Snow Crocus

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snowcrocus
Not a particularly clear photo of the white crocus in the snow.  Among the masses of deep purple and bright violet crocus is one golden crocus who was completely covered by the snow, and this lovely white one, camouflaged in the snow.

Gratitude List:
1. Crocus in the snow
2. Crow in the snow.  There is some inward thrill I can’t quite name about those black wings flying through a field of dancing white flakes.  Also, I love seeing black wings against a field of golden corn stubble.  Black wings against a blue sky.  Black wings through misty air.
3. Yesterday’s conversations, Part A:  For my opening moments in class yesterday, I followed the lead of another teacher friend and showed a video about a high school student who was disturbed by the unkindness of tweets between students in his school.  He began a Twitter account in which he began tweeting sincere and heartfelt compliments about his friends.  People began talking about it, and it began to snowball.  I was afraid my students might be cynical, and the one class that I was most concerned about began talking about it in a slightly cynical vein, and then suddenly they were sharing about the things that hurt them, the ways they respond to unkindness, the ways they try to include each other.  We didn’t really get to my actual lesson for the day, but I am pretty certain that learned more in that spontaneous, student-generated conversation than anything I could have offered them.  I need to keep remembering that once in a while the best thing a teacher can to is just get out of the way.  Language Arts is about expanding the communication skills of students–so I consider that class a success on the academic as well as the psycho-social level.
4. Yesterday’s conversations, Part B:  I ended up getting home much later than I had planned to because a Chinese student stopped by after school to talk about how to improve his English grammar.  We went through his most recent paper in detail, and talked about how to make his sentences flow.  While we were working on the paper, we also talked about imperialism: Japanese imperialism in China at the time of World War II, and Roman imperialism at the time of the Caesars.  I love being back in the world of academia and watching my students beginning to piece together their ideas and learning.
5.  As I typed that last, I had a sudden vision in my head of my grad school professor, Dr. Zancu, who would set up a discussion, then sit back and smile and nod serenely at us as we went at it.  I feel myself in the stream of the many good teachers I have had in my life: my mother who was my Kindergarten teacher; Miss Guntz, my fifth grade teacher at Locust Grove Elementary, and my other teachers there; my teachers at LMH; professors at EMU and Millersville and Sunbridge College; Sarah Preston, who has taught me so much about putting my roots into earth and my branches among the stars.  I am incredibly grateful for my teachers.  I feel a convergence, as though all those streams of learning are meeting now.
6.  Since those last few were several parts of one theme, I am going to give myself a bonus gratitude this morning:  Rising to the occasion.  I have gotten used to saying, “That’s not in my skill set.”  And that’s great protection–it has served me well and kept me from getting too caught up in too many things that I can’t quite manage.  But there also comes a time when it seems right to say, “I am ready to grow in that area and develop those skills.”  Scary stuff, that.  I am going to take on the symbol of the mountain lion for a while, to help me focus on the inner growth that I want to develop.

May we walk in Beauty!

God Runs to You

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“If you take two steps toward God,” the Sufi mystic Satish Kumar tells Pi Patel in Life of Pi, “God runs to you!”

My friend, do you see
how everything runs to you
when you draw nearer?

Gratitude List:
1.  The daffodils at school are preparing to burst open some morning soon.
2.  That red-tailed hawk that wheeled low above the farm this afternoon.
3.  Still room to ripen.  How to say this one?  I’ve been thinking lately about how middle age doesn’t not have to mean peak ripeness.  I’m still allowed to grow, still allowed to mature.  Whew.
4.  Wiggle room.  Some days, it’s okay to be simply sufficient.  Striving counts.
5.  Teamwork.  I love my colleagues.

May we walk in Beauty!

The Ferns will Unfurl in the Sunshine

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P1010973
Soon, soon, soon…

Gratitudes:
1.  Another amazing music chapel/assembly this morning: from a 16th century Korean opera to a men’s quartet to a jazzy piece arranged by students.
2. Yesterday’s sunrise.  Enough to make the grumpiest time-change-denier sit up and take notice.
3. Milestones.  We took off the training wheels and that kid just took off on his bike like he’d always known how.
4. Being open to what comes.
5. Helping to hold the web.

May we walk in Beauty!

Aconite and Crocus

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Slides 097
A Shirati morning, circa 1970.  Todd is holding
an African Green Pigeon. 

