Here is my Rain Poem. I feel like I am starting to get back in the groove.
Gratitude List: 1. Rain, and the hope of sun to come 2. More light each day 3. Roasted veggies 4. Naps with cats 5. People who step and do what needs to be done May we walk in Beauty!
“Sound or vibration is the most powerful force in the universe. Music is a divine art, to be used not only for pleasure but as a path to Awakening.” —Yogananda
“Being a successful poet is a lot like being a successful mushroom.” —Poet Richard Howard
“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.” —Hermes Trismegistus
“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.” —Jane Goodall
“Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.” —Henri Nouwen
“In the end, we’ll all become stories.” —Margaret Atwood
“Privilege is when you think something’s not a problem because it’s not a problem to you personally.” —attributed to many authors
Dea Ex Machina by Beth Weaver-Kreider
What we speak we create. Writing, we make meaning into existence.
These words, cogs and gears, shift meaning to matter:
“Let there be. . .” And there is.
And it is good.
quilting by Lucille Clifton
some other where alchemists mumble over pots. their chemistry stirs into science. their science freezes into stone.
in the unknown world the woman threading together her need and her needle nods toward the smiling girl…
Make space in this house for all of the people you are. Make room for the schemer, the doubter, the cynic, but open some space for the credulous child and the mystic, the dreamer, the wild one, the quiet one.
Open a space within for the glass-half-full to dance with the glass-half-empty, for the monk to sing songs of revolution with the fury.
There in those rooms, the One may enter and speak your many names, saying, Peace be yours. —Beth Weaver-Kreider
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.
I know. No posts for weeks, and then two posts in two days. Yesterday, I wrote in my gratitude list about how difficult January is. I should clarify that it’s not entirely spent in a burrito on the couch scrolling through my phone. There is definitely more of that than I wish for myself, but there are also small bursts of energy in the Tunnel of Tired, usually in the context of those strategies I listed. January is definitely not all bad. It’s just a slog.
But now to the point of the post. Here are two items from my journal in the past year:
This is a tarot reading I did for myself on 12/22/22. When you draw the 9 of Cups in a reading, you make a wish. I highlighted mine.This was a month later, 1/23/23, as I was thinking through what would be my heart’s desire petition for the coming 54-day novena. This was one of four.
Usually my wishes and heart’s desires, when I write or speak them with intention, are fairly internal or safe things that I can be pretty sure that I can help create. Wishing to return to Tanzania in such an intentional way (it’s been my constant internal wish/heart’s desire since my last trip 36 years ago) has always felt risky because I didn’t want to deal with the disappointment of not having my wish granted. It was okay as long as it was basically unstated, or stated wistfully, and I knew that it was just a “wish.” Then the disappointment of it not happening would be less intense. But here I was, saying it out loud. Putting it out there. And the novena concluded, and the year began to wane, and I let myself forget my magically spoken wish. Making a trip to Tanzania hasn’t been something I could logistically or financially plan, hard as I looked at it, so I figured that it just still wasn’t time, or that it was unlikely ever to happen.
But last November, my brother and sister-in-law asked me if I might want to accompany them on a trip to Tanzania. They’d made the plans already. I’m getting some help in the financial area. Our tickets are bought. Shots in order. Willing and capable substitute procured for the classroom. In just three weeks, we’re making a dream trip back to the place where we spent our early childhood. My heart’s desire.
I’d forgotten that I had made these clear intentions in written form, and was looking through my journal a couple days ago when I stumbled across them. Feels like a miracle. At the very least, it’s a sparkling synchronicity.
I worded the heart’s desire as a “sacred journey.” This is a good reminder that I don’t go entirely as a tourist or as a home-goer (both of which have problematic edges, and which have been part of my uncertainty about returning), but as a vessel, to receive what is meant for me to receive, to give what is meant for me to give. To find the strands that are woven into this web. To keep my heart open, to allow the jittery excitement to give way to a quiet sense of purpose and intention, receptivity. To delight in everyone and everything.
Gratitude List: 1. Three-day weekend. Breathe in. Breathe out. 2. Anticipating seeing actual flamingos in a few weeks 3. Generosity, how it grows and expands as it is given 4. How the big birds–the hawks and vultures and eagles and crows–catch the wind and whirl above the ridge 5. Puzzles May we walk in Beauty!
