The Contemplative and the Activist

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Kloster Disibodenberg
Kloster Disibodenberg

Two streams have been nudging me in different directions lately.

On one hand, I have been working through the Desert Wisdom Advent series from Spirituality and Practice.  While it can be frustrating to try to dig further into a contemplative life during the hustle and bustle of the daily, I believe that it is possible, and this is helping me to find my spaces.  I am trying to maintain that interior castle (was it Teresa of Avila who called it that?), the place of calm and contemplation that keeps me from getting whirled away by the whirlwind of the moment.

The other stream is the rising despair that I am feeling about the lack of will we seem to have in the United States to do anything about our mass murder problem.  We begin to look like people who live in a repressive political regime, unwilling and unable to make a change because the oppressor is too big for us to conquer.  But here it isn’t a government that is keeping us cowed and silent–it’s the NRA.  What keeps us from standing up and saying, “Enough already!”  The US has had more gun-related mass murders than there have been days in 2015.  I think we need an active anti-NRA revolution.

I glibly wrote something the other day about how the work of the contemplative needs to feed the work of the activist in order to keep the activist from despair, in order to keep the contemplative from irrelevance.  Perhaps that can be true.  Somehow I need to find the link.  Contemplation and calm are not the same thing as apathy and impotence.  Perhaps activism can be honed and sharpened by inner work.

Gratitude List:
1. New batch of fire cider on the way
2. Today’s brain is less foggy than yesterday’s
3. Thursday (it’s almost Friday)
4. Ginger
5. Rich colors for drab days

May we walk in Beauty!

Clear Vision

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

monastery
“Amma Syncletica said, ‘There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one’s own mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts.’ “

Gratitude List:
1. Elderberry syrup
2. Story to listen to on the journey
3. Boy making Christmas
4. Clear vision
5. Developing the interior castle

May we walk in Beauty!

Nurse-Boy

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

phoenix
“If you will, you can become all flame,” said Abba Joseph to Abba Lot.

Gratitude List:
1. A small nurse-boy.  When they got home from their grandparents’ house yesterday, and I was waking up groggily and painfully from a nap, a small boy sprang into action.  He started rubbing my feet.  Then he called out to his dad, “Dad!  Bring her some food!”  Then he called out to his brother, “Hey!  Come rub her feet while I go get my violin and play her some music!”  No matter that he was doing his Worst-Whiner Schtick within minutes.  I felt greatly cared-for.
2. Feeling better.  I knew it would happen.  I still sound like a granddaddy bullfrog, and I look pretty pale and ashen, but I feel so much better.
3. This Advent course that a friend gave me.  It’s from Cynthia Bourgeault’s Spirituality and Practice group.  It is on the spirituality of the desert abbas and ammas.  I am learning lots.  Today’s lesson is hard.  It’s good for me.
4. Shifting practices.  I will continue to write regular poems, but I am glad for a break from the prompts for a while.  Imposed discipline from the outside is important, but then it needs to settle into the corners a bit.
5. Brownies

May we walk in Beauty!

The Moment

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I lay down for a nap, to try to sleep off some of this fog.  I thought that perhaps I could catch a fish from the dream-stream for the poem that I am to write today.  The prompt is “let the moment begin.”  When I woke up, the last line of this poem that I wrote in April of 2014 was singing itself over and over again in my head.  It took me about half an hour to realize it was my own.

Prayer

To wait within the moment for the coming dawn,
To breathe the single breath of all that lives,
To walk the web on which we all belong,
To face the newborn day with love instead of fear.

To listen for the whisper of the Spirit’s wind,
To feel Creator’s heartbeat in the world around,
To hear the grace of the Beloved in my neighbor’s voice,
To embrace the sacred space between the past and change.

* * * *

So, today’s poem might look a little like this:

Step into the stream of time and change,
feel the tug and swirl that draws you on,
swimming where the current takes you.
Say the words that hammer at your throat:

I am here.

And again, as you feel the current take you,
no longer the same here where you were:

I am here.  And here.  I am here.

Let it echo from the walls of your heart
as the stream bears you onward and outward.
Each time you say it, you burst into flame,
all flame, all wind, all perfect dreaming:

I am here.

I Am Here

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Home sick from school today, but lost to be grateful for.