Gratitude List:

1. That fog last night, how it swirled around the lamps on the bridge, how it turned the lamplight into a living, swirling thing.
2. Yellow aconite.  Violet crocus.  The boys say they have seen the bees.
3. Friends of Shirati banquet last night.  Old friends.  Lifelong connections.
4. Daryl Snider’s concert at the banquet, how every song seemed to be perfectly designed for the moment.  Here is one of the songs he sang last night, “Nou se Wozo,” about resilience.  This performance was from last fall when Sopa Sol (the singing duo of Daryl Snider and Frances Crowhill Miller) sang it with LMH’s Campus Chorale.
5. Dawn chorus

Wings

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I dreamed I had wings,
black feathers rising behind me like shadow.
When I opened my eyes,
the lonely earth spread out beneath me;
the old moon was at my back.

Gratitude List:
1. Crows crossing the moon in the morning
2. Mist rising from the Millstream in the afternoon
3. Options
4. Shadows
5. Three Good Things.  I have been carrying some heaviness lately–by my own choice, and with gratitude and great love.  So it was nice in the space of this day to have Three Good Things come my way: a student stopped by to tell me that her father, who had been injured fighting a fire a year ago, is back on the job; another student, adopted as a baby from Russia, stopped by to tell me that he finally received his official citizenship; this evening at the library, I ran into a friend I haven’t seen in a long time.

May we walk in Beauty!

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 7 Comments

Tonight, a new set of Shaman Words.  A Magic Spell.  A Prayer.  An Incantation for Healing.

I will say that I breathe and mean that I am praying.
I will say the drums are throbbing in the night
and mean that your heart beats
to the rhythm of the earth’s heart,
strong and measured,
strong and measured,
strong and measured.

I will say sparks rise from fire
and mean my thoughts fly to you.
I will say the River flows to sea
and mean your blood flows
through its royal chambers
in the manner it is meant to.

I will say the hunting lionesses
gather on the plains
and mean that the women
are fierce in their prayers for you,
that the mothers
are wild in their magics
to see you whole again.
Gratitude List:
1. The good words of Conrad Moore.  Sometimes the best words are the ones that unsettle, that cause a little discomfort, that admit to anger, that shake us from our complacency, to wake us up, and break our status quo.  Jesus called the spirit the Comforter.  Sometimes the people need a Discomforting Spirit to bring renewal.
2. Watching live theater with the boys.  I am the House Manager for the plays–in charge of the ushering.  I took the boys with me to different shows of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat this weekend and they helped usher and then watched the show.  Nothing cuter than watching a five-year-old absorbed in a musical, eyes wide, clapping at the end of each song.
3. Thaw.  Warmth.
4. It’s International Women’s Day–I am grateful for Jane Goodall and Wangari Maathai and Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and Mary Oliver and Joy Harjo and Malala Yousufzai and Leymah Gbowee and the suffragettes and the herbalists and witches and midwives and mothers and sisters and daughters and word-weavers and artists and farmers and teachers who have gone before.
5. The heart.

May we walk in Beauty!

A Forest

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2014 January 021

For Friends Who Are Experiencing Anxiety:

Here in the hollow
the sun sparks white flame
from the snow-boughed limbs
of walnut and sycamore.

And you, can you feel the rays
that sparkle to your valley
from my own heart-limbs?

From our many different dells
we trees make a forest
which hums with the light
we are sending your way.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Big words.  Panopticon, in a student paper.  Hippopotomonstrasesquipedaliophobia, from Ellis’s student dictionary.  It’s the fear of big words.  Change the ending from phobia to philia (love of) and you’ve got me.
2. During this last big snow, the color for contemplation (other than white, of course) was ginger/rufous/chestnut.  Fred the ginger tomcat on my lap, set off by the rich colors of an olive and russet blanket.  The chestnut flank of the titmouse who sat in the twiggy branches high up in the sycamore outside my bathroom window and seemed to watch me brush my teeth.  The deep rufous/russet flanks of the towhee who visited the feeder during the storm and scratched, chicken-like, to get the seed below the snow, setting the table for the less industrious birds.
3. Creativity.  Music, art, drama, craft, word, play.
4. I have to say it: March snowstorms.  This reminds me of a March blizzard years ago that kept a party of giddy friends snowbound for two days longer than a weekend.
5. Healing.  Hope for healing.  The body’s ability to work wonders to fix itself.

May we walk in Beauty!

Language Event II

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In this book of Native American poems and rituals, “Language Event II” is labelled  Navajo, and goes like this:

Hold a conversation in which everything refers to water.
If somebody comes in the room, say: “Someone’s floating in.”
If someone sits down, say: “It looks like someone just stopped floating.”

(Shaking the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Native American Indians, edited by Jerome Rothenberg)

That’s all there is to it.  It reads like a drama exercise or a poetry writing prompt.

