How Sun Comes to the Hollow

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

P1020484  P1020487

This is how sun comes to the hollow:
The day arrives before the sun comes in,
the bowl of hills holding the morning,
shadowless and muted,

and then the tops of trees go golden,
branches like spiderwebs catching the sun,
and golden travels down the trunks of oak and locust,

and then a star emerges
over the southeastern rim of the bowl,
pulling shadows out of everything,
spilling gold over the fields.

Gratitude List:
1. One more snow day.  I really needed these snow days right now.  I’d’ve managed, of course, but now I feel less like I’m free-falling into the semester.  Two days of rest and contemplation after doing the grades is perfect for me.
2. One more snow day, which is to say: sleeping in.  I slept until after 7.
3. One more snow day, which is to say: hanging out with the fellas.
4. Anticipating the return to rhythm.
5. Memory of green.

May we walk in Beauty!

Digging Out

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Gratitude List:
1. The Good Samaritan
2. in his red pickup with a snowplow
3. who drove by on his way to a plowing job as I was trying to tackle this 3.5-foot wall of compressed snow

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4. and turned it into this:
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taking HOURS of work off our plates.
5. The shining blue at the heart of the snowbank
6. Sending in first semester’s grades.  Every few months, I get this marvelous sense of completion when I send in the grades for a completed semester: that chapter is closed.  Now I can focus on this one.  Sure, there’s often a trial by fire in the last days before grades are due, when I don’t know if I’ll get it all done in time, but it is satisfying to meet the deadline.  And of course, there’s the earnest pledge to myself to create more reasonable end-of-semester grading next time (I think I can manage it this semester!).

May we walk in Beauty!
Take care of each other!

Someone Has Been Walking Here

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“We carry ourselves wherever we go and we cannot escape by mere flight.” –Matrona I

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Some people have been walking here.

Gratitude List:
1. Moonshadows.  Did you see the faeries out there last night?  Such magic.  And this morning, it was starshadows.  Starshadows! (I have not seen the five all strung out in their line, but this morning one was pulsing, twinkling at me through the branches of the walnut and sycamore trees, oh so brightly.)
2. The internet connection that makes it possible for me to see what everybody else’s snow looks like on these snowbound days.
3. Getting the work done.  I’ve got this.
4. Baked Oatmeal.  It’s what’s for breakfast.  (Apples in there.)
5. Snow ice cream.  It’s what’s for snack.  (3 cups of snow.  Mix in 1/2 c. sugar, 1 c. milk, and 1 tsp. vanilla.  Add another 2-3 cups of snow.  Serve immediately.)

May we walk in Beauty!

Snowy Day

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Gratitude List:
1. Thundersnow (though, frankly, I could have done without the lightning when I was out shoveling a spot for Fred).
2. The children’s delight in the snow.
3. A warm and cozy house.  (I am worried about what the women from the shelter are doing today, hoping someone has made arrangements for them to have indoor spaces today, hoping that there were intrepid volunteers to staff the shelter this weekend.)
4. Word play.
5. Snow.  Did I say snow?  (Oooh, there was another crash of thunder just now!)

May we walk in Beauty!
Stay warm, ya’ll.

True Names

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2013 April 004

I gave my students in Creative Writing an assignment to create a collage and then write a short story or poem or essay that was sparked by the images that came together.  The idea was to begin the semester by unhitching the horse of the brain from the writing process for a moment–letting the creative urge impel them–and also to get them working with images right away.

I haven’t taken a photo of my collage yet, but here is the poem I wrote in response to them (I always seem to make two collages at a time).  A friend of mine recently turned me on to Francisco X. Alarcon’s poetry (he died a couple days ago), and I am finding the simplicity of his work to be incredibly powerful.  I cannot quite get myself to simplify enough to really be Alarconesque, but it was a powerful poetic experience to work in his style.  Also, we have been working with models of professional writers as a way to spark creativity, and we were working with an Ursula Le Guin short story about True Names, and that also found its way into my poem:

fire and flight

after the fire
has kindled
within you
patient gestation
of coals beneath
your heart
between
your ribs

fire within you
fire in the earth
fire in the fruit
the egg
the seed

flames will burst forth
and you will rise

you will know
your wings
you will
open your feathers
catch the breezes

the old world
of magic and monsters
will fall away
below you

you will dance
on pillows of cloud
you will swim
in rivers of air

you will hear your
true name
in the voice
of the wind

Gratitude List:
1. The promise of snow.  (I know, it causes anxiety, too, not knowing what will happen, but I look forward to being cocooned in the house for a time.)
2. Making collage.  Perhaps it was an entirely personal agenda to give that assignment, but I had fun making my own collages.
3. Lights at ends of tunnels.
4. Taking root.  Taking flight.
5. True Names.  One of your True Names is Beloved.

May we walk in Beauty!

Colors

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(We decided that with young readers in the house, it might be nice to have a sort of family creed or motto on the wall for them to explore, so we bought this one from Flinchbaugh’s Farm Market and gave it to ourselves for Christmas.  They read it out loud quite a lot.  The one about doing loud really well is, of course, their most vocal favorite.)

