Here’s a quick attempt at a list poem. As always in these poem-a-day experiences, it’s raw and unrevised:
Reasons for Hope by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Peregrines nest on the Wrightsville Bridge The prophets are filling the streets again, calling, “Peace!” A human Wall of Love stands up to bigots, offering belonging How purple dead nettle creates a carpet in corn stubble Two I thought certain we’d lose are breathing and healing Those we have lost live on, for what is remembered lives The hollow here opens its arms like a green blanket A student who chooses invisibility called “Hello” to me last week There is always singing, and there will always be more singing I am here and you are here, and you and you and you. . .
Gratitude List: 1. Poetry 2. Keeping memories alive 3. How dreams inform waking 4. Housecats 5. All the people, like you, who are doing the good work of making the world a better place May we walk in Beauty!
“What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.” —Alain de Botton
“We are capable of suffering with our world, and that is the true meaning of compassion. It enables us to recognize our profound interconnectedness with all beings. Don’t ever apologize for crying for the trees burning in the Amazon or over the waters polluted from mines in the Rockies. Don’t apologize for the sorrow, grief, and rage you feel. It is a measure of your humanity and your maturity. It is a measure of your open heart, and as your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal.” —Joanna Macy
“We should have respect for animals because it makes better human beings of us all.” —Jane Goodall
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you love. It will not lead you astray.” —Rumi
“If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.” —Harriet Tubman
“The little grassroots people can change this world.” —Wangari Maathai
“Some form of the prayer of quiet is necessary to touch me at the unconscious level, the level where deep and lasting transformation occurs. From my place of prayer, I am able to understand more clearly what is mine to do and have the courage to do it. Unitive consciousness—the awareness that we are all one in Love—lays a solid foundation for social critique and acts of justice.” —Richard Rohr
“You don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to.” —Anonymous
“The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.” —Julian of Norwich
“Water flows over these hands. May I use them skillfully to preserve our precious planet.” —Thich Nhat Hahn
“At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realise I am fighting for humanity.” —Chico Mendes, Martyred Brazilian environmentalist
“It is everyone’s business is to connect with their ancestors, and to be in wholeness and peace. To know your true authentic self, it is required that you know your ancestors.” —Annette Mendoza-McCoy
I’m hoping to create a daily prompt again this month.
Here’s my attempt at a topsy-turvy two-stanza poem. As happens during these months of a poem-a-day, this one’s pretty unfinished and unrevised, but the point is to loosen up and not get caught in my desire for perfection:
You know how it is, how you amble down that dusty road, scramble over rocks and stones, and it becomes a game to name the turnings on the winding way? You know, like the story of the children stumbling through the woods who laid a trail of breadcrumbs so they could find their way home.
You could say it’s all a part of the part you play, the scene you’ve been assigned, the way the play’s designed– one act follows another, but what if the old woman was saving the brother, cold as he was from walking in the wood, and what if the sister got the story twisted, or the townspeople insisted on telling the story their way? Who’s to say?
Gratitude List: 1. A work day at school. It’s nice to have a day when the students aren’t around, just to catch up and catch my breath. 2. A thousand shades of green 3. Flamingos and ostriches. They really do seem sort of impossible, which makes them doubly charming 4. Grounding. Every day, I do a grounding meditation. Since my trip to Tanzania, I can feel my roots spread out so far, so far. 5. The Springtime dawn bird chorus has been filling out a little more each day. May we walk in Beauty!