I keep trying to write a poem, but none are swimming my way at the moment.  Perhaps this is one I’ll try as a verbal exercise throughout the day and see if my children notice.

Gratitude List:
1. A snow day.
2. The way those indigo afternoon shadows flowed across the snowy landscape.
3. The way snow brings every branch and twig into high relief.
4. Persephone never fails to return.  She will rise.
5. Fresh start.  Tabula rasa.  Blank pages.  Snowy fields.

May we walk in Beauty!

 

Colors of March

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Planting

Here is a photo from last year when we first began to plant.  It’s that time again!

Gratitude List:
1. Bluebirds and the Bluebird Whisperer.  The bluebirds know my dad.  They “knock” on the window to get his attention.  They fly up to the window perch to thank him after they’ve had their share of mealie worms.  The watch for him through the windows of the house.
2. The stunning scarlet amaryllis of Amaryllis Drive.  They’ve had at least one indoor amaryllis bulb for years and years, so it is only appropriate that their house is now on Amaryllis Drive.  And this year’s crop of blooms is out of this world.  Sun shining through the red petals.
3. Naming the loss.  Often when there are disagreements or differences of opinions in a community, I think we don’t openly name the losses of those who choose to leave, because we don’t want to gossip or pass around misleading information.  But then we never really grieve the loss together.
4. First Responders.  We passed an accident on the way home yesterday on those slippery roads.  People stood out in the freezing rain to help and direct traffic.
5. The way the gulls flew up off the River like snowflakes whirling upward.
6. Bonus, because.  The sap is rising.  I can see it in the shift of color in the willow up on Pisgah, and in the forsythia.

May we walk in Beauty!

Say Dream and Mean Poem

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2014 March 016

To celebrate the dawning of March, here is a photo from last March.  I don’t think the aconite are up just yet, but I will check this morning on the way out to the car.

Two nights ago, I dreamed that Lady Gaga and her beau were touring the school one afternoon and stopped by my room.  The Lady was enthralled by the look of the room, and told me that it must mean I was an excellent teacher.  Look at me, fishing for compliments even in my dreams.  I know where this one came from, of course.  I had been pondering, as I fell asleep, how fascinating it is that all these sober and earnest Lancaster County Mennonites (I include myself in those descriptors) are suddenly three degrees of separation away from Lady Gaga: We know people who taught Taylor Kinney, who is soon to be Mr. Gaga.  Does that make him Lord Gaga, perhaps?

This morning, I woke up in the middle of an etymological dream about the root jour, which my sleeping brain reminded me means day.  I know that journal means the record of the day, so journey, I woke up thinking, must mean the day’s travel.  Sojourn–how does that differ from journey?  I looked it up a moment ago.  The first part of  sojourn comes from sub-, which means “less than,” so sojourn originally intended to indicate a short stay, whereas journey was about the travel from place to place.  I am so glad that my dreaming mind had me clear up all that information.  Perhaps I need to plan a journey, a sojourn.

This morning’s writing exercise is the Language Event I wrote about yesterday.  I am going to try to do it as a free-write–as fast as I can–and see whether any treasures fall out of my foggy brain.

Say journey and mean day
Say blue and mean that you were out in the morning
Say wildness and mean longing
Say twilight and mean the way your soul whispers
Say birdsong and mean message
Say warning and mean that you need to move on
Say season and mean that you have become someone new
Say winter and mean that an old thing is passing
Say springtime and mean that the morning is dawning
Say morning sun and mean that you open your eyes
Say green and mean that you are nourished and fed
Say golden and mean that butterflies are returning

This has some possibility.  I feel like I might want to keep a notebook and write ten of them a day, and then compile a Shaman’s Lexicon Poem, perhaps.  If you want to do it, too, feel free.  Perhaps our poems will meet some day in the ethers of the internet.  I think I will add it to my list of poetry-writing exercises for the ninth-grade poetry unit.

Gratitude List:
1. Grandma Weaver’s afghan and old plum-colored recliner.  Nothing says comfort to me quite like sitting here like this.  Come to think of it, the white and blue quilt that is folded over the back of the chair right now was made by Grandma Slabaugh.  (Say grandmother’s blanket and mean enwrapped by love.)
2. A clean house.  (Say clean house and mean quiet mind.)
3. This sea-foam-colored scarf.  (Say aquamarine and mean contemplation.)
4. Playing violin with Ellis on the cello yesterday afternoon with the winter sun sparkling through the windows. (Say music and mean my heart is dancing.)
5. The shenanigans of a silly five-year-old. (Say shenanigans and mean shenanigans.)

May we walk in Beauty!