Season of Dreaming

December 22, 2020December 22, 2020 / Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This is the season of dreaming, these nights and days between the Solstice and Epiphany.
I mine my dreams in these days carefully, for words and feelings and images, symbols I can use to put the old year to rest, or to carry into the creation of the coming year.

This is going to seem more like a personal journal, perhaps, than a blog. In some ways that is what the blog is. Feel free to read along. I follow a fairly Jungian path to dream interpretation, looking at myself in the story of it, reading it like a fairy tale, watching for images and people to stand out to me, for relationships to reveal themselves. I try to write my dreams in present tense, so it draws me back into the moment of experiencing the dream. I am open to hearing your thoughts about symbols and archetypes in the dream. I tend to close myself off to “This is what your dreams means,” finding my inner world much more open to “This is what I see or hear in your dream.”

Last night: I am taking a student home. While people in my dreams are often archetypal stand-ins, this is an actual student in an actual class of mine right now, a sensitive and thoughtful young woman who has been finding this year to be an emotional roller coaster. We are in Lancaster. Parts of it are recognizably Lancaster, but much of it is dream creation. Also, we are not in a car. I am pushing her in a large stroller.

At one point, we get stuck waiting in traffic, and she starts to suggest we go left, but I am already on it. We pull out of traffic and go through a neighborhood which is almost entirely brick. Orange brick–big, rounded orange bricks. All the houses, the cobbled walkways, and the street itself. “We call this Peter’s thumbs,” she tells me.

I say that it’s good exercise to go up over this way, and she says, “Oh, I don’t believe in that whole weight loss thing.”

This touches a nerve for me because, while I am being really careful right now about not gaining more weight (I gained al lot in the spring of the pandemic), I make it a point to never ever use the words weight loss diet in front of students. So I make a little half-lie: “Oh, I just meant exercise. I want to be healthy and strong. I don’t care about diets and weight loss.” (This is the lie I tell myself in real, waking, life in order to try to make it a truth. When the numbers on the scale are troubling to me. Even at 53, I still struggle with body image.)

At one point our journey takes us up a street that’s more of a tunnel, underneath a heavy, dark skywalk. I’m talking more about exercise and deepening my lie about not caring about my weight. At the top of the hill, when we get into the light, I realize that she’s no longer in the stroller thing. I panic. I’ve lost her! She emerges from the doorway behind me: “Oh, I just thought I’d walk for myself for a little while.” She’s wearing an orange acrobat’s leotard.

That’s when the alarm goes off. As I was writing that, I kept getting flashes of the dream that preceded it, of a small blond boy (perhaps one of mine) following an older child around a camp. They cover themselves in mud. They run down to the river to wash. I have a moment of panic that the small child will drown, and have that moment of vision when I see myself diving into the muddy river, frantically searching for a drowning child, but it passes, and I hold back on my panic as they run laughing into the water.

I think this dream hits right at the center of my anxieties about parenting and teaching–the weight of responsibility, of protecting (both physically and psychically) the young ones in my care. Unfortunately, when I get anxious about the physical well-being of my children, I do get momentary visions of worst-case scenarios sometimes. I do find myself spooling out the dreads. My Dream-spinner was showing me that part of myself, I think.

And also about my own lifelong battle with learning to love being in this particular body, of dealing with shame for my up-and-down weight, of very intentionally not speaking of diet in front of students, particularly female students. In general, I think teachers and adults need to be open about our struggles with students, not spilling all our secrets and pain, but letting them know that we, too, go through challenges. But this whole diet thing is pernicious and insidious. Hearing others talk about dieting has always been a trigger for me, and I want to be extra cautious about that with students.

Like the panic about the boy in the river, I had a similar panic when the student (who is struggling in real life) approached the topic of weight loss. I felt the heaviness of being responsible for someone else’s emotional health. But the reality, at the end of the dream, was that I was not actually pushing her. She was coming out on her own power, and indeed, with grace and agility and strength, as an acrobat.