Words for the Day of the Holy Fool: “Let’s be April fools in the Shakespearean sense of fools. Time to be insightful and speak truth to power.” —Jarod Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. “ —Emily Dickinson
“The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.” —Julian of Norwich
“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” —Carl Jung
“Poems are maps to the place where you already are.” —Jane Hirshfield
“Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quiet desperation. The choice is to draw the blinds and shut it all out, or believe.” —Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson
“When you do not know you need mercy and forgiveness yourself, you invariably become stingy in sharing it with others. So make sure you are always waiting with hands widely cupped under the waterfall of mercy.” —Richard Rohr
“All four gospels insist that when all the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene does not run. She stands firm. She does not betray or lie about her commitment to Jesus—she witnesses. Hers is clearly a demonstration of either the deepest human love or the highest spiritual understanding of what Jesus was teaching—perhaps both. But why—one wonders–do Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell the story of Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady and unwavering witness of Magdalene is passed over—not even noticed? How would our understanding of the paschal story change if instead of reflecting upon Jesus dying alone and rejected if we were to reinforce the fact that one person stood by him and did not leave? For this story of Mary Magdalene is as firmly stated in scripture as the denial story. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feeling of ourselves? How would it reflect upon how we have viewed, and still view, women in the church? About the nature of redemptive love?” —Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal Priest
“When I feel this fog rolling in on me, I light fires of affection in the hearts of others. I tell them in tangible ways how the life they live makes me live mine differently, how precious and important they are to the rest of us. That fire then becomes like a beacon which burns through the grey and which I can sail towards.” –Toko-pa Turner
It’s good to leave each day behind, like flowing water, free of sadness. Yesterday is gone and its tale told. Today new seeds are growing. —Rumi
View of Engitati Hill, the Round Table Hill, in the Ngorongoro Crater.
A week ago, I returned from a trip to the town of my early childhood–Shirati, Tanzania–and several days in game parks. One of my words for the trip, and for the current phase of my life, is INTEGRATION.
How do I integrate the layers of my life: the past, present, future selves? How do I integrate the sense of myself in a safe and loving childhood in a beautiful and tender community, with the awareness of how mission and religion has been an agent of colonialism in the world? How do I integrate my deep connection to the Jesus story with my adoration of his mother, with my universalism and witchiness? How do I integrate the activism and the contemplation, the magic and the prayer, the wildness of spirit with the deepening wisdom of middle age?
Within a day of our return, I received word that a beloved friend, a former student, had died. Now, how to integrate the bliss of my Tanzania Trip with the deep welling grief of losing someone I loved and admired? How to integrate my own grief with that of the many circles of community who loved him?
I’ve been going back through some of our text and message threads to find the poems and songs and kind thoughts Ash sent me over the years, revisiting some of the writings we shared with each other, the ideas we hatched, integrating those with the memories people have been posting to his Facebook page.
Before I went to Tanzania, I created a journal for the trip, an altered book made from an oldcopy of Birds of East Africa. True to Bethie form, I ended up taking notes not only in the journal, but in two of the Poetry journals I had taken along, and in the Notes app on my phone. This week, I hope to spend my Spring Break making sense of the various notes, sorting through photos, and integrating the sense experience with memories and scraps of poetry that have been filtering through. Somehow even the fact that I must weave together the various threads of my note-taking feels like part of the bigger process of sorting and integrating joy and grief and memory.
Ash was one of the editors of the literary magazine I directed at the high school where I used to teach. The magazine’s symbol was the flamingo, and I had promised Ash I would send him pictures of flamingos when I returned. I never had the chance. Here, Ash, are some flamingo pictures for you.
Check in on your beloveds. Remind them they are loved. And when hope seems far away, hold on for one more day. The morning, as they say, is wiser than the evening.
Gratitude List: 1. The beautiful journey. Return, belonging, joy, wildness, friendship, beauty 2. The privilege of knowing Ashton Clatterbuck, whose life touched so many, whose activism will continue to inspire and light the way, whose sense of justice will push me to stand up and speak out, whose courage knew no bounds 3. The birds of Goldfinch Farm and Skunk Hollow 4. The house lions: Erebus, Thor, and Sachs 5. The process of integrating heart and mind, memory and sense, grief and bliss, dream and reality May we walk in Beauty!
“Our capacity to create must overwhelm their capacity to destroy.” —Occupy Movement Quote
“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.” —C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
“At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey. ” —Lemony Snicket
“Scared is what you’re feeling. Brave is what you’re doing.” —Emma Donoghue
“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.” —August Wilson
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” —Rumi
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” —William Faulkner
“For one human being to love another is the most difficult task, the ultimate, the last test and proof. It’s the work for which all other work is mere preparation.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
Teilhard de Chardin said: “Some day after we have mastered the winds, the waves and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, humans will have discovered fire.”
