In the dark season
daylight wanes and shadows grow
then sun shines on snow
Gratitude List:
1. Moon. Sigh, I didn’t see her show tonight, but still: Moon.
2. Story
3. Rest
4. This Cat
5. Winter
May we walk in Beauty!
Poems
Messages from Skunk
Blessed are the watchers, the sentinels, the keepers.
Blessed are the ones who pause and listen
for the quietest voices on the wind.
Blessed are the ones who let truth whisper
in the curling spirals of their ears,
who take it in and feel it in their marrow,
let it settle in their bellies, in the gut, the womb, the blood.
Blessed are the ones who sit with that bright coal
that grows and glows within them
as it reaches flaming fingers into every artery and vein.
I have been in conversation today with a friend on the subject of truth. While I love truth as an ideal, and I have worked on impeccability as a spiritual discipline, I have tended to be uncomfortable speaking of truth because of the way it has been used–particularly in religious circles–as a bludgeon. Too many times I have heard people speak of the One Truth: “I have a corner on the Truth, and unless you believe exactly as I do, you are believing lies and falsehoods and you are hopelessly lost.” Poor, poor Truth. She’s so misunderstood.
And lately she’s become such a commodity. When people in positions of power are slicing her up into tiny fragments, stitching her into their webs of falsehoods, and selling her to the lowest bidder, she’s lost all her sense of purpose in the world. It behooves people of integrity to take her in, harbor her, give her sanctuary. My friend suggested taking Truth inside, and observing your physiological response. How does she feel inside you? These times call for a new and wide-awake relationship with Truth. She’s an ally, not a weapon. She’s a teacher, not a dictator.
Gratitude List:
1) You know how I chose skunk (see February 3) as my symbol of nonviolent resistance? This morning as we were driving between corn-stubbly fields on the way to school, a great big skunker with ambled out of the thin line of woods and looked at us passing by. I love seeing skunks at any time, but today it felt like an affirmation.
2) Crows. I think we saw all 20,000 at once this afternoon. No kidding. They were swirling in the wind above a field like a little cyclone, sitting in all the trees along the highway, flying above us in the sunset. They also feel like a message.
3) All the migrators. Along with the crows, the sky was simply filled with all the wing-folk today. Flock of small birds layered behind the crow flocks, and behind and above them, skeins of geese.
4) That seahorse cloud. Golden-white against the pinking sky. Like an embossment. Far away, it kept its shape longer than other whimsy-clouds tend to, almost the whole way home from school.
5) Vision. Sight. Seeing.
May we walk in Beauty!
Making Connections
You know that feeling when someone you love is probably dying?
And you feel like you should know exactly what to do, exactly what to say,
but you’re paralyzed by the shock, and really,
isn’t that what the doctors are for?
Shouldn’t they know what to do,
how to keep your loved one alive?
But still, you can’t quite sleep at night
for that nagging feeling in the pit of your gut
that tells you you should be doing something,
you should be making it stop,
should at least be saying something apt,
something to keep the demons at bay.
And so what do you do when you see it,
when you see your democracy dying?
You’ve been watching, all the signs,
every one, just like the predictions.
It’s a cancer, this.
And it’s progressing rapidly.
And what do you do?
Aren’t there lawyers, politicians,
noble powerful people somewhere
who know what to do to fix this mess?
And you can’t quite sleep at night
for that nagging feeling in the pit of your gut
that tells you you should be doing something,
you should be making it stop,
should at least be saying something apt,
something to keep the demons at bay.
Gratitude List:
1. The owls are really going at it tonight. I love living within hooting distance of so many of the wise ones.
2. It’s felt like a really long time when I could have a day when I didn’t absolutely have to be doing something school-related. What a relief. I did actually work on something for school today, a sample memoir project for my students to see what I am looking for in their projects.
3. Cheese
4. A good book to read on a cold night
5. Making connections: with people, with memories, with ideas, with synapses.
May we walk in Beauty!
Sunreturn
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?
Gratitude List:
1. Those really super-bright stars at evening and morning. Sometimes you get those news reports that THIS star or THIS comet is going to appear fifty times bigger than usual, and I look and I can’t discern any difference. But that star in the west last evening, and one in the east this morning were so incredibly large and bright. I wonder if it’s a function of my aging eyesight? No matter. It’s compelling.
