Green Willow and Golden Fish

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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Infant leaves and developing catkin on the little willow tree.

Gratitude List:
1. Willow trees. The bark of the tiny new willow by the mint patch went a vibrant yellow green a couple weeks ago, and now, all of a sudden, the leaf buds have burst open, and tiny leaves and catkins have appeared.  I love willow trees, and this gangly youngster has begun to stand straighter and more confidently since last year’s wobbly beginning.
2. A great golden fish.  We went walking and exploring by the pond yesterday after school, and had our first spring sighting of Golda, Lady of the Fish.  I am always so relieved in spring to see her, so grateful that she has survived another winter.  Of course, I know she is adapted to live and thrive through the cold, and she will likely outlive me (some koi live over 200 years), but I always worry just the littlest bit.
3. Senior Presentations.  My seniors in my advisory group are nervous about their presentations tonight and Monday.  I gave them a positive and hopeful pep talk yesterday–I hope they couldn’t see how nervous I am, too.  I want these moments to become powerful and rich memories for them.  I want to bless them as they step forward into the next phase of their lives.  I am so proud of them.  I know that they struggle to understand why we make them do this process of presenting their lives and learning to the community, but I love it, offering them this moment to reflect on what has brought them to this moment in their lives.  Fly well, Bright Ones!
4. Not being sick.  I felt so terrible last night, I went to bed at 9:30, hoping to stave off whatever cold or ick-thingie was trying to make a home in me.  It seems (knock on wood) to have worked.
5. Elderberry syrup.  I am following up that good sleep with some of Tabea’s good elderberry syrup.

May we walk in Beauty!

Rhythm and Change

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Gratitude List:
1. Reassessing.  Watching someone have the courage to say, “This doesn’t work.  I am going to try something different.”  Because sometimes will and determination aren’t about perseverating and following through on that one thing despite all indications that it isn’t working.  Sometimes will and determination are about having the wisdom and grace to say that it’s time to find a different new thing.
2. How community forms naturally and organically when it is given the spaces and the rooms in which to thrive.
3. How there is always something more to strive for and to learn.  This sometimes looks pretty crunchy–I can feel like I am always inadequate, never quite up to the task, never quite the best best that I can be.  Or I can remember that I am never completely formed, never static, never done, but that there are always new ways to grow and develop and change, to transform.
4. Rhythms.  Things are always changing.  Things are always staying the same.  Like fractals, the patterns repeat endlessly with intricate variations that create complexity and beauty.
5. I hear phoebe calling this week.  Welcome back, Wing-friends!

May we walk in Beauty!

Two Hands

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Gratitude List:
1. Two hands: one to hold the terrible, and one to hold the wonderful.  Breathing into the spaces between.
2. How the heart holds stories
3. Shades of red.  Shades of green.  The red buds of leaves popping out on the tree outside my classroom window, against the mossy green of the trunk.
4. Burrito for lunch
5. Transformation

May we walk in Beauty!

Reminders

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Gratitude List:
1. Reminders: It is well.  All shall be well.
2. Calls to be courageous in the face of that which feels threatening.
3. Interfaith and intercultural dialogue.  Many gratitudes to the folks who invited a groups from the local Islamic Center to visit church yesterday.
4. Sleep.  Deep, long, sound sleep.
5. Fellowship meals: The people at my church know what to do with kale.  And there were plenty of brownies to go around.

May we walk in Beauty!

People Are Really Good at Heart

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Gratitude List:
1. Daffodils.  Narcissus.  Sunny golden greetings.
2. Orioles.  It’s too early, I know.  Way too early, I suppose.  But I dreamed last night of that whistle, high in the sycamore tree, of the oriole announcing his return.  I can’t wait until that bright bird is back with us.
3. Getting it done.  This and that and the other thing.  It DOES come together, even when it feels impossible.
4. The goodness in everyone.  Lately, my belief in this idea is being sorely shaken.  In this election cycle, I have begun to let a deep cynicism about the motives and benevolence of others begin to seep into my consciousness.  I want to continue to hold onto the belief that there is something inside each of us that can be touched and met.  If Anne Frank could say it, I can at least do my best to try to believe that “in spite of everything, people are really good at heart.”
5. Towering clouds.

