Charming Gardeners

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My parents nurture beauty in their gardens and in the lives of people around them.

I love this first quotation by Marcel Proust. Thank you to so many of the charming gardeners who help to tend and nurture my soul. Let’s all take up this work.

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
~~Marcel Proust
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Naomi Shihab Nye: “You are living in a poem.”
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“Every woman must own her story; otherwise we are all part of the silence.” ~~Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International
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“Don’t just be yourself. Be all of your selves.”
~~Joss Whedon
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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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“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby.

But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
~~Margery Williams -The Velveteen Rabbit
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I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact I just said “shit” than you are that 30,000 kids died last night. ~~Tony Campolo

Gratitude List:
1. Monarchs everywhere–more than I have seen in several years. It is the season of butterflies and moths. How are you experiencing transformation from a creature of earth to a creature of air?
2. All the people who are charming gardeners (as Proust said) of my soul.
3. Cool morning
4. Purring and inquisitiveness from Fred this morning. One day at a time.
5. The start of a new week. Always we begin again.

May we walk in Beauty!

Circle of Stories

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The setting for a circle of stories.

“Some say you’re lucky
If nothing shatters it.

But then you wouldn’t
Understand poems or songs.
You’d never know
Beauty comes from loss.

It’s deep inside every person:
A tear tinier
Than a pearl or thorn.

It’s one of the places
Where the beloved is born.”
―Gregory Orr
*
“And the wood is tired, and the wood is old, and we’ll make it fine, if the weather holds. But if the weather holds, then we’ll have missed the point. And that’s where I need to go.” ―The Indigo Girls
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“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.” ―Joseph Campbell
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“Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis
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“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
―Thomas Merton
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“I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. And this is one: I’m going to tell it – but take care not to smile at any part of it.”
―Emily Brontë
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“To say ‘I don’t know’ is an unparalleled source of power, a declaration of independence from the pressure to have an opinion about every single subject.
It’s fun to say. Try it: ‘I don’t know.’
Let go of the drive to have it all figured out: ‘I don’t know.’
Proclaim the only truth you can be totally sure of: ‘I don’t know.’
Empty your mind and lift your heart: ‘I don’t know.’
Use it as a battle cry, a joyous affirmation of your oneness with the Great Mystery: ‘I don’t know.’
(To revel in this reverie can be a respite, a vacation. Any time you feel ready, you can return to the more familiar state of ‘I know! I know! I know!’)” ―Rob Brezsny
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“Declare amnesty for the part of you that you don’t love very well. Forgive that poor sucker. Hold its hand and take it out to dinner and a movie. Tactfully offer it a chance to make amends for the dumb things it has done.

“And then do a dramatic reading of this proclamation by the playwright Theodore Rubin: ‘I must learn to love the fool in me — the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool.'”  ―Rob Brezsny
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“We all receive water from her, we receive food from her, we receive air from her, anything that is received as a gift from the Earth and from nature has to be a commons, it cannot be privatised, that is why privatisation of life forms through patents or water through privatisation schemes driven by the World Bank, or the privatisation of the atmosphere and the air through carbon trading and emissions trading are all illegal and illegitimate in a legal framework based on the Earth’s rights.” ―Vandana Shiva
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“The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him; they crush those beneath them.” ―Emily Bronte
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“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.” ―Susan B. Anthony
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“To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.” ―Rudolf Steiner

Gratitude List/Examen:
(Questions based on the Examen of St. Ignatius)
1. (How have I encountered Beauty?) The pale glowing green of a large caterpillar who persists in entering the garage.
2. (What makes me grateful?) The way our stories weave themselves together. when you speak of your challenges and your delights, and I share mine with you, something magical happens, in which our stories become one great story–a vibrant, many-colored tapestry. I cannot overstate the power of a deliberate and compassionate and loving story-sharing experience. I come away empowered and energized to be my own best self.
3. (What is the texture of my feeling life?) There is deep joy in the presence of my beloveds, an upwelling of sadness at the declining well-being of a feline friend, that regular and well-known tugging of anxiety about my children, and a wide and flowing river of contentment in the world.
4. (What is the defining moment of the day past?) The stories. The children playing together in the dark. The children reluctant to end the day: “But we need more time to bond!”
5. (How will I walk into today?) Wrapped in the threads of story, in the words and the love of my friends. Breathing deeply.

May we walk in Beauty!

God is Your Lover

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A previous year’s patty pan harvest.