Emma Goldman: “The most vital right is the right to love and be loved.”
“Everything I understand, I understand only because I love.” —Leo Tolstoy
“If you do not love too much, you do not love enough.” —Blaise Pascal
“Who I was meant to be was a breaker of some stories and a maker of others.” —Rebecca Solnit
“You are not required to set yourself on fire in order to keep other people warm.” —Anonymous
“The job — as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy — of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.” —Dani Shapiro
“Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.” —Parker Palmer
“For education among all kinds of [people] always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.” ―W.E.B DuBois
“The phoenix must burn to emerge.” —Janet Fitch
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” —Ken Robinson
“When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.” —Ellen DeGeneres
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” —Thomas A. Edison
“Geometry draws the soul towards truth.” —Plato
“In which of the fairy tales does this wandering stream appear? Perhaps a golden trout swims through here every morning at dawn, or the three riders who pass Baba Yaga’s courtyard stop here to water their horses. A frog beneath that brightest mossy rock awaits your kiss. Just beyond your vision, through those trees, is a little cottage made of gingerbread and candy. An old man appears each day at dusk to sit on the tallest rock and ask you for a favor when you approach the stream for a drink.” –Beth Weaver-Kreider
Of Love by Beth Weaver-Kreider (after Mary Oliver)
It’s a process repeated everywhere you look: the way the beech tree catches and holds the wind in her hair, the way the meadow grasses gather around the tentative feet of the fox, the way the hands of the clay hold and guide the flow of waters.
What is attention, but a kind of loving? Living in awareness is a constant tumble into loves. The way your eyes twinkle when you tell a story. The way your listening hands reach outward. The way a new thought is born in your eyes. The hearty abandon of your laughter, the caress of your voice, the shine that surrounds you.
Several years ago, we discovered where the hummingbird had made her nest in the ancient sycamore tree outside our house. Every day, we watched her zip and zoom through the swinging branches to a nest the size of a bottle top, no larger than a quarter. Sometimes she would hover for the briefest seconds right near one of us, people-watching, and we could hear the hum of her wings. With the help of binoculars, we began to notice two tiny needles resting on the edge of that circle of a nest, that minuscule bowl, two tiny hummingbirds growing in that miniature house of a nest.
One day, we caught the tail end of a hurricane, and the sycamore branches whipped savagely back and forth for hours in the wind and rain. I couldn’t breathe for the fear of what was happening to those babies. When the rain stopped, we ran to the yard, craning our necks, straining our eyes, searching for the precious little ones, and there was the nest! And there they were! Miracle of miracles, the nest had survived, and so had the chicks! We caught the whir and the hum of wings, and the mother zipped in to tend to her storm-tossed tinies.
The orioles don’t stop at a simple circular bowl, but turn their nest to a sphere, a woven basket hanging from the branches. Twice we’ve found their nests on the ground at the end of the season when the small ones have already fledged.
Wrens, robins, bluebirds, swallows, phoebes, mourning doves–we’ve watched them build their circles of protection to hold their hope of another generation, through storms and summer heat, bumbling first flights, hungry predators.
What is the circle of protection you build, your space to keep safe the vulnerable ones? Is it your home, your work, your school, your community life? How do you draw the circle around the ones who need your protection? How do you protect and nurture the small bird of your own precious spirit? What prayer, what petition, what magic, what circle, what nest will you offer for the protection of the new thing growing in you?
Gratitude List: 1. Safe circles 2. Birds at the bird feeder 3. The way the light shines in 4. Nesting 5. Soup and bread and brie May we walk in Beauty!
Honoring Kwanzaa with those who celebrate it: Today’s Word is one of my favorite Swahili words: Ujamaa. Cooperative economics. How can we create local systems that develop economic justice for all? How can we share our finances in ways that build up the community?