Gratitude List:
1. The painting of a road above the altar yesterday.
2. Singing, singing, singing
3. Ruby Bridges–her courage and her determination.  If a six-year-old could pray daily for those people who daily abused her, perhaps I can find it in me to pray for these presidential candidates who get my goat?
4. Meditation.  The Desert Ammas and Abbas.  Zentangle.
5. I know I will feel better again.  I sort of forget what normal feels like, and it has only been a few days of this.  Still, I know that I will get better.  I say an extra prayer for those who live with permanent or chronic illness or disability.

May we walk in Beauty!

An Open Letter

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s Prompt is An Open Letter.  I am so beaten up by this bad cold that I can’t even think straight to write.

An Open Letter to the Bug

I don’t even know what to call you:
A Bad Cold? Feverless Flu? Exasperation?
Whatever.  I concede.  You’ve got me.

I knew going in to that family party three days ago
that I was already sunk, but I struggled onward,
enjoyed the day, and likely infected at least three loved ones.

By yesterday, I was sure I was back on my feet again
but you laid me so low, I couldn’t even taste
that sweet potato casserole, that shoo-fly pie.

Today was just a blur of throwing good money
after bad.  I can just do this one more thing,
I thought, but I’m a goner now, for sure.

I’ll soak myself in Ny-Quil
and sleep you out of my system.

Good Teachers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1. The many fine, intelligent, and loving teachers I have had in my life.  Today, I remember Myron Dietz who taught me Anabaptist History, and who died this weekend.
2. Oatmeal
3. Shoo-fly pie
4. Rainy mornings
5. Getting back into the schedule

May we walk in Beauty!

Vast and Inescapable

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

The prompt is to write a poem based on “It was a dark and stormy night,” but to substitute my own adjectives.  I’m not entirely sure what this is about, but I’m still working out the dream.  Where does a pacifist find such visceral scenes of violence?

It Was a Vast and Inescapable Night

It was a vast and inescapable night.
The ghost in the attic had called his benediction
down the stairs–“Get out of here!” he’d said
as cheerily as usual, which is to say, not a whit.

The Night Mare whinnied in my ear,
“I have a nice little gallop planned for you tonight.”
She promised me she’d take it slow to start,
and show me deeper pools than usual.
I’d learn new meanings of my name.

The man was weeping when I shot him in the head
although he knew, like me, what was required.
It was myself I shot, of course, so loss and fear
and grief compounded with the guilt I felt,
the trembling gun still steaming in my hand,
and a body waiting for discreet disposal.

“I have done this work before,” I told my shadow steed,
“The murder.  Culpability.  The hiding of the body.
But in past dreams I was the victim, not the agent.”
Last time, my life was vastly changed.

I wish I could say that the sun sprang forth
into morning with a hearty shout,
that I leaped out of my bed,
my new name burning in the air above me.

But days have passed and the curmudgeonly ghost
still treats me more rudely than I deserve.
My Shadow Mare has left me to wander
the dream meadows darkly and in silence.

I wear my new name around my neck
in a small leather pouch.
I have yet to check it, to see it,
to listen for its colors in the bright day.

Sunrise

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

No prompt yet this morning, and I have to go help get ready for the second Thanksgiving feast.


IMG_1478
We’ve been playing gnomes again this weekend.  For a while, I had a dragon egg incubating there in the center of the labyrinth where the Queen is standing (in violet robes).  Then someone else needed the gems to make a gem mine, so I used the rocks to make a pretty excellent spiral. 

Gratitude List:
1. That sunrise: stripes of tangerine and violet, and a faint glow of cobalt shining through.
2. Photos of friends from far away appearing on my news feed this morning.  It feeds my spirit.
3. Time to play with the kids.
4. How a good stretch opens up breathing spaces inside.
5. Meditative drawing.

May we walk in Beauty!

Leftovers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

IMG_0239

Prompt: Write a leftovers poem.

What you have is the residual,
the leftover, the new guiding principle:
When all is said and done the finest morsel
may be in the doggie bag
awaiting your next meal.

Don’t underestimate the power
of the second day’s feast,
the way memory seasons the taste
with her own sweet-savory-sweet,
how the sharp edges of solitude
define the shape of intimacy.

Gratitude List:
1. That streak of orange fox, lithe and muscular, that raced across our path yesterday morning while we were on the way to Thanksgiving dinner.
2. Laughing together
3. Singing together
4. Eating together
5. Moments of solitude, too.

May we walk in Beauty!