“God is your Lover, not your jailer” —Hazrat Inayat Khan
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“What is good for the world will be good for us. That requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.”
—Wendell Berry
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“We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.” —H. G. Wells
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“Stand firm against injustice even if it be against yourself.”
—The Quran
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“It is out of the dailiness of life that one is driven into the deepest recesses of the self.” —Stanley Kunitz
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“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” —Rachel Carson

Gratitude List:
1. Swallows on a wire
2. The butterflies that dance in the garden my Beloved has planted for Beauty
3. Reunion: The next generation seems to like each other, too
4. Pesto
5. Africa House: It’s one of the places that our group has met most often in recent years, and by now it has begun to feel like the home of us

May we walk in Beauty!

A Circle of Beloveds

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Interesting coincidence. I am in a hurry this morning, and I quickly found this photo to represent the feeling of being held in a circle of beloveds. Then I saw that I had used the exact photo on my blog on this day two years ago.

“God is not a celestial prison warden jangling the keys on a bunch of lifers–he’s a shepherd seeking for sheep, a woman searching for coins, a father waiting for his son.” ― Clarence Jordan
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“You think you are alive because you breathe air?
Shame on you, that you are alive in such a limited way.
Don’t be without Love, so you won’t feel dead.
Die in Love and stay alive forever.” —Rumi
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“Education is not preparation for life. Education is life itself.” ―John Dewey
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“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.” ― William Faulkner
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“O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice!
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths!
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb!
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee.”
―Walt Whitman
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“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” ―Nelson Mandela
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“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” ―Stephen Jay Gould

Gratitude List:
1. A circle of Beloveds
2. The certainty of rain
3. Being ready to let go, but being given a little more time
4. Wisdom from the ages
5. A circle of Beloveds

May we walk in Beauty!

Take Care of Your Own

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“Good People, 
most royal greening verdancy,
rooted in the sun,
you shine with radiant light.” ―Hildegard of Bingen
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“Just living is not enough said the butterfly, one needs sunshine, freedom and and a little flower.” ―Hans Christian Anderson
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“I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquillity comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.”
―Dalai Lama
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“You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.”
― Vandana Shiva
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“How do you endeavour words at the marvel of dawn – slow but suddenly arising in your heart?
How do you speak to the dispersing cold and fog from the treetops, the gradual bathing of your outlook in gentle pinks and gold?
What can you say towards the stillness of things, even as they move, like a sleepy barge drifting through the channel,
reflecting the presence of that forgiving first light from all its bright sides?
How can you say I am sorry for all the dawnings you’ve not gambled in poetry?
Perhaps today, you think, you’ll make up for it – steadily pulsing in your reverence, keeping these embers of attention aglow.
But morning never remains.
Instead it grows into a glory of chaos, dropping its gifts – too numerous to carry – in an afternoon heap at our feet.
Generous as it is, the day collapses us into a womb of darkness, where we can finally rest our magnificent failures at being all the way alive.” ―Toko-pa
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“On this day
the blessings of heaven.
On this day
the blessings of earth.
On this day
the blessings of sea and of sky.
To open us to life
to ground us in life
to fill us with life
and with wonder.
On those we love this day
and on every human family
the blessings of heaven
the blessings of earth
the blessings of sea and of sky.”
―John Philip Newell
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“Every person is a living treasure box. Listening holds the key.”
―Mollie Marti
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“You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire.”
―Leymah Gbowee
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“I remember Hushpuppy at the end of Beasts of the Southern Wild, just trying to take some food home to her daddy Wink, finally turning to face the hideous beast on the bridge, facing it down and saying, “I take care care of my own.”

“I take care of my own. You are my own, and I am yours–I think this is what God is saying, or trying to, over the din. We are each other’s. There are many forms of thirst, many kinds of water.”
―Anne Lamott

Gratitude List:
1. Getting the primer coat on Ellis’ room. I feel like we’re making progress, like we’ll finally have this project finished before school starts.
2. The magic of that book we just finished reading together: One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street by Joanne Rocklin. Joss picked it out of the used book shelf as his reading prize at the library. It connected to so much that I have been pondering lately: how time works in layers, the tenderness and fragility of memory,  the infrangibility of friendship (that’s a word you learn in the book), the deep desire to protect what we love.
3. Each peach, pear, plum. . . Actually, no pears yet, so maybe it’s cherries instead, but I didn’t want to break up the line from the children’s book. (I spy Tom Thumb!)
4. Screech owl calling in the hollow last night when we were sitting outside before bed.
5. Supper on the porch.

May we walk in Beauty!