“Don’t let the tamed ones tell you how to live.” —Jonny Ox
“The best way for us to cultivate fearlessness in our daughters and other young women is by example. If they see their mothers and other women in their lives going forward despite fear, they’ll know it is possible.” —Gloria Steinem
Mark Twain: “I’ve been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”
Frederick Buechner: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
“A night finally came when I woke up sweaty and angry and afraid I’d never go back to sleep again. All those stories were rising up in my throat. Voices were echoing in my neck, laughter behind my ears, and I was terribly, terribly afraid that I was finally as crazy as my kind was supposed to be. But the desire to live was desperate in my belly, and the stories I had hidden all those years were the blood and bone of it. To get it down, to tell it again, to make something—by God, just once to be real in the world, without lies or evasions or sweet-talking nonsense. It was a rough beginning—my own shout of life against death, of shape and substance against silence and confusion. It was most of all my deepest, abiding desire to live fleshed and strengthened on the page, a way to tell the truth as a kind of magic not cheapened or distorted by a need to please any damn body at all. Without it, I cannot imagine my own life. Without it, I have no way to tell you who I am.” —Dorothy Allison, from “Deciding to Live”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov: “Love all of God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.”
“A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” Jeremiah 31:15
XXIX Traveler, there is no path. The path is made by walking. Traveller, the path is your tracks And nothing more. Traveller, there is no path The path is made by walking. By walking you make a path And turning, you look back At a way you will never tread again Traveller, there is no road Only wakes in the sea. ― Antonio Machado, Border of a Dream: Selected Poems
Walt Whitman: “Allons! whoever you are come travel with me! Traveling with me you find what never tires. The earth never tires, The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first, Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d, I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell. Allons! we must not stop here, However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here, However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here, However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.”
A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait. —Theodore Roethke
“Here is one way to look at yourself through spiritual eyes: you are a message. When you wonder what existence is all about, when you ask about your purpose in life, or when you feel small in comparison to the troubles of the world: remember that you are a message sent by the Spirit into creation. What you say, what you do, how you think and feel: your whole life is a long and sustained message for others to encounter, experience and receive. You are a living message: sent to touch more lives than you can imagine.” —Steven Charleston
Today begins another 54-day novena–the Circles and Cycles novena–with the online rosary group I follow, The Way of the Rose. During one of the novenas in the past year, I tacked on an extra petition with my heart’s desire request: That I would somehow find a way to return to the town where I spent my early childhood. During this past novena, the plans began to fall into place for that to happen, and during this coming novena, in February, I will travel with my brother and sister-in-law to Shirati, Tanzania. I can hardly believe it. I am living in a constant state of anticipatory tingles.
As I prepare to return to my childhood home, I’ve been thinking a lot about our current home. I love this old house, built in the last decades of the 1800s, perched on a hillside in a hollow, with snakes in the attic and basement, spiders in the corners, wavy window glass. I also find it frustrating: the weird plumbing, the scary wiring, the crumbling basement plaster, the tight spaces for a family of four, the accumulated stuff of almost twenty years of living here. We have begun to consider selling the farm in three or four years to move to a smaller, more manageable property with a slightly more modern house. I love that, too.
Meanwhile, we will be living here, and I want to make this time a time of nurture and delight in the place where we live. I want to Refresh the Nest–that will be my heart’s desire prayer for the coming novena, that we’ll have the inner resources (and find the financial resources) to do the sorting and arranging and renovating and re-nesting necessary to make this a satisfying period of our lives, especially as the kids begin to look to making their own lives separate from ours.
On each daily round of the rosary, there are five sets of Mary prayers (Hail Marys–I call them Hello Marys) book-ended by what I call The Love Prayer (traditionally Our Fathers) and Glorias. The rosary forms a pentagon, and each corner of the pentagon represents a mystery in the sacred journey. There are fifteen mysteries, three sets of five, so during a novena, every three days you cycle through the five stages of each set: the Joyful Mysteries, the Sorrowful Mysteries, and the Glorious Mysteries.
