Beloved

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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There is such a thing as the Sun.  I captured this photo of the elusive creature a couple days ago, so I know it, whether or not you believe me.

Henri Nouwen said:
“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved.’ Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”

As much as I want to, I don’t think I will read this quotation in my classes.  I think that the specific students to whom I want to give it would only feel a greater burden of guilt because they can’t FEEL Beloved.  But it shows me more deeply how the work we need to do, no matter the physical vocation, is to find ways to show people this truth: You are Beloved. To paraphrase I Corinthians 13: If you are a brilliant intellectual or a gifted teacher, but have not love, you are a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  As I strive to improve my skills and knowledge base as an educator, I need to keep this always in my heart.

Gratitude List:
1. I am Beloved.  You are Beloved.
2. Working together.  Supportive colleagues.
3. Memory
4. Watching a small boy prepare for his dad’s birthday party.
5. Eating ugali.  I don’t know why I don’t make it more often.  (It’s a thick corn-meal mush, sort of like polenta.)

May we walk in Beauty, knowing we are Beloved.

Where Such a River Runs

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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What a wonder of a tree.  I am so grateful to live here in this place where such trees stand sentinel, where such a River runs.

Gratitude List:
1. The woman who reads bedtime stories to her little dog, and it settles him in to sleep.
2. Stories of people who stood up for what they knew was right, no matter the personal cost.  These days, Sophie Scholl and Wangari Maathai are on my mind.
3. The work of the Nobel Women’s Initiative.   Currently, laureates Rigoberto Menchu and Jody Williams are in Guatemala, witnessing the Sepur Zarco trial to bring justice for Mayan women survivors of sexual violence perpetrated by the Guatemalan military.
4. Blessings on the seeds!  Jon started planting in the greenhouse yesterday.  We will be selling some tomatoes and their friends throughout the mid-season, and doing a short late-season CSA.
5. Vocation

May we walk in Beauty!

Awakening

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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I took yesterday’s photo on Saturday, and today’s photo on Monday.  It’s the same tiny patch of aconites.  In two days, it went from just peeking above the soil surface to blooming.  Blessed be.

Gratitude List:
1. Flexibility, adaptability
2. Mists and fogs.  Mist flowing over the ramparts of the bridge at night, lit by moonlight and lamplight.  Mist in that boggy area by Route 30 on my way to school, back lit, orange in the morning sun.  Mist rising over the Millstream at school.
3. Flocks of gulls.  Yesterday, I stopped briefly on my way home from school to take some pictures of the sun on the River, and the parking lot of the River Park was covered in a white carpet of gulls.  I love to watch them floating on the River, and wheeling above it.
4. This work.  It’s really difficult on some days, and really rewarding on some days.  Sometimes both on the same day, for the same reason.
5. Vegetable stew and crusty bread

May we walk in Beauty!

Late Bloomers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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I thought the aconites beside the shop must have died off, but this weekend when I went to look again, these tiny tender leaves were beginning to uncurl.  That’s okay.  I am a late bloomer, too.

Gratitude List:
1. Jim’s story for the children.  Fear and and grief, but also mystery and strength and transformation.
2. The way the narratives are weaving themselves together, how our stories of loss and grief and hope and transformation become part of the same cloth. I think this is one of the definitions of community.
3. The morning’s moon
4. So many more signs of spring.  I know there’s more wintry mess predicted, but we are whirling toward the sun even so.  The chickweed is coming.  I think I am going to need to go foraging.
5. Stretching the spine

May we walk in Beauty!

Are You Dancing?

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“Are you dancing?” –greeting from my friend, Saheeb

Are you dancing?
Has your soul found its wings,
caught the rhythms that surround you,
felt the throb of waking earth beneath your feet?

Gratitude List:
1. aconite
2. crocus
3. that wren out there, hailing the morning
4. children playing in the sandbox for hours
5. voices of sanity among the clang and clatter

May we walk in Beauty!