“I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.” —Audre Lorde
“Your crown has been bought and paid for. Put it on your head and wear it” —Maya Angelou
“If you’re not angry, you’re either a stone, or you’re too sick to be angry. You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger, yes. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.” —Maya Angelou
“History has never been kind to those who have sided with voter suppression over voters’ rights. And it will be even less kind for those who side with election subversion.” —Joe Biden
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” —Robert Frost
“I am always doing what I cannot do yet in order to learn how to do it.” —Vincent van Gogh
“Have you been to jail for justice? Then you’re a friend of mine.” —Anne Feeney
“Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.” —Naomi Shulman
“The desire to reach the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise and most possible.” —Maya Angelou
“Begin with something in your range. Then write it as a secret. I’d be paralyzed if I thought I had to write a great novel, and no matter how good I think a book is on one day, I know now that a time will come when I will look upon it as a failure. The gratification has to come from the effort itself. I try not to look back. I approach the work as though, in truth, I’m nothing and the words are everything. Then I write to save my life. If you are a writer, that will be true. Writing has saved my life.” —Louise Erdrich
“Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labor to others… Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book; Dismiss whatever insults your own soul; And your very flesh shall be a great poem.” —Walt Whitman
“In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves. We deny the importance of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our lives. Or we use one piece of the past or present to screen out another. Thus we lose faith even within our own lives. “The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire.” —Adrienne Rich
“Art is here to prove, and to help one bear, the fact that all safety is an illusion. In this sense, all artists are divorced from and even necessarily opposed to any system whatever.”—James Baldwin, in “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity.”
Once, a few years ago, a student came running into class in an extreme state of excitement saying, “Ms Weaver-Kreider! I just discovered something amazing! I always thought that flamingos were like unicorns or fairies, but I just found out that they’re real!”
What a delightful discovery! To learn that something you always thought was mythical and magical actually exists! The absolute epiphany of that. The hope. Yes, it is indeed truly amazing.
Last week Keri, one of my beloved niblings*, wrote to tell me that she’s been seeing that flamingo story in her own self as she explores her own deep truths, and finds out who she is. She told me recently that she feels like she’s finally learning to love herself, discovering who she really is, and finding that discovery extremely satisfying. She said she feels like the girl discovering that flamingos are real. This thing, this elusive thing, that she’d always imagined was possible but slightly mythical is actually real! What a delight!
When you are on a journey of self-discovery and inner exploration, new fantastical creatures like unicorns and flamingos keep popping into existence. What a poetically rich way of looking at it.
May you find your flamingos. May you find your flamingos!
(*Nibling is the inclusive term for niece/nephew. I love it. Though every one of them is taller than me, some by more than a foot, they’ll always be my niblings.)
Gratitude List: 1. We’re on the way out of the tunnel. If you don’t experience winter blues or sadness, if you love this season, it’s hard to describe. It’s not about hating the cold or the darkness. It’s being exhausted to your bones. It’s exhaustion at a cellular level. Weary. I am doing all the right things: light therapy, drinking the teas, sleeping a lot, exercising more, eating good protein and well-balanced meals, yoga, breathing, meditation, grounding. The only real cure is for the sun to come back. And we’re on the way there. This one sounds much more like a complaint, but I think the context is important to express how grateful I am to be on this side of the winter tunnel. Every day, a little more light. 2. My colleagues. Part of the reason I am eating well is that in January someone brings lunch for everyone every day. Part of the reason I am being really good about exercising is that we’re doing our January Step Challenge right now. Some of these people are really competitive, so I’m not sure I am a great asset to my team, but I am plugging along, and getting a lot more steps than I would otherwise, which is the point. 3. The ruby-crowned kinglet we saw on the balcony this week. Such a little bunting of a bird, with a tiny touch of red on its head. 4. Fountain pens 5. Flamingos. Both the actual birds, and the delightful inner discoveries. May we walk in Beauty!
“Solitude is not an absence of energy or action, as some believe, but is rather a boon of wild provisions transmitted to us from the soul. In ancient times, purposeful solitude was both palliative and preventative. It was used to heal fatigue and to prevent weariness. It was also used as an oracle, as a way of listening to the inner self to solicit advice and guidance otherwise impossible to hear in the din of daily life.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.” —Elie Wiesel
The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.” —Wangari Maathai
“Language helps develop life as surely as it reflects life. It is the most important part of the human condition.” —Jane Yolen
“It is through beauty, poetry and visionary power that the world will be renewed.” —Maria Tatar
“And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.” —William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”
As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses For the people hear us singing, bread and roses, bread and roses.