For decades before I came to praying the rosary, I have meditated on various pentacles, following the paths of the star and circle, using five words to guide my meditation. Birth, youth, maturity, old age, death. Birth, initiation, Ripening, Reflection, Death. Grace, Initiation, Desire, Beauty, Self-Knowledge. You can make up your own–follow a trail of your own personal development through five stages and give it words to anchor your reflection. I used a couple different oracle and tarot decks this morning to help me choose five words/phrases to anchor my meditations during the coming novena when my petition is about refreshing the nest. In a delightful experience of synchronicity, all the cards either have a name beginning with S, or are described by the deck’s creator with words beginning in S: 1. Silent One (from the Forest Fae Deck): watch and observe 2. Staff (from The Mystic Shaman Oracle): right action, authority, the middle way, balance 3. Shadowdiver (from the Archeo deck): seeking the source of the problem within myself, being a hunter, a miner, an archeologist, for the pains and traumas and experiences which keep me from living fully 4. Starclimber (also from Archeo): seeking the mystical pathway, meditating, gazing into the depths 5. Sacred Siblinghood (from the Light Seer’s Tarot): the 3 of Cups, communing deeply with my beloveds, support networks, Presence
Gratitude List: 1. A safe journey yesterday to see a beloved friend, and many fresh and lucid moments, smiles, jokes, delight, wakefulness, recovery 2. Pho: Delicious, nutritious, and filling for most of the day 3. This week of Time Out of Time 4. Nesting 5. The whole family under one roof May we walk in Beauty!
Watching with those who celebrate Kwanzaa. Today’s word is Ujima. Collective work and responsibility.
“Beauty is not a luxury but a strategy for survival.” —Terry Tempest Williams
“Your suffering needs to be respected. Don’t try to ignore the hurt, because it is real. Just let the hurt soften you instead of hardening you. Let the hurt open you instead of closing you. Let the hurt send you looking for those who will accept you instead of hiding from those who reject you.” —Bryant McGill
“Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.” —bell hooks
“I came from a family of repairers. The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and repairs it.” —Louise Bourgeois
“When you have an ancient heart and childlike spirit you must feel deeply, but go lightly. To trace and learn the language of waves. How all the seas carry secrets, yet still move freely. I am still learning how to be water.” —Victoria Erickson
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” —Viktor E. Frankl
“We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew… Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful… and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.” —Desmond Tutu *: “I’m restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.” ―Anaïs Nin
Leave your windows and go out, people of the world, go into the streets, go into the fields, go into the woods and along the streams. Go together, go alone. Say no to the Lords of War which is Money which is Fire. Say no by saying yes to the air, to the earth, to the trees, yes to the grasses, to the rivers, to the birds and the animals and every living thing, yes to the small houses, yes to the children. Yes. ―Wendell Berry
“If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle, lonely and confused.
So like children, we begin again…
to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.” ―Rainer Maria Rilke
Martha Beck: “The important thing is to tell yourself a life story in which you, the hero, are primarily a problem solver rather than a helpless victim. This is well within your power, whatever fate might have dealt you.”
“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
It seems that we Christians have been worshiping Jesus’ journey instead of doing his journey. The worshiping feels very religious; the latter just feels human and ordinary. We are not human beings on a journey toward Spirit, we are already spiritual beings on a journey toward becoming fully human, which for some reason seems harder precisely because it is so ordinary.” ―Richard Rohr
“What if nostalgia is not a fruitless dwelling on those irretrievable moments of the past, as we are taught, but an attempt by sweetness to reach you again?
What if nostalgia is really located in the present, like a scent or ambience which is gathering around you should you avail yourself to it.
As anyone who has been heartbroken knows, there comes a time when, long after loss has been well-lived with, a small melody of love always returns. And to your surprise, you may recognise the tone of that love as the very same love you believed you lost.
It’s then that you know that your love was always your love. And if you let yourself be unguarded to it, nostalgia may find its way back into the generosity of your presence.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa
“We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle and difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent.” —bell hooks
As often happens in the wake of a Poem-a-day spree on the blog, when the month (November or April) is over, I neglect the blog. This time, I did begin writing a piece in early December on spiritual gaslighting, but I couldn’t find my way the whole way through it, so I’ve been letting that sit here, waiting for me to come back and give it some energy and focus.
In the meantime, it’s Yuletide, Solstice season, Christmastide, the High Holy Days of the year, and I want to offer some seasonal greetings here at the Turning, the Pause, the Quiet and the Hush, the Between.
