Musings

Despise Not Small Things

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment


The theme of my cousin Ken’s words at Uncle Harold’s funeral last night. Uncle Harold loved the small, the miniature, the tiny. His delight in tiny things led the rest of us toward wonder as well. He offered us a great example of the power of giving great attention to his craft, and to small acts of kindness and love.  

“Live in the center of your life.” ―Sark
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“Cluster together like stars.” ―Henry Miller
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“Now that you’ve awakened. . .immediately take a nap! Naps are when the angels come out to take special care of you.” ―Sark (I think naps help to cement and deepen the insights we have in waking life.)
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“We live by mystery, not by explanations.” —Cecil Collins
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“Every child of ours needs to learn the simple truth: She is the energy of the Sun. And we adults should organize things so her face shines with the same radiant joy.” ―Rob Brezsny
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“In mythos and fairy tales, deities and other great spirits test the hearts of humans by showing up in various forms that disguise their divinity. They show up in robes, rags, silver sashes, or with muddy feet. They show up with skin dark as old wood, or in scales made of rose petal, as a frail child, as a lime-yellow old woman, as a man who cannot speak, or as an animal who can. The great powers are testing to see if humans have yet learned to recognize the greatness of soul in all its varying forms.” ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés
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“A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except to be able to grow in rows” ― Doug Larson

Yesterday, after I wrote about the Shameshadow, I began to think about the indicators and symptoms of unacknowledged shame, signposts I can see much more clearly when I look backwards than when I walk among them.

1. Pacifiers: For me, this has been Facebook, or reading, or any odd task that took me out of my inner space–usually Facebook surfing. Whenever I have a free moment, instead of settling into myself, I find myself gravitating to the computer. “I just want to check this one thing.” Anything so I don’t have to be alone inside my own head. Seeking outside comfort first, and avoiding discomfort at all costs. This sounds to me like the definition of an addiction.
2. Affirmations: Affirmation begins to mean more than it should. You know what I mean? I think that it’s important to spread the love around, to affirm each other, to tell each other the positive things we see. When I begin to ignore my shadows, I find myself seeking affirmation, basking in any little tidbit. Like the pacifiers, affirmation in this case leaves me feeling a little hollow, wanting more, rather than resting in the beauty of the connection between myself and the other person.
3. Excuses: The underbelly of the affirmation-crutch is the excuse-machine. When I am avoiding looking into myself and my shadows, instead of developing a healthy awareness of my human limitations, I make excuses for my shame.
4. Reading instead of doing: I am an English teacher, and far be it from me to suggest that reading is a bad thing. Still, there are times when I find that I am reading about inner work rather than doing inner work, and calling that sufficient. Don’t get me wrong: Reading often leads me into inner work, gives me the inspiration and ideas to move more deeply inward. But when I am avoiding myself, I find that I can use the reading about inner work as an avoidance of actually doing it, taking an intellectual path rather than that little trail that leads to the heart.
5. Chronic Feelings of Embarrassment: I call this Alfred Prufrocking. Like T. S. Eliot’s character, I find myself asking, “Do I dare? What will people think?” Poor Alfred. He didn’t even know how he ought to part his hair in order to please people. He didn’t dare to eat a peach. What a fearful and tremulous way to live. Embarrassment tames and domesticates us. It kills our essential wildness.

I remain grateful for this current encounter with my shadows. Funny thing about the Shameshadow is that I feel sort of ashamed for experiencing shame, like I should somehow be more evolved than that. Ha. I’m walking around in a big old circle there.

Gratitude List:
1. Bree Newsome. Remember her? She climbed the flagpole to take down the offensive flag. When she was arrested, she calmly recited ancient biblical poetry. She looked positively joyful. Her act woke people up. Be like Bree.
2. Kettle of vultures above Columbia. Usually the Columbia vulture club has about seven or eight members. Yesterday, I drove underneath a kettle that must have contained at least fifty birds. Vultures symbolize the dying of old patterns, old ideas, old habits, old chains, and the transformation of all that is dead into new energy, new life, new flight.
3. Family time, and remembering a good, good man. We met to say farewell to a beloved uncle last night. I will miss his gentle smile, his good humor, and his accordion music. I remember at least two family reunions that I left with a voice hoarse from singing along.
4. Establishing new rhythms and patterns. Now I really fully enter summer. May it be fruitful and fun.
5. The way paying attention leads to seeing new things. I have been doing zentangles again as a way to focus my brain, slow me down, and help me to be conscious of my breathing. Suddenly, I am seeing beautiful lines everywhere. That dull brown moth on the curtain actually has an intricate, delicate pattern of fine lines on her wings. Today I will be looking for elegant lines.