As we come marching, marching, we battle too, for men, For they are in the struggle and together we shall win. Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes, Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread, but give us roses.
As we come marching, marching, un-numbered women dead Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread, Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew Yes, it is bread we. fight for, but we fight for roses, too.
As we go marching, marching, we’re standing proud and tall. The rising of the women means the rising of us all. No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes, But a sharing of life’s glories, bread and roses, bread and roses. —James Oppenheim
“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Be kind to yourself—especially when others are not yet ready to affirm your favorite parts. Love at least one person more than they deserve.” —Bishop Meghan Rohrer
“We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own – indeed to embrace the whole of creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. Recognizing that sustainable development, democracy and peace are indivisible is an idea whose time has come.” ―Wangari Maathai
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
I took the photo this morning just after dawn. The sky was still indigo to the north. To the east, right of the barn a line of tangerine sky was appearing. And the great horned owls were calling from north and south. Sometime when the moon is rising red above the ridge, I want to position his antlers so I can catch the moon in their circle.
If you have followed my images of the stump over the past couple of years, you can see that this year, the surface is cratered. The wood is spongy and fragile, and there have been no new flowerings of mushrooms lately, though the slime molds and other creeping fungi are still having their day. It’s becoming treacherous to walk in the near vicinity of the stump because the roots have begun to rot, leaving troughs which radiate outward.
Gratitude List: 1. My most quiet student became very animated during a class discussion today, and told a story. It is such a satisfying thing for a teacher to hear the most quiet ones speak. 2. Cabbage for supper. Must be those Germanic genes, but cabbage is comfort food. 3. Listening to Brene Brown’s Braving the Wilderness. So much to learn. 4. Hard conversations 5. Community May we walk in Beauty!
“…believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.” —Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
Valarie Kaur: “What if this is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?”
“They say to dance like nobody is watching. I think that implies that we are afraid or ashamed to dance in front of the people. I say dance like everybody is watching. Dance like your children are watching, your ancestors, your family. Dance for those who are hurting, those who can’t dance, those who lost loved ones and those who suffer injustices throughout the world. Let every step be a prayer for humanity! Most of all dance for the Creator, who breathed into your soul so you may celebrate this gift of life!” —Supaman, hip hop and Powwow dancer
“Destroy the idea that men should respect women because we are their daughters, mothers, and sisters. Reinforce the idea that men should respect women because we are people.” —Radleigh Lauren
“Let the violence and pain in our world root you even more deeply in your commitment to be kinder and love harder, no matter the person or circumstance. Your great ability to love has everything to do with creating a more peaceful reality on our planet. Your love matters. It makes a critical difference. It helps us all.” —Scott Stabile
“What we would like to do is change the world—make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute—the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words—we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.” —Dorothy Day
“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” —Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
Gayle Boss, comparing the precarious life of the chickadee to the chosen poverty of St. Francis: “Like the saint wed to Lady Poverty, every winter day the equation of their existence is open: Will there be enough of what they need to take them through the dark night, into tomorrow? Beyond reason, like the saint, they act as if the question is truly an opening, a freedom, a joy.”
“There’s an important distinction between the word ‘cure’ and the word ‘heal.’ In contemporary language, cure means to eradicate an illness or wound. But heal comes from the root “to make whole.” While some grief can not and should never be cured, it can be invited and allowed into one’s way of being in the world.” —from “Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home” by Toko-pa Turner
“The opposite of consumption is not frugality, it is generosity.” —Raj Patel
“By reciting a myth, the storyteller remembers a creation, and, by remembering, is a part of that creating. It is best understood in that dreadful solecism “walkabout”. In walking, the Australians speak the land. Their feet make it new, now, and in its beginning. And the land speaks to them, now, anew, and in their beginning, by step and breath that meet in its dance, so that land and people sing as one.” —Alan Garner, The Voice That Thunders
“This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories.” —Ben Okri
“So every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you.” ―Mary Oliver
“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.” —Nelson Mandela
“Never does Nature say one thing and Wisdom another.” —Juvenal
“There is a place where words are born of silence, A place where the whispers of the heart arise.” —Rumi (Barks)
“Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.” —Dante, first tercet of The Inferno
Mockingbird Chronicles 