I know two things about the Dark Season of the Wheel of the Year: One is that I am physiologically inclined to depression and anxiety when I am not getting enough sunlight. The other is that I love the darkness, the shadows, the dreamtime and storytime, the flickering candles in the dusk, the fogs and mists of winter. So I live in the paradox of that, tending to my mental and physical health the best I can while reveling in the spiritual richness to be found in wandering through the shadows.
As my wise mother says, it can be both/and. I can be tending to my winter sadness AND reveling in the darkness at the same time.
In this season of lights and shadows, may you revel and celebrate joy, and sit quietly in the darkness with your shadows, honor the pain and the memories, and dance with delight at the new thing coming, follow the stories of of anguish and horror, and hold the stories of bravery and kindness, feast merrily with your beloveds, and offer food to those who do not have enough, give in to your weariness, and take your rest, and stay up all night with the revelers. Take from the season what you need. Let it offer you darkness and light, sorrow and joy, glad tidings and the space to mourn. May your heart be broken open as you re-member yourself to the shadows, as you re-call yourself to the light.
Keep track of your dreams in these days between Solstice and Christmas, between Christmas and New Year, New Year and Epiphany. Notice the persistent images and words that float around you in the day. What messages are you hearing? What words are asking for your attention? What birds and animals keep slipping through the edges of your awareness? Sometime around the New Year, or Epiphany, settle on one word or image or idea. Let that be your guide for the coming season, or the coming year. Between now and the beginning of February, when we celebrate our awareness of the growing light, the quickening of the Earthwomb–this six weeks is a time to consider what we need to bring into the light, and what we need to allow to gestate for a longer time in our own inner darkness.
Now is the time to claim your darkness. It might make me uncomfortable. It may make me afraid. But it’s my own shadow, my own personal cave. This is the time to gently probe the corners with our hands and toes, into the places where the light does not reach. In those places that make us afraid because we do not know them, there may also be treasures hidden. Blessings on your searching. Blessings on your darkness.
Gratitude List: 1. Time with Beloveds 2. The hush, the pause, the quiet, and the riotous revels 3. The spaces for both joy and sadness 4. Morning fog, and birds singing through the fog 5. The merry lights of my Advent candles in their birch candle holders May we walk in Beauty!
Joyful Kwanzaa to my friends who are celebrating the first fruits: Today is Umoja, or Unity, time to 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
“Many years from now, when the world I know now is only an echo, my love will still be alive, still be touching hearts and changing minds, still be bringing people a sense of peace and hope. The love we send out does not disappear. It is carried forward by those who receive it, adding their love to ours, sending it forward, a promise made and remade for generations. Rejoice: your love lives forever.” —Steven Charleston
Last day of the month. Last prompt: Last night. That’s the prompt. I decided to make it simple and do a refrain with a bit of free association, and then I tidied it up.
Last night I was haunted by last year’s ghost Last night I sank to the ground in relief when I remembered my name Last night I heard you offered solace to a wandering heretic lost in a storm Last night I dreamed I was standing under a jacaranda tree that rained purple blossoms on my head Last night I stayed awake until the sun rose and the moon fell Last night I slept the whole night through with a purring cat tucked under my arm Last night I learned of the secret door that leads to the garden of the moon
Gratitude List: 1. Knitting 2. Intentional Breathing 3. Origami 4. Reading poems out loud 5. Finding my voice May we walk in Beauty!