May we walk in Beauty!

Facing the Shameshadow

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

  

      

   

      

I am home again, after four days of silence at the Jesuit Center at Wernersville. I feel refreshed, reprogrammed, reset, re-energized, rejuvenated, renovated. I needed this one more than I realized. I wasn’t admitting to myself quite the extent of the bubble I had placed between me and the world. When you live with your heart on your sleeve, it can begin to feel like you’re immune to the numbing effects of addictions and sadnesses and avoidance of the inward pathways. I think I knew that I had been veering off, not walking deeply to center, not really wanting to see myself.

It’s a long and messy story, full of my own self-absorbed wanderings. It’s about the sudden weight gain, about Facebook as pacifier, about the news cycle. It’s name is Shame. I hate it when I have to go back and work through something I have already been through, but there it is. It took me two days of walking and making art and standing in doorways to finally step through and look that Shadowself in the face and name it: Shame. I have been living by shame, and refusing to call it by its name.

The Shameshadow had been lurking at my heels, a menacing old dog. I called it Anxiety. I called it Exhaustion. I called it by the name of our new president. But when I turned and called it by its true name–Shame–it bounded up to me and began to teach me. Those other names were simply things it fed on and symptoms. It was one of those Illuminating Moments, an Epiphany. I am under no illusions. I am sure it will probably begin to lurk and growl again someday, but then I must remember that it will have more to teach me.

I don’t like that that my Shadowself so often goes by the name of Shame. I want to exorcise it once and for all, not live with it crowding my heels. But this seems to be the way of it. It returns again and again to teach me. I am grateful for the messages.

After my moment of Epiphany, I walked out to the labyrinth. At every turning, I dropped a shamebundle. You don’t want to know these, do you? It’s things like the constantly messy/dirty house, sudden weight gain, use of FB to numb anxiety, not paying enough attention to the boys, being too hard on the boys, not being the perfect teacher, not getting my grading done in a timely fashion–that gives you the picture. Some of them, I picked up again on the way out of the labyrinth, not as shame, but as ideas for satisfying my heart.

And yes, I have spoken to the Shameshadow time and again in my life. It can feel like I’ve slid back down the longest slide in the game of Chutes and Ladders, but I find the spiral a much more helpful metaphor. I have been here before, on a previous cycle, but I am spiraling onward. I am not  where I once was, just at a further loop on the spiral.

May we all find the courage to turn and call our Shadowdogs by name, and wait quietly to learn what they have to teach us.

One more thing about the monastery. My friend Ruth Ann and I decided to take our silent retreat at the same time this year. We spoke together about our intentions and hopes before we sank into silence, and then we surfaced into a quiet reflective conversation at the end. In between, we left books in the hallway outside each other’s doors. Having a silent witness and being a silent witness was a powerful experience. It was a deep and powerful level of Companionship that mirrored and enhanced the work with the inner Companionself.

Jan Richardson:
did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
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“I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.” —William Stafford
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“There are years that ask the question and years that answer.” —Zora Neale Hurston
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“Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.” —Hafiz
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Sign on a stone at the monastery: “I am now.”
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“One puts down the first line. . .in trust that life and language are abundant enough to complete it.” —Wendell Berry
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“Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee.” —Job 12:8
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“Sometimes the truth depends on a walk around the lake.” —Wallace Stevens
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“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.” —Emily Dickinson
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“The contemplative stance is the third way. We stand in the middle, neither taking the world on from another power position nor denying it for fear of the pain it will bring. We hold the dark side of reality and the pain of the world until it transforms us, knowing that we are both complicit in the evil and can participate in wholeness and holiness.” —Richard Rohr
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“Always we begin again.” —St. Benedict
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Thomas Merton: “There are only three stages to this work: to be a beginner, to be more of a beginner, and to be only a beginner.”
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“If the Angel deigns to come it will be because you have convinced her, not by tears, but by your humble resolve to be always beginning; to be a beginner.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
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“When you have stood at the edge of the pool
and concentrated your will upon it,
a moment will arrive to ask you the question,
“What do you see?” and you will not know
whether you are gazing at the surface
or into the depths, or into the very woods itself.
All will be one, and it will be into your own soul
that you are gazing.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
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“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” —Rumi
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“Ask much,” the voice suggested, and I startled.
Feeling my body like the trembling body of a horse
tied to its tree while the strange noise
passes over its ears.
I who in extremity had always wanted less,
even of eating, of sleeping.
Agile, the voice did not speak again, but waited.
“Want more” –
a cure for longing I had not thought of.
But that is how it is with wells.
Whatever is taken refills to the steady level.
The voice agreed, though softly, to quiet the feet of the horse:
“A cup taken out, a cup reappears; a bucketful taken, a bucket.”
—Jane Hirshfield