2. Driving into the Solstice sun this morning. The sky was like a gentle watercolor painting.
3. Waiting quietly in this space at the edge of the void, a moment between moments. Stepping into time outside of time. Walking over the Dreamtime Bridge.
4. Approaching a time of rest.
5. The people who get it. Today I read a Jan Richardson poem to my classes, and I posted a picture of Richardson on the Smart Board that included a statement about “Seeking the thin places that exist between heaven and earth.” One of my students, who has some learning struggles, got really wide-eyed and said, “I like that poem-thing you have up on the board there. It’s like when you go to a place with a lot of history, like caverns, that you know have been there since before people were around, and it feels like heaven is right there.” What a wise, intuitive boy.
May we walk in Beauty!
Last Days into Darkness
One more step into the quiet darkness
One more step into the night
One more step toward the winter
One more step toward the coming of the light
One more step into the labyrinth
One more step to play your part
One more step toward the daybreak
One more step toward the Mother’s heart
Stand within this dusk-bright moment
Feel the heartbeat of the waiting Earth
Hold your head high, listening for starsong
Be still and silent, ready for the birth
Gratitude List:
1. Endarkening. My friend Michele gave me this word today, and I treasure it. I am grateful for people willing to talk me through the dark time. I am waiting, listening, being enfolded in the darkness. Hush.
2. How, even in times of silence and stillness, there is work being done beneath the surfaces of things. Crystals forming beneath the earth. Seeds coming undone.
3. Walking the labyrinth into the very center. Inanna had to relinquish something of herself at every turning. I, too, am being stripped of that which no longer serves me.
4. Sharkey finally lost that tooth today, brave boy. The big tooth has come all the way in behind it, and the baby tooth stuck straight out from the gum for weeks, making him look slightly vampiric. Tonight he pulled the thing right out, and then for good measure, he pulled the splinter out of his foot.
5. The people who let their hearts be broken by the pain of the world. All together now, we break open, and we pray, and we call for peace, and we hope, and we stand up, and we shout, and we sing, and we dance. It is time to be who we have been becoming.
May we walk in Beauty!
You’ll Be Flying
Today is the last day of the November Poem-a-Day Challenge. The Prompt is to write a Last-Chance poem.
Last Chance
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Last dance
take a chance
never any
backward glance
high hopes
a grand scope
acrobat
walks the rope
doing or dying
never stop trying
before you know it
you’ll be flying
Gratitude List:
1. Making Progress
2. Mist. Have I mentioned mist on the River? How it crawls along the surface of the water and boils up into the air? Fog and mist.
3. How dreams and ideas are like mist–they’re so ephemeral, but so substantial. You swim in them, even though you can’t touch them.
4. Warm scarves
5. The way the students in my Foundations class are making connections, thinking, processing. Lots of strong EQ in that class.
May we walk in Beauty!
Love and its Opposite
Today’s Prompt is to write a Love/Anti-Love Poem. I realize that I am pooping out on these. Much work to do, and little time for poeming. I’ll leave it at this for tonight.
Love and its Opposite
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
The opposite of fire is not more fire,
we know that–just like Frost’s desire–
his opposite was ice, which like him I suppose
would dim the fire until it froze.
Gratitude List:
1. I have great gratitude for Sam Ovalle of Sam’s Auto in Akron. Finally, we have the Prius back with us in working order. We’ve been driving my dad’s car for six weeks, the last one with the Service Engine Soon light on. Tonight I had to learn the Prius all over again. I tried to honk the horn when an approaching car passed in a no-passing zone, and accidentally turned on the radio (“You really showed him!” said Jon).
2. Mist on the River
3. Mist in the fields
4. Mist caught in the trees
5. Mists in the little River Towns
May we walk in Beauty!
Walk in Beauty
Every December, as we begin to seek our way down the steps into the last darkness before the light returns, I carry within me the story of the Conestogas, the last tiny village of Susquehannock people who lived in Lancaster, who were brutally massacred by the Paxtang Boys, a band of white men who wanted to wipe out the Native people.