“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.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
“To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine voice. Our primary need for the various life forms of the planet is a psychic, rather than a physical, need.” —Thomas Berry
“All through your life, the most precious experiences seemed to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience. This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret.” —John O’Donohue
“The next time you go out in the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people—in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones—just wish for them all to be happy and well. Without knowing anything about them, they can become very real, by regarding each of them personally and rejoicing in the comforts and pleasures that come their way. Each of us has this soft spot: a capacity for love and tenderness. But if we don’t encourage it, we can get pretty stubborn about remaining sour.” —Pema Chodrun, From her book Becoming Bodhisattvas
“Quiet the mind enough so it is the heart that gives the prayer.” —Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
“People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.” —Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Creative acts of social justice constitute life’s highest performance art.” —Rebecca Alban Hoffberger
“If you will, you can become all flame.” —Abba Joseph
“Become all shadow. Become all light.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
“You cannot use someone else’s fire; you can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe you have it.” —Audre Lorde
“The first duty of love is to listen.” —Paul Tillich
“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith. The opposite of faith is certainty.” —Paul Tillich
“When you go to your place of prayer, don’t try to think too much or manufacture feelings or sensations. Don’t worry about what words you should say or what posture you should take. It’s not about you or what you do. Simply allow Love to look at you—and trust what God sees! God just keeps looking at you and loving you center to center. ” —Richard Rohr
“People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.” —Charles Fort
“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t.” —Shakespeare, The Tempest
ollyollyoxenfree! who are olly’s oxen? why are they boxed-in and searching for freedom? like children running from hide and seek or kick-the-can uncaught uncaptured last to be found racing to safe haven sun setting over the hill oxen giggles echoing wiggling into base safe
I’m trying to drag myself through November and into December right now. I always feel a little guilty about these winter blues, as though I’m not trying hard enough to be energetic, not pushing myself through the blues. I would never tell a depressed person to suck it up and just try harder, so why do I tell myself to do that during November’s blahs and December’s doldrums?
I read a lovely thing today about how trees in our climate need their time of winter rest in order to survive. They actually need to winter. So. Me too. I’m going to let myself winter. Just sit on the couch and read or knit after dark (which feels like all the time when I am home these days). I ran a little this evening, but only a half mile or so. I’ll keep trying to get necessary exercise when I can, because I know that is supposed to help, but I am also going to get more sleep.
Gratitude List: 1. Cloud Dragons 2. I feel like all my classes are really into the class novels right now. I love sharing story with students. (We’re reading Touching Spirit Bear, Catch-22, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) 3. Spaghetti Squash 4. Remembering to let myself Winter/hibernate/settle 5. You May we walk 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
“The innocence of our childhood lives on, in each one of us, no matter how old or battered we may be. Still that original goodness, that simple goodness, remains within us. Our best nature never grows old. What the Spirit first intended us to be is still there, peeping out from wrinkled eyes, caught in a quick glance in the mirror: the laughing, shining, curious child who lives again. And again and again. For we are made of the intention of heaven, a part of the perfect life at the center of all creation. Watch for your inner self, the ageless soul, and see it smiling back at you, like a little child caught beside the cookie jar.” —Steven Charleston
Today’s prompt offers a choice, to write a Seize the Day or a Survive the Day poem. Here’s my response:
i don’t want to seize the day so much as to take it gently in my hands like a round red and yellow apple admire its shiny surface feel the smoothness of its skin then take a bite taste the tang the sweetness the perfection of it know that each bite will be sweeter than the last
Gratitude List: 1. Apples 2. Blankets 3. Red curtains 4. This quote, by Brené Brown: “You will always belong anywhere you show up as yourself and talk about yourself and your work in a real way.” 5. This other quote by Brené Brown: “Strong back. Soft Front. Wild Heart.” I might want to get that as a tattoo. May we walk in Beauty!
“There are no shortcuts to wholeness. The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’” —Parker Palmer
Solace is your job now.” —Jan Richardson
Joy Harjo: “When I woke up from a forty-year sleep, it was by a song. I could hear the drums in the village. I felt the sweat of ancestors in each palm. The singers were singing the world into place, even as it continued to fall apart. They were making songs to turn hatred into love.”
