Musings

Courage and Generosity

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude of Resistance Twenty-Two: 
The giving hearts of Lancaster people. This is my favorite thing about the Thanksgiving season in this place: The ExtraOrdinary Give. It’s true, we can be pretty divided about many things, but the Lancaster Community Foundation brings us together on the Friday before Thanksgiving for a massive celebration of giving. Nearly five hundred organizations signed up this year, and people from all over the county (and beyond–I’m a Yorker, after all) donate whatever they can afford to these hard-working organizations. This year Lancaster raised 10 million dollars from 23, 545 donors. What an amazing community-building experience. I am proud of my community. And grateful. So, so grateful.

May we all be generous.

I’m doing the Poem-A-Day Chapbook challenge again this year, but on the advice of a friend, I have not been publishing the poems on social media, except as comments on the Poetic Asides site–in the hopes of making the more marketable. This is one I likely will not try to publish because it’s so tied to the Harper Lee quotation, but I like it. Yesterday we read chapter 11 in To Kill a Mockingbird (which is about courage), and Brewer’s poetry prompt was to write a brave poem. It felt like a lovely bit of serendipity.

“Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It’s knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” —Atticus Finch

Courage is
not a gun
not a word
that slices skin
not a look
that tears up
a soul
but a way to begin.

Two Today

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Gratitude of Resistance:
A couple different ones today.
1. Yesterday’s chapel, led by Latinx students. Students from the Dominican, from Puerto Rico, from Colombia, from Guatemala, and from Honduras stood up and spoke about culture and foods and people from their countries. On Wednesday, they had asked students from around campus to write their stories of experiencing discrimination based on their race. In chapel, students stood up and read these stories, as though they were coming from their own voices. It was really powerful.
2. Getting home. Yesterday afternoon was really trying for me. School was let out just before noon for the snow, and the drive home on the highway was a white knuckle experience. We couldn’t make it up Cool Creek Road. But there were beautiful moments in the story. We took refuge for an hour or so in the home of friends who live at the bottom of the ridge. Rochelle gave me coffee in a mug that says: “I love you. That’s all.” Our sons did computer whiz-kid stuff together in their den, and their sweet puppy Ophelia washed my face with kisses and snuggled on my lap. It was a moment of serene and utter safety in the midst of an anxious trip. It gave me courage to get out and try again. We made about 8-10 attempts on the hill until a plow finally came through at 4:30 and we made it up to the top. It was such a relief to get home and snuggle with cats and sit in the living room with the whole family.

Step by Step

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Gratitude as Resistance Nineteen:
It only has to be one step at a time. When I look at the map, and the journey just seems so long, and I know that I can’t go all that distance, I need to remember to look down at my feet and just walk it one step at a time. Bit by bit. Piece by piece. Bright leaf by bright leaf. Morning by morning. Challenge by challenge.

May we walk in Beauty!

Sweaters and Socks

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Gratitude of Resistance Eighteen:
Carpets of colorful leaves. After the weekend’s wind and rain, some some trees are encircled by red and gold and orange carpets of leaves, and they shine so in the rain.

May we walk in Beauty!

Young People

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Gratitude of Resistance Seventeen:
Young adults. My niblings (the children of my siblings), my former students, a whole cadre of young people who are the children of my friends whom I have come to know and appreciate as friends of my own. I am grateful for the earnestness, the twisting humor, the open-eyed awareness, the focus on the work of their creative lives, the care for Earth and her people.

May we walk in Beauty!

Keep Your Beloveds Close

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Gratitude of Resistance Sixteen:
Reweaving the threads of friendship and memory with my Beloveds. We need to keep our Beloveds close in these times, and what can fight the tides of hate and intolerance and despair more effectively than eye contact across a table, sharing food, creating ideas and dreams together? Make each moment with those you love and trust a moment of prayer in action, a grand magic spell, a wishing bird of hope–that all may come and go in peace, that no one shall be forced away from the table, that a better way of living together in this world will be possible.

May we walk in Beauty!

Exchanges

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Gratitude of Resistance Fifteen:
Exchanges. I forget if I have written about this in my Resistance Gratitudes,  but it bears repeating: School Foreign Exchange programs. They’re an incredible growing experience for students who go abroad, for the students who receive them, and for the teachers who experience students from around the world in their classrooms, and the chance to experience a collegial relationship with teachers from other countries. My school, Lancaster Mennonite, has students who come to us for three or four years from other countries, like Korea, Ethiopia, China, Japan, Ghana, and elsewhere, and just this past month, we hosted two short-term visiting groups–from Germany and France. These groups come with teachers, who teach their students a few lessons a day, and then visit our classes to observe how we do education in the US. I always look forward to having these visitors in in my classroom.  Both groups left us yesterday, and Monday is going to feel a little empty.

May we walk in Beauty!

Invented Magic

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Gratitude of Resistance Fourteen:
The CryptoNaturalist–an account I follow on social media accounts. His name is Jarod K. Anderson, and he has a podcast (I don’t find time to listen to podcasts, but if you do, I think you might want to check him out). Short, wise, pithy epigrammatic notes about the humans occupy in the context of the universe. Here’s a recent example: “We are so quick to invent magic. To purchase magic. To bruise our fingers trying to squeeze magic from concrete and asphalt. What pale imitations we find compared to the poignant wonders we discover when we simply ask questions of our living world and bother to learn the answers.‬”

May we walk in Beauty!

Caught in the Brambles

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Gratitude of Resistance Thirteen:
You know that feeling when you’ve been following a bright path in the forest, working your way from twinkling mushroom to red flower, and suddenly you find yourself completely lost and caught hopelessly in the brambles? You’re scratched and bleeding and entangled and far from home and you can hear the wolves closing in, and something moving around in the leaves nearby.

Then suddenly an army of mice and little birds appears. The mice carefully chew their way through the brambles that hold you and the birds bring you bright berries, and suddenly you’re free. There might still be wolves around, and you’re still scratched and bleeding, but you’re free now, and you know you’re not alone.

That was me yesterday, and all the wonderful people who reminded me that all is not lost, that much has been gained in the movement toward more kindness, more decency, more justice. And some of those berries are so bright and sweet: 100 Women Elected to Congress. That will have to become a poem, I think.

To top off the recovery, yesterday was a five-hawk day: a red-shouldered, three red-tails, and a mottled juvenile something-or-other.

Election Angst

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Gratitude of Resistance Twelve:
I’m a little discouraged this morning. Post-election angst is a real thing for me since 2016. All those people made an absolutely herculean effort to elect Jess King. She and they showed us a different way to be in this climate, and I wanted so much for her to win. Despite, or maybe because of, her opponent’s negativity and racist pandering to people’s worst fears about immigrants, he won the seat. I am grateful for her run, for the hope of a new way of doing politics that she offered.

It feels like a back door into gratitude this morning. I am deeply grateful for the thoughtfulness and civility and genuine concern for humanity shown by Jess and her crew of dogged volunteers. Grateful for all the people outside the Old Boys’ Club who were elected in this cycle. May it continue to be so.