I suppose it’s because last week I was going through some of my poetry that mentioned them that their names were in my head, but this morning during my insomniac looping, the names began to appear in my brain-loop, like messages: Sheehays, Wa-a-shen, Ess-Canesh, Tea-wonsha-i-ong, Kannenquas, Tee-kau-ley. These were the six who were murdered in their village in Conestoga on the morning of December 14, 1763. I tried several years ago to memorize their names, but I didn’t realize that I had managed it until the wee hours of this morning. They appeared like a message. Two weeks later, the marauders broke into the Lancaster jail, where the remaining six adults and eight children of the Conestoga band were being kept for their protection, and killed them all.
May we do better in these days. May we be more effective at standing between the vulnerable ones and the marauders. How can we keep the Paxtang Boys from riding again?
* * * * * * * *
Today’s Prompt is to write a poem that begins: I Want __(Blank)__. I am tired and I still have work to do, so this will be a little riff.
I Want the Moon
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
I want the moon on a platter.
I want my cake and a side of pie.
I want a day when no one needs me.
I want a Michelangelo sky.
I want to wander in an oak grove.
I want to sing incantations in the rain.
I want to run away to islands.
I want to come back home again.
I want to sleep in a seaside hammock.
I want to memorize every color of blue.
I want to write a thousand poems.
I want to spend more time with you.
Gratitude List:
1. Sometimes things just work out better than you expect them to. Big sighs of relief.
2. These two little (not-so-little) rosy-cheeked folks at my table.
3. How Jon takes care of us when I can hardly remember to take care of myself.
4. Leaves
5. The comfort of knowing that you are there, holding all this, too. So many of us are doing the Work, day by day and minute by minute. So much love.
May we walk in Beauty!
Falling Apart
Today’s poetry Prompt is to write a Falling Apart poem.
Falling Apart
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
First: Everything begins to work in sync. From within the random chaos,
a pattern emerges, a rhythm, a mutual response between working parts.
Cooperation and tunefulness abound. Order prevails.
Second: Before long, the sameness of the patterns and the rhythms
begins to grate on the inner ear. A background whine hovers
just within earshot. Orderliness begins to thump and thud.
Third: Some of the ordered bits begin to stumble, miss a step,
misfire. Still, the march plods on, and the bumbling is only a hiccup
in the ordered scheme of things. Weariness sets in.
Fourth: A counter-rhythm develops. Syncopation sets in. Suddenly,
a wild dance whirls through the march. Chaos returns with a will.
The order has been subverted, the structure shredded.
Fifth: All sense of order has fallen apart. Randomness reigns.
The beauty of the wild begins to appear–itself–as a sameness.
Colors and sounds and sensations begin to sort themselves.
Sixth: Everything begins to work in sync.
Gratitude List:
1. More wonderful family time together. Nate riffing on the piano. What a musician! Jon’s delicious lasagna. Uno has to be one of the best family games.
2. Shadows. Secret scenes and messages in the shadows.
3. Watching the boys take on creative projects and take pride in their work.
4. Thanksgiving Break. It wasn’t long enough, but it was wonderful while it lasted.
5. Dark Chocolate: Lemon Pepper Ginger.
May we walk in Beauty!
To Those Who Wander
Today’s prompt is to write a Visitor Poem.
Blessing for the Visitor
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
May you who wander, who sojourn, who travel,
may you who make your way to our door
find rest for your tired feet and weary heart,
food to fill your bellies and to nourish your minds,
and company to bring you cheer and inspiration.
May you find comfort for your sorrows,
belonging to ease your loneliness,
and laughter to bring you alive.
And when your feet find themselves again upon the road,
may they remember the way back to our door.
Gratitude List:
1. Coming through a conversation feeling more like myself. I wish everyone could have someone like that, who can ask questions and build upon ideas with you, help you sort things out. I am grateful for the people of my family, who do this for me.
2. Nieces and Nephews, good cousins to my children. The in-laws–my siblings chose their partners so perfectly. My parents.
3. My mother’s question: “How shall we pray for each other?” Reminds me of the sacred question to ask the Fisher King–the one that leads to the finding of the Holy Grail.
4. The art on the walls of the houses I visited today. Such beauty, such rich depth of meaning.
5. Gathering around a table with people I love. As Joy Harjo says, “Perhaps the world ends here.”
May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 