May we walk in Beauty!  (In Goodness.)

Garden Peach, Goldie, and Green Zebra

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(The babies are coming up in the greenhouse.  We will be selling tomatoes this summer.)

Gratitude List:
1. How prayer changes the one who is praying.
2. That sliver of a new moon that rode low in the sky last night as I was driving home.
3. Warm breezes.
4. Chickadee’s spring song.  “S-weeeeet?”
5. Knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.

May we walk in Beauty!

Fierce

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Acorn caps and dandelion fluff.  Oak leaf.

Gratitude List:
1. Fierce love.  I keep coming back to that word–fierce–lately.  This impulse to protect the ones we love with whatever we have inside us.  Today is a day to hold someone in Mama Bear love.  Stand at the door of that cave and bear your teeth.
2. How decisions dawn, especially when they are tough decisions.  Still, the right answer comes.
3. Kindness.  Someone said yesterday, “Kindness is one of my core beliefs.”
4. Speedwell and crocus and windflower.  The green of the aconite leaves when the flowers fade.
5. Parent Teacher Conferences this evening.  I have so many ninth graders that I end up with a pretty full schedule.  I love talking with parents about their students, being able to characterize how I  see them in class.  May our time be fruitful and helpful.

May we walk in Beauty!

Slipping Out of Bounds

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I went through a period of time when, instead of gluing down the pieces of a collage, I would just set them together, and then photograph them.  I carried with me a little box of collage elements for months, arranging and rearranging them.  I don’t know if this was a good and interesting artistic process or a symbol of something in my brain that was unwilling to commit to permanence.  Still, some of the photos that I took then continue to grab at strands in my unconscious, like this one.

Gratitude List:
1. The way crocus refuse to stay within their borders.  While I do believe in good, strong, safe boundaries, I do think that those crocus escaping out over the lawn have a special message.
2. Good strong boundaries.
3. Breathing room.
4. The poem that is beginning to form.
5. How language shapes and creates ideas.  How ideas hinge on the language used to express them.

May we walk in Beauty!

We Can Do It!

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March 8
International Women’s Day, celebrated around the world since 1911, to honor the work that women do.  This year’s theme is a pledge for parity, with the core belief that empowering women will lead to greater sustainability on the planet.

Gratitude List:
1. Berta Cáceres, a Honduran environmentalist and human rights worker, 2015 winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, who rallied the indigenous Lenca people to oust the builders of the Agua Zarca Dam, a project which would have cut off water for the Lenca and made it impossible for them to continue living sustainably on the land.  She was assassinated last week in her home.
2. Harriet Tubman, whose story amazes and inspires me, challenges and informs me.  If all you know about her is that she rescued people out of slavery, you owe it to yourself to find out more about her, about her many roles during the war, and how she continued to work for human rights and dignity until she died.
3. Wangari Mathaai, the Kenyan college professor and founder of the Green Belt Movement, first woman in East Africa with a doctorate degree, and 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who saved Karura Forest, who planted trees, who worked for the rights of women.  (Karura Forest is again threatened with development, and the Green Belt Movement is working to save it yet again.)
4. Jane Goodall, who, though she is in her early 80s, continues to travel around the world to speak on behalf of sustainability, earth care, and animal rights.
5. All you women in my life who have mentored me and modeled for me how to live sustainably, how to regulate and care for my own energy, how to stand up and speak out, how to do the work.  Friends and family, women older than me, my peers, and young women, too–my nieces and my students–who show me every day what it means to make a hopeful difference in the world.

May we walk with wisdom, with courage, and with strength.  May we make the world a better place.

Around the Corner

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(Stolen from the internet.  I do not know the photog.)

Gratitude List:
1. Yesterday’s Scholastics Awards Ceremony, honoring the thoughtful and careful work of student writers.
2. It looks like the migrating snow goose population at Middle Creek is really strong this year.
3. Ritual of turning over a new leaf–letting the old thing dissolve in water
4. Being part of many concentric circles of community.  How could I survive without you?
5. Trees.  Sap is rising, buds are forming.

May we walk in Beauty!