Gratitude List:
1. What the Shameshadow will teach me if I will listen
2. Clearing
3. Doorways
4. Beech Cathedral and Labyrinth
5. The Art Room at the Jesuit Center
6. Cloister walks–there is something deeply TRUE about archways. Something in my spirit recognizes the deep significance of archways, even if I cannot find the words to explain.
7. Being home again. Establishing the summer rhythms.

May we walk in Beauty! With sunshine sparkling all around.

#mylittlething

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment


I am bringing Wangari Maathai into the circle at Sense of Wonder Camp for Girls today. It’s been a real pleasure studying her again, relearning her story, finding new things, reading new quotes. I am really struck this time by her deep understanding of systems and the way systems work together. She really was a woman ahead of her time.

“It’s the little things citizens do that will make a difference. My little thing is planting
trees.”  ―Wangari Maathai

#mylittlething is believing in you.
What’s your little thing?

“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”
― Joseph Campbell
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“We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!” ―Wangari Maathai
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“Every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times. But all of them picked themselves up and kept going, and that is what I have always tried to do.” ―Wangari Maathai
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“It is the people who must save the environment. It is the people who must make their leaders change. And we cannot be intimidated. So we must stand up for what we believe in.”
―Wangari Maathai
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“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.
…To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle.
Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace.
Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.”
—Terry Tempest Williams
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“The extremists are afraid of books and pens, the power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women.”
― Malala Yousafzai
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“Hey, even Santa Claus believes in you.” –Floyd and Janice, The Electric Mayhem
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“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.” ―Edgar Allen Poe
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“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” –Mark Twain
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“It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility. ”
― Rachel Carson
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“…drink in the beauty and wonder at the meaning of what you see.”
― Rachel Carson

Gratitude List:
1. Bull Thistles. I know that farmers hate them, but goldfinches love them, and I have seen them EVERYWHERE this year–on roadsides, down highway medians. And always, like a beautiful cliche, goldfinches.
2. That cute little chipmunk who sat up on his haunches and looked at me as I was on my way to the dentist yesterday.
3. Hag’s tapers. Midsummer Day, right on cue, the mullein bloomed yellow all over the roadsides.
4. My dental hygienist. She has been cleaning my teeth for decades. She’s excellent at what she does, not only at cleaning my teeth, but at teaching me how to keep my teeth clean myself. She’s an educator. We’re very different people politically and spiritually, and I always feel like I have to sort of brace myself a little for some of the conversation, but she’s sort of become a friend, and I am always really glad when she’s the one who cleans my teeth.
5. Sense of Wonder Camp for Girls. I am eager to go be the storyteller this morning!

May we walk in Beauty!

Hugs

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

My little old man cat has got me thinking about hugs. He doesn’t like to just sit quietly on my lap. He has to have his paws on my shoulder, like a cat hug. I think he finds comfort and ease in the heart-to-heart contact. And it strikes me that that’s part of the healing power of a hug: For just a moment, your heart and my heart are together, right next to each other. Offering a hug is offering your heart. We help each other to regulate our breathing and our heart-rhythms when we hug each other.

Gratitude List:
1. Watching that moon rise. Last night, we went down to Hellam to watch the moon rise. A bubble of flame breaking free. No matter how many times I watch, I am always sort of stunned by how quickly it rises, how we can see it moving. It sets my heart a flutter. We also saw the space station.
2. Planting herbs. I am expanding my mint bed to include other herbs. The wild St. John’s Wort that I planted last year is flourishing. Today I planted thyme and oregano and rosemary. I need some white sage yet.
3. Cycles of work and rest
4. The lure of words. I am restless, picking up my journals and printed poems, shuffling and browsing. I am ready to edit and reconfigure, ready to settle into a writing rhythm for the summer.
5. This boy bought himself a pair of water shoes today with pink insets. “That’s okay with you, the pink?” I asked, casually, just to be sure that I wasn’t investing my money in something he wouldn’t actually wear. He shrugged: “They’re water shoes.” Righto.

May we walk in Beauty!