Living in the Layers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

This morning, I am sitting outside with cool breezes, delicious morning sunlight, the calling of the wingfolk all around, a not-so-small boy playing in the sandbox, and an old man cat resting in his bed beside me. It is a perfect moment, one I want to hold forever, inner and outer worlds aligned. Grief is here, too, in the perfect moment: the old man cat has gone nearly blind in the past week, the marvelous boy with the giant-sized heart is growing so fast I cannot keep track of the changes, some of my beloveds are hurting and anxious. It is all part of the wheel of changes, and grief and uncertainty have their place. It is part of the package of being human.

And it’s not only the boys and the cat who are aging and changing. I am about to complete my fiftieth year. It feels right and good to be here on the cusp of my half-century, still learning to be who I am: mother, spouse, teacher, friend, writer. I feel a new story rising, wanting to burst forth. I have spent this past decade learning to trust my voice, honing my craft, taking baby steps. Now it is time to find a way to take my words out, further out. I’m not entirely sure what that will look like, but it is the promise that I am making to myself in this moment. I am ready to leave the safety of the chrysalis.

(And now there is an older boy here, golden as the sunlight, and he is telling me words that are beyond my understanding, this child who came from my body–he is so much smarter than I am, already–his mind making connections at lightning speed, learning every new thing. What a marvel it is to watch these beings absorb information and grow and develop, extending ideas of their own, creating new things. The wheel turns. . .)

“I saw you once, Medusa; we were alone.
I looked you straight in the cold eye, cold.
I was not punished, was not turned to stone.
How to believe the legends I am told? …
I turned your face around! It is my face.
That frozen rage is what I must explore —
Oh secret, self-enclosed, and ravaged place!
That is the gift I thank Medusa for.”
―May Sarton, “The Muse as Medusa”
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Pablo Picasso:
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
“Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”
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“Our religion is relationship. Our relationships are our religion.” ―Bruxy Cavey
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“The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work
on the images imprisoned within you.”
―Rainer Maria Rilke

Gratitude List:
1. (How did you encounter the Divine Wow?) Synchronicity. In this case, it had to do with armadillos. “Protect yourself,” says the wise woman, and the Mystery adds, “What she said.”
2. (What awakens you?) All the butterflies swinging down the breezes: monarch, swallowtail, fritillary, buckeye. “Isn’t that chrysalis becoming a little claustrophobic?” they ask. Isn’t it time to emerge and fly?
3. (What quickened within you?) It is time to fly, time to learn a new kind of noticing, time to address the claustrophobia, time to break out of the chrysalis.
4. (What do you take deeper?) The layers of my living–photos of very young children who are both gone and here in this moment, time with friends which is both this moment now and last year and the years before, this morning sun slanting into the hollow and the blue jay and doves calling which is the essence of this very moment and also a hearkening to my own ancient story.
5. (How will you carry the past and the present into the next moment?) Allowing the little bird of grief for what is past and gone to sit on my shoulder and sing her songs. Anticipating the joy that comes with the next ray of sunlight, the next bird call, the next “Mom, look!”

May we walk in Beauty!

Wisdom of the Body

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“He’d grown convinced that play–more than piety, more than charity or vigilance–was what allowed human beings to transcend evil.” ―from Tom Robbins, “Jitterbug Perfume”
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“There are opportunities even in the most difficult moments.”
―Wangari Maathai
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“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.” ―Meister Eckhart
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“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.” ―Rumi

Gratitude List:
1. The lessons in the challenges
2. The light in the leaves
3. The persistence of life in small things
4. The span of a day
5. The wisdom of the body

May we walk in Beauty!

Shine

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.” ―Vincent Van Gogh
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“Change is continuous on the seamless web,
Yet moments come like this one, when you feel
Upon your heart a signal to attend
The definite announcement of an end
Where one thing ceases and another starts; 
When like the spider waiting on the web
You know the intricate dependencies
Spreading in secret through the fabric vast
Of heaven and earth, sending their messages
Ciphered in chemistry to all the kinds,
The whisper down the bloodstream: it is time.”
―Howard Nemerov
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“One of the most exciting things for me about being in the freedom movement was discovering other people who were compelled by the Spirit at the heart of our organizing work, and who were also interested in the mysticism that can be nurtured in social justice activism. We experienced something extraordinary in the freedom movement, something that hinted at a tremendous potential for love and community and transformation that exists here in this scarred, spectacular country. For many of us, that “something” touched us in the deepest part of our selves and challenged us in ways both personal and political.”  ―Rosemarie Freeney Harding, in “Remnants: A Memoir of Spirit, Activism and Mothering”
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“I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.”
―Desmond Tutu
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IT WORKS
“Would you come if someone called you
by the wrong name?
I wept, because for years He did not enter my arms:
then one night I was told a 
secret:
Perhaps the name you call God is
not really His, maybe it
is just an
alias.
I thought about this, and came up with a pet name
for my Beloved I never mention
to others.
All I can say is―
it works.”
―Rabia of Batista
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“The aim of education is to reveal an attainable image of self that is lovelier than that manifested in his or her present acts.” ―Nel Noddings

Gratitude List:
1. Rain
2. The medicine that is under our feet and all around us: plantain, jewelweed, nettle, chamomile
3. Cool breeze
4. Rest
5. The way the wren’s voice fills the hollow. There’s the message: Find the space where your voice is clearest. Practice your words, over and over again.