Seeking Spring

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Gratitude List:
1. Friday morning hymn sing with my colleagues.
2. Blue, blue, blue, sky blue as Mary’s robe.
3. The way humor can sometimes make the bleak and difficult breathable.
4. My colleague Amanda, who helped me out of my February Funk yesterday by reminding me that February is the time to be actively seeking the minute indications that the season is progressing.  I came home and found one crocus bud and one aconite bud.
5. The tiny wing-person with the huge voice who is singing songs of spring.

May we walk in Beauty!

Left Foot, Right Foot, Breathe

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

2014 March 016

Gratitude List:
1. Yesterday, there was sunshine.  So much sunshine.
2. I left 20 minutes late for work yesterday (which, in my world, still gets me to school 40 minutes early), and caught the sunrise.  So much color!  I am hungry for color.  Ravenous.  The season is shifting out of greyscapes into pastels now and I can start to breathe.
3. Left foot, right foot, breathe.
4. Collaboration
5. Listening

May we walk in Beauty!

All Our Children

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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Gratitude List:
1. I am grateful that my friend’s surgery seems to have gone well.
2. I am grateful that we were able to get a much better interest rate for our mortgage (more of a mundane concern than I usually write about perhaps, but this is a grace that comes at a good time).
3. I am grateful that there are always enough hours in a day, even though it sometimes doesn’t seem like it.
4. I am grateful that the sun will return again.
5. I am grateful that my children have safety and comfort.  My prayer is for safety and love for all our children.  They are all our children.

May we walk in Beauty!

Sun Will Return

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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I came home yesterday to this pensive smile. Does anyone else see inanimate objects smiling?

My brain has filled with fog.  What is it veering away from?  What wintry truth do I avoid by settling myself back into the mists and bogs of my brain?

Perhaps it’s just the overweening weariness of February.  I don’t care what anyone says: It might contain fewer days, but February is the longest month.  Some years February is harder than others.  Maybe I just need a little more sunlight.

I begin to notice the sunreturn in January, and that has its thrill, but by February, the process seems too slow and ponderous.  Just bring me light, already!  It’s coming.  I might be grouchy about it now, but I can wait.  The sun always returns, whether I am paying attention or not.  Meanwhile, I will see what I can learn from the bogs and fogs of February.

Gratitude List:
1. Musings.  Every year, my church puts together our own book of writings for Lent.  People take the lectionary scriptures and use them as a jumping off point for writing a contemplative piece.  I look forward to it every year, every morning reading a thoughtful pondering by someone in the congregation.
2. Hot sauce
3. Editing.  Last night, I submitted a packet of poems to the Spoken Word Festival.  I haven’t sat down to simply edit and revise my work like that for a long time, and it felt so good.  I need to be careful–the editing bug catches me like an obsession.  I need to put this one off until the summer so I can focus on my daily work.  I don’t think I have the discipline to just work on one poem at a time.  But the dream of putting together the next book will feed me for the next few months.
4. The sun will come back.  It always does.
5. Color

May we walk in Beauty!

You Have Always Known

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

2013 May 032

You have always known what dawn has to offer you,
what the new-born crescent of a moon
hanging above the oaks on the hillside
wants to tell you about your birth,
how you are born every minute
re-cast, re-formed, re-molded
from the stuff of the which
the stars are made.

You have always known what the owls meant
when they called you out of dreaming
with their shadowy conversations
to listen with your whole body
to their fierce song of desire
that pulls you like tides
into this holy breath
of the day’s longing.

You have always known how it would be here
how this taste of daily incarnation
would ignite those inner bonfires
that keep you always burning,
always longing, always open
to fierce and tender winds
that call your soul awake
into the dawning.

Gratitude List:
1. Words of courage and conviction and challenge.
2. Keeping the hands open.  Avoiding the closed fist.
3. How they laughed while watching Pippi Longstocking.
4. How we’re all in this together.  You do your part, I do mine, and they’ll do theirs, and it all gets put together to make for a new thing in the world.
5. The little breaks and graces that add up to mean more than they mean.  How that makes the coping and muddling all more workable.

May we walk in Beauty!