Blue and a Moon

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Quote for the day:
“The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.”
― Arundhati Roy

This was the pain of Cassandra. Seeing the destruction that approached her beloved city, she took the accountability upon herself–to shout it in the streets that the city would fall in blood and flame. But no one believed her. No one listened.

This time last year, I remember a Cassandran murmur beginning to spread: “But he couldn’t really be elected, could he?” And the firm and reasoned answer was always, “Certainly not. Never. Don’t worry about it.”

Today, I thought that perhaps the people of the city might begin to listen. Perhaps there is yet time for Cassandra’s message to be heard, before this “city” falls.

Gratitude List:
1. Color of the day: BLUUUUUE. A Blue Grosbeak alit for a moment on the bird feeder pole.
2. Breathtaking moment of the day: Down over the ridge from Yorkana on the way to the library as the afternoon sun was lowering and the whole valley sparkled with the sun.
3. Sign of the day: Someone in Yorkana has a Welcome Neighbors sign.
4. Flavor of the day: Mulberries with milk on Cottage Pudding.
5. Another breathtaking moment: The moon. On the way home from the library–the sun had set out of the hollow but not yet out of the rest of the world, and the full moon stood pale and watery on the ridge.

May we walk in Beauty!

Getting It Done

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“What? Love.

Who? Everyone.
When? Now.”
―Glennon Doyle Melton
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“No, Charles Wallace said. “I have to go on. We have to make decisions and we can’t make them if they’re based on fear.”
―Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
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“Live not for Battles Won.
Live not for The-End-of-the-Song.
Live in the along.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, Report from Part One
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“We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole…. ” ― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
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“Some people have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy.”
― Abraham H. Maslow
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“I don’t try to understand everything in nature. I just look at it. And enjoy it.” –Bob Ross

Gratitude List:
1. Snugglesome cat
2. Lots of tea
3. Stretching sore muscles
4. Reading, reading, reading
5. Planning ahead

May we walk in Beauty!

I Just Love that Kid

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I wonder if my students sometimes find themselves filled with a warm feeling out of nowhere, as if someone has just whispered, “I just love that kid,” and they can feel the vibe like a gentle breeze across their souls. I always feel a little frustrated with myself at the end of a semester when I still have a stack of grading to finish, and I wish I could have handed the papers directly to the students for the feedback; still, I also love to have these final moments of quiet, thoughtful contemplation of each one of them, bringing them back into my mind as I read their last words of the school season. Often, I catch myself whispering, “I just love that kid.”

Gratitude List:
1. My own schedule. Sleeping when I want. Working and taking breaks when I want.
2. Planning for next year. While I am doing this last bit of grading, I am thinking about how to make next year’s classes even better. How to define my assignments more clearly. How to ask more effective questions. How to get them interacting with each other more. How to elicit critical thinking. How to stimulate curiosity and creativity. How to challenge them without creating frustration.
3. Indigo bunting
4. Nettle/mint/dandelion/wild chamomile/catnip/plantain tonic. Good for what ails you.
5. Solitude

May we walk in Beauty!

Mulberries

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Another version of the moth.

Erf. I got kind of grouchy this evening, trying to give an extremely thick-haired kiddo a haircut. He was twitching his head all around, the mosquitoes were whirring all about our heads, younger brother kept dancing past mashing blueberries all over his own face and trying to get attention, the cat kept pawing at us and crying to be picked up, and it was getting dark. I really want to let my kids get messy and filthy, but I wasn’t very pleasant with the mulberry-faced youngster.

Gratitude List:
1. Mulberry-Picking with my boys. Delightful, though not perhaps the gently quiet experience you might be imagining:
“Hey! That’s MY branch!”
“Mom! He’s shaking mulberries onto my head!”
“Hey Dad! We’re picking mulberries!” (Dad’s about two full acres away.)
Addressed to a mulberry: “I am going to call you Daryl. Stay with me now, Daryl!”
“Daryl–this is your cousin Bob.” Etc., etc., etc.
2. Knowing we’ll have bags of frozen mulberries for smoothies.
3. Robin’s rain-song
4. Serious talks with the kids. I was paging through some Facebook pages while Ellis was looking over my shoulder. He wanted me to stop and look at the article about raising feminist boys with him. It led to some great discussions.
5. In some ways, tonight is actually the real beginning of summer vacation. While I do still have to clean my room and grade my papers, I don’t have to wake up tomorrow morning and go anywhere right away. I am on my own schedule now. No Sunday afternoon panic. The weight is lifted.  And, I have more energy right now than I remember having at this point in previous years. Even though this year’s grading was more stressful for me than ever, I still feel much more motivated to do the work I need to do.