May we walk in Beauty!

Regrouping

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“You don’t have anything
if you don’t have the stories.”
—Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
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“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”  —Lilla Watson
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“A poem is not a puzzle, even if it’s puzzling at first. Instead, it’s a highly selected parcel or capsule of language meant to burst into your psyche and change you in some way. Poetry is the life blood of our language, and it’s meant for everyone, not just academics or young people in school. Poetry is in a word: consciousness.” —Cathryn Hankla
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Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
—Leonard Cohen (September 21, 1934 – November 10, 2016)
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“Like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.” —Leonard Cohen
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“I have become convinced that the most serious and unaddressed worldwide challenge is the deprivation and abuse of women and girls, largely caused by a false interpretation of carefully selected religious texts and a growing tolerance of violence and warfare.” —Jimmy Carter
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Tom Joad, from John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath:
I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin’ fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin’. And I been wonderin’ if all our folks got together and yelled…

As long as I’m an outlaw anyways… maybe I can do somethin’… maybe I can just find out somethin’, just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that’s wrong and see if they ain’t somethin’ that can be done about it. I ain’t thought it out all clear, Ma. I can’t. I don’t know enough.

Maybe it’s like Casy says. A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then… Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too.

Gratitude List:
1. Regrouping
2. Grounding
3. Doors opening
4. Elements
5. Bats

May we walk in Beauty!

How the Light Enters

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I don’t like questioning people’s spirituality. We all believe what we do for various reasons. Still, I have become incredibly curious about the folks who are making policy in this country, about the supporters of the current raft of laws and bills that further marginalize the poor, that block people fleeing terror from reaching safety here in the US, that put so many in danger of losing their health care. I know that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and many of their comrades call themselves Christians, and I do hesitate to call people’s faith into question, but. . .  Yes, but I think that there is an appropriate time to do so.

I think someone needs to ask these guys how their faith informs their politics. I would like to ask these folks about what they see as the message of the Prince of Peace. I would like to ask them what it means to them to follow the way of Jesus.  I would like to ask them what they do with the Sermon on the Mount, how they interpret the Beatitudes, and even how they answer to some of the Old Testament prophets who called down gloom and doom upon a nation that would not see to the needs of the poor.

Again, normally I would consider it bad form to question someone’s faith, but this is the kicker: So many people in this country who also call themselves Christians are following their plans, supporting their ideological architecture of greed and graft, that they have more to answer for than their own faith. They have become the preachers and the prophets of a style of Christianity that I want to repudiate and distance myself from. I want to know how they carry that weight on their souls. Or perhaps, if they do not feel that weight, I would like to show them the weight that they carry.

“Do anything, but let it produce joy.” ―Walt Whitman
*
“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.” ―Madeleine L’Engle
*
“I believe that if I can sit out there long enough those crows, the trees and the wind can teach me something about how to be a better human being. I don’t call that romanticism, I call that Indigenous Realism.” ―Dr. Daniel Wildcat
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“The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.” ―Carlos Santana
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“Take for joy from the palms of my hands
fragments of honey and sunlight,
as the bees of Persephone commanded us.”
―Osip Mandelstam
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“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”
―Martin Buber, “The Legend of the Baal-Shem”
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“It’s no wonder we don’t defend the land where we live. We don’t live here. We live in television programs and movies and books and with celebrities and in heaven and by rules and laws and abstractions created by people far away and we live anywhere and everywhere except in our particular bodies on this particular land at this particular moment in these particular circumstances.” ―Derrick Jensen

Gratitude List:
1. A long fun day with the family at Legoland yesterday. We came back exhausted and happy.
2. Today’s Work
3. Good sleep
4. Anger, rage, grief: these, too, are teachers, unwelcome as they often are.
5. My friend’s yard sale: Last year, and this year, I went to her yard sale and found the basic clothing that I will need for the coming year. No need to make a big shopping trip to search for clothes that fit and might or might not look like me.

May we walk in Beauty!