Gratitude List:
I have to be really careful to focus on the drive to work these days because I am driving into sunrise, and the colors tend to throw me toward a deep meditative mode.  I suppose I could try to attach symbolic significance to the various colors and the way they deepen my meditative state, but I’m not sure that it’s something nameable.  Yesterday there were wings of clouds that rose upward from the point where the sun was about to rise.  At their base they were a (1) glowing tangerine orange, which shaded upward through (2) magenta into a rich, deep (3) violet.  The tops of the clouds were rimed with a velvety (4) indigo, and behind it all was that pure and serene (5) aquamarine that I love so much.  I had to stop and get some snacks for my Advisory Group, and when I got back on the road, everything had shifted, and the clouds were, for a moment, a simple shining (6) gold.  I think I should take another art class with someone who can give me more vocabulary for color–the last art class I took was at Sunbridge College in 2002, and the color work we did there has become part of my regular meditations.

What experiences with color enrich your spirit?

Blessing

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2013 May 051

Here is a poem from this day in 2013.  It’s one of my favorites.

May the bright breeze of morning rouse your heart to singing,
May the fire of the noonday warm your heart to hopefulness,
May the cooling rains of evening wash your heart to freshness,
May the enclosing arms of the earth hold you through the midnight.

Walk in paths of the winds that awaken,
Walk through the fires that burn off the scars,
Walk in the waters that cool and renew,
Stand with your feet firmly planted on earth

Until you hear the voice of the wind,
Until you breathe the essence of the fire,
Until you smell the message of the waters,
Until you feel the heartbeat of the earth,
Until you see the sun rise
within you,
within you.

Gratitude List:
1. The wisdom and thoughtfulness of that group of students who led chapel yesterday, telling stories of their experiences of racism, opening up the conversation.  The post-chapel discussion took more than two periods because people were so caught up in it, and people were talking about it in the halls.  I am grateful for the courage they had to share their stories and get the conversation going.
2. Warm mittens
3. More readings from the desert mothers and fathers.
4. The collage assignment in Creative Writing.  I love watching them create and develop and work with images.
5. Routines.  Developing helpful habits.

May we walk in Beauty!

Living into the Wildness of Abundance

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

MLKDream

Gratitude List:
1.  The Lancaster Emergency Women’s Winter Shelter.  I am grateful that my church and so many organizations in Lancaster participate in making sure the program is staffed with volunteers throughout the winter.  It’s cold out there, and dangerous at night.  The motto for the program is “Safe.  Warm. Dry.”
2. Baked oatmeal with mixed berries for supper on a cold night.
3. The Here and Now piece yesterday on NPR about the hyenas of Harar, Ethiopia, and the man who feeds them.  When the city was built in the 13th century, low entry passages were left in the thick walls, so the hyenas could come and go throughout the city.
4. Getting enough sleep.  I lost sleep over the weekend because I did a shift at the shelter, but I have had time for naps, and lately I fall right back to sleep when I wake in the night.  I even struggle to wake up in the mornings instead of my body pushing me out of bed at 4.  I will receive this with gratitude for as long as it lasts.
5. Sunday’s sermon. Live with a belief in abundance: I have abundant time, sleep, resources to accomplish my Work.  There is enough for all of us.  The church has certainly twisted and skewed this concept over time: to believe in abundance is to believe that God will make you wealthy, to exploit the earth for material resources.  I have responded to that erroneous thinking by shifting to a sometimes scrimping frugality that has me living with a sense of scarcity, of never having enough time, enough sleep, enough resources–and that pushes me into a hoarding spirit, not just of stuff, but of time and spirit–and this can be paralyzing.  Writing these gratitude lists has helped me to learn to appreciate the abundance of my life.  The words on Sunday helped me to look at how I can deepen that belief and live into the wildness of that.

May we walk in Beauty!

What Have You Done?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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Just a little morning riff here:

“What have you done for color?” –Henri Matisse

What have you done for color,
for light, for dancing?

What have you done
for the quiet journey of the sun
over the ridgetop at dawn?

What have you done for the line,
for the eloquent curve,
for the circle?

What have you done for the pure note,
the perfect A that hangs in the air above you?

Gratitude List:
1. Pie night.  I didn’t write about that when it happened, but when I got home on Friday, Jon was making pie crusts.  He made an out-of-this world vegetable pie, and with the leftover dough, we mixed up a lemon sponge pie.  I think we will have to do this more often.  Of course, it brought to mind the cherry pie that he made for me once when we were dating.  He told the boys that he would help them some day if they want to make pies to impress their dates and their families.
2. How getting rid of things makes the things you hold onto even more real.  We gave away a rather large stack of vinyl records the other day, and suddenly I find myself playing the ones we kept.  My ears are still filled with Abba.
3. Watching a child become a reader.  Literacy is a magical thing.
4. Miracles and wonder.  These are the days. . .
5. Learning the new script for how I speak about myself to myself.  (This is a constant process.)

May we walk in Beauty!

The Gift of Today

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kittykisses

Gratitude List:
1. Today.  What a gift.  Here’s another one, with all the same hours as yesterday.  And tomorrow, another one will come.
2. Good Work.  English teachers tend to fuss a bit about the stacks of grading (and I have a massive stack of last semester’s papers to finish in the precious hours of today), but it’s Good Work.  Meaningful.
3. Nourishment.  Nurture.  I want to ponder those words a little.  What are the shades of difference in their meanings?  How are they similar?
4. Laughter.  One of my mentors in a previous teaching job once told me, “Make them laugh every day.”  I think that applies to families and friends and oneself as much as to the classroom.  Laugh every day.
5. Clearing out.  We are working on getting rid of 2016 things from our house in 2016.  It’s a real challenge, about 39 things a week, 168 things a month.  And it feels good.  It also makes me more aware of not bringing in more stuff.
6. The sun has just lifted over the ridge and into the kitchen window.  Hello, Bright Friend.

May we walk in Beauty!