May we walk in Beauty!

River Has Her Pathways

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River has her many pathways.

Dear Shining Girl,

You stand poised in the limbo of doorway, and the light nearly shines through you, prisming the water in your eyes.

The hallways have emptied, but for that cluster of your friends who can’t quite say goodbye.

And you, like a forest doe, still pause on the threshold, ready to bolt at hint of danger.

It has been a season of words, and I the purveyor, the pusher, the cataloguer, the demagogue of vocabulary.

But I have no words for this transparent glimmer of invisibility you wear, for the way this grief has caught you by the shoulders, the way your words suddenly lock themselves into that golden cage of your throat.

Your giddy group of comrades bounces down the hallway and you take a step out of the shadows. Their joy is a distorted mirror of your misery.

When you go from this woodland of words and the solace of chums, who will See you? Who will know who you are?

Take heart, Shining Girl. Let those words that have caught in your chest like a trapped bird beating against the windowpane–let them fill the hollow spaces until there is no more space to fill, and then they will burst forth, radiant as your name.

I will be listening for that moment.

The last day of school is so exciting for so many of us. For some, however, it is a return to uncomfortable places, long stretches of loneliness, days of not being Seen. I need to remember that not everyone is experiencing this riot of joy.

Gratitude List:
1. Dedication for the seniors this evening. Glorious group of young people, about to be unleashed upon the world. They’re a force to be reckoned with.
2. Last day. It’s a big relief for me.
3. Icarus oriole still sings from his treetops, often enough that in my short forays into the pollen-infested world, I can hear him sing.
4. Empanadas–somebody’s mother left us empanadas in the Faculty Lounge. Oy. My.
5. Lunch was Vietnamese food provided by our wonderful principals. Delicious, and a great chance to connect with colleagues before separating for the summer.

May we walk in Beauty!

What the Covfefe is Happening?

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It turns out it was a tulip moth and not a sweetbay moth–those are from further south. Apparently I had correctly identified last year’s visitor, but I’d forgotten.  I’m posting this filtered version to balance today’s rant with a little beauty.

We’ve all had a ton of fun today, laughing at the US president’s cryptic “covfefe” tweet. He’s even joined the joking with a more cogent message during daylight hours: “Who can figure out the true meaning of “covfefe” ??? Enjoy!”  I won’t repeat all the brilliant jokes. You can find them all over the internet, and they are most entertaining. My favorite is that “covfefe” is the Russian word for “resign.”

Still, something has been bothering me today. All the hilarity aside, the implications of the president’s incoherent tweet of last night unsettle me. Sure, accidentally posting a garbled and incoherent midnight social media post isn’t uncommon, and there’s no danger in leaving it up for the night when you get distracted and just want to get to sleep. It’s sort of adorably capricious, something a big old forgetful lummox might do, a forgivable distractability. Except that this is the president of the United States we’re talking about. The US president does not get to be adorably capricious, or forgetful, or distractible. He could have been drunk. He could have been high. He could have been having a stroke, or a psychotic break. A responsible White House staff would be prepared to mop up quickly to make sure that the world wasn’t looking in on the impaired or distractible ramblings of one of the most powerful people on the planet, unsure about whether anyone in the White House is actually holding the reins.

The president is off his covfefe. He’s gone completely around the covfefe. And his handlers and staff are so sloppily covfefe that they don’t even seem to care about the reputation of the office of president anymore.

Gratitude List:
1. This sweet moment in my day: I stepped out of the classroom today during Advisory Group to wash the ice cream scoop (umm, yes, there was ice cream), leaving my first years listening to a Minions video set to Pharrell Williams’s “Happy.” When I came back, the song was over, and a bunch of them were gathered around the Smart Board to choose the next video. I had a moment of feeling anxious at the idea of letting them choose the party music. Several of them started saying things like, “Yes! That one! It’s one of my favorites!” And they’d chosen: “Baba Yetu.” LMH Party Music: The Swahili Lord’s Prayer.
2. Today was the last day for seniors. So happy-sad. Many of them also seemed to get the sad part of that combination, and that made me sort of happy. Sigh. I’m going to miss them. This is a really good batch of young folks we’re sending forth this weekend.
3. A little solitude this evening. Everyone else went to the baseball game, but I am incapacitated by tree pollen, and so I stayed home. By myself. All alone. Such silence in my head, and all around me. Solitude is such a balm.
4. People who just jump in and do the right thing.
5. Afternoon sunlight, how it sparkles.

May we walk in Beauty!