“The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.” ―Meridel Le Sueur
“I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.” ―Madeleine L’Engle
“Alas, the webs are torn down, the spinners stomped out. But the forest smiles. Deep in her nooks and crevices she feels the spinners and the harmony of their web. We will dream our way to them …
…Carefully, we feel our way through the folds of darkness. Since our right and left eyes are virtually useless, other senses become our eyes. The roll of a pebble, the breath of dew-cooled pines, a startled flutter in a nearby bush magnify the vast silence of the forest. Wind and stream are the murmering current of time, taking us back to where poetry is sung and danced and lived. … In the distance a fire flickers – not running wild, but contained, like a candle. The spinners.” —Marylou Awiakta, Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom
“Do it right, because you only got one time to walk this earth. Make it good, make it a good thing.” —Grandmother Agnes “Taowhywee” (Morning Star) Baker Pilgrim (1924-2019)
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” —Robert Frost
“I believe war is a weapon of persons with personal power, that is to say, the power to reason, the power to persuade, from a position of morality and integrity ; and that to go to war with an enemy who is weaker than you is to admit you possess no resources within yourself to bring to bear on your fated.” —Alice Walker
“The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our selves.” —Cassius, from ‘Julius Caesar’ by William Shakespeare
“Let your love be like the misty rain, coming softly, but flooding the River.” ––Proverb
“Perhaps too much sanity may be madness.” —from ‘Don Quixote’ by Cervantes
There was a little game going around Facebook recently in which you determine the name of your craft beer by using your grandfather’s profession and a word that you don’t quite understand. I think mine might be Harnessmaker’s Redux. I know redux means remix or retry or rework, sort of, but it always feels like there’s some edgy mystery meaning in there. Today’s prompt is to remix a poem from earlier in the month. I’ve rewritten my poem about wooing the muse. I think I may prefer the original, but this month is about the way the daily deadlines push me to play with words and sounds in new ways. If I don’t get any “good” poems out of this month, I have already expanded my voice, pushed myself out of some ruts. But I really hope I can glean at least one or two good ones from November’s hoard.
how to woo the muse
woo her with muchness or nothing at all woo her with wise nonsensical prattle with the way sound crashes upon sound upon sound upon sound upon sound ringing from line to line singing a fine tune say her name often, say i would have written, but my muse. . . say, the muse is a harsh moon a mysterious mistress, sing odes to the moon but mean muse pretend not to care write a masterpiece of utter garbage pretend not to care but as they say the best way is simply to put your butt in the chair
Gratitude List: 1. Commiseration 2. I am pretty sure that was Raven rowing through the sky above me on my way to Hershey this morning 3. Today’s Literacy Conference in Hershey–lots of great ideas to enliven my teaching 4. My colleagues 5. Free books! So many books! May we walk in Beauty!
“Never laugh at live dragons.” —J.R.R. Tolkien
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” —Aristotle
“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” —Mark Twain
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” —Aristotle
“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.” —Anais Nin
“Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best thing to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we’re doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change.” —Michelle Obama
“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” —Amelia Earhart
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” —Lucille Ball
“Learn how to take criticism seriously but not personally.” —Hillary Clinton
“Like a great starving beast, my body is quivering, fixed on the scent of light.” —Hafiz
“Identity is a story carried in the body.” —Sophia Samatar
“Once every people in the world believed that trees were divine … and that deer, and ravens and foxes, and wolves and bears, and clouds and pools, almost all things under the sun and moon, and the sun and moon, were not less divine …” —W.B. Yeats
“The heart is your student, for love is the only way we learn.” —Rumi
Poet Joy Harjo, from 2012: “Visited with my cousin George Coser, Jr yesterday at the kitchen table. He’s a gift. Always something profound among the stories. The sacred lies at the root of the mundane. And every word is a power element. Each word or sound, whether thought, written or spoken grows our path, the path of our generation, the children, grandchildren, the Earth. . . . We become the ancestors. A sense of play gives a lightness of being. So get out there and play—and be kind while you’re at it. To yourself, too.”
Help me to journey beyond the familiar and into the unknown. Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You.
Christ of the mysteries, I trust You to be stronger than each storm within me. I will trust in the darkness and know that my times, even now, are in Your hand. Tune my spirit to the music of heaven, and somehow, make my obedience count for You. —The Prayer of St. Brendan (attributed to Brendan)
The Wild Geese by Wendell Berry
Horseback on Sunday morning, harvest over, we taste persimmon and wild grape, sharp sweet of summer’s end. In time’s maze over fall fields, we name names that went west from here, names that rest on graves. We open a persimmon seed to find the tree that stands in promise, pale, in the seed’s marrow. Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.
Mockingbird Chronicles 