe they belong.”
2. Birdwatching at our little feeder station. There’s a whole family of red-bellied woodpeckers, along with the newly-arrived flock of juncos, titmouses (titmice?) and nuthatches, chickadees, goldfinches, sparrows, doves, downies, cardinals, a blue jay, and several fat squirrels.
3. How physically cleaning a space seems to create inner space. I need the creative jumble of clutter, but putting it neatly away also makes creative spaces.
4. My mother’s old Singer sewing machine. I have been putting it to great use lately, making what my friend Kris calls Frankendresses–I love that term.
5. This web of loving hearts. Thanks for being part of it all. Cast a line to someone today. Let’s make a glorious net, a new thing, a hopeful future.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“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

“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