I think the words for this dream are: Responsibility, Care, Anxiety. Maybe Diet or Body Image. The color orange: Sacral Chakra. Tend to the creative and sensual.
I have no idea what the heck Peter’s Thumbs are doing in the dream!

Gratitudes:
1. When I cannot be with my beloveds, memories really do warm my heart
2. New things arising and old things passing out of the picture
3. Messages from the Dream-spinner
4. Today is the last day of school until January–I need this break
5. Today I am healthy. And I hope you are, too. Stay well.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.” —Isadora Duncan

“There is really only one way to restore a world that is dying and in disrepair: to make beauty where ugliness has set in. By beauty, I don’t mean a superficial attractiveness, though the word is commonly used in this way. Beauty is a loveliness admired in its entirety, not just at face value. The beauty I’m referring to is metabolized grief. It includes brokenness and fallibility, and in so doing, conveys for us something deliciously real. Like kintsukuroi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with powdered gold, what is normally seen as a fatal flaw is distinguished with value. When we come into contact with this kind of beauty, it serves as a medicine for the brokenness in ourselves, which then gives us the courage to live in greater intimacy with the world’s wounds.” —Toko-pa Turner

“God has scattered the haughty ones.
God has cast down the powerful from their places of power
and has lifted up the lowly.
God has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.” —Mary

“No human relation gives one possession in another—every two souls are absolutely different. In friendship or in love, the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach alone.” —Kahlil Gibran

“Always there comes an hour when one is weary of one’s work and devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.” —Albert Camus

“Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop. ” —Rumi (Barks)

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power
reconstitute the world.
—Adrienne Rich

Merry Misty Solstice

December 21, 2020 / Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I do not need to see the sun to know that it is there. The morning rose in fog and mist, everything cloaked and veiled, emergent, in the swirling ensorcelling mist. No matter the dusky veil of the day, today is the first day of Sunreturn, and we celebrate once again the walk through the labyrinth, the beginning of the journey outward into light.

What dreams (both night messages and day visions) lead you forward into the light of the coming year? What stories are you part of, and how will you play your part?

Josiah and I are reading Bruce Coville’s Magic Shop series together right now, and we’re in the middle of Juliet Dove, Queen of Love. As she accidentally steps across a particular threshold, crosses a line into the mists of magic, Juliet’s companions tell her there is no going back when you have stepped into a story. The only way out is the way through.

What is your way through the story in which you find yourself? How will you prepare yourself for the encounters with messengers and guardians and fellow travelers?

Blessed Solstice to you, Beloveds.

Gratitudes:
1. Sunreturn
2. Walking the labyrinth. Although we journey alone, each following our own twists and turnings, it is a comfort and a joy to know we walk together in our knowing.
3. The magic of fog and mist
4. Cookies
5. Oyster stew: I think I need to stop and get some oysters on my way home this afternoon–I have a craving

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“No matter what they ever do to us, we must always act for the love of our people and the earth. We must not react out of hatred against those who have no sense.”
―John Trudell
*****
May you grow still enough to hear the small noises earth makes in preparing for the long sleep of winter, so that you yourself may grow calm and grounded deep within. May you grow still enough to hear the trickling of water seeping into the ground, so that your soul may be softened and healed, and guided in its flow. May you grow still enough to hear the splintering of starlight in the winter sky and the roar at earth’s fiery core. May you grow still enough to hear the stir of a single snowflake in the air, so that your inner silence may turn into hushed expectation.
―Brother David Steindl-Rast
*****
“When someone mentions the gracefulness of the night sky, climb up on the roof and dance.”
―Rumi
*****
“Be who you were created to be, and you will set the world on fire.” —St. Catherine of Sienna
*****
“How the Light Returns
Breathe deep the light-filled air.
Feel how the new sun touches you.
Remember the stars that circled you
through the long hours of darkness.
Sit within the circle of the dwindling dark
and feel the way it bathes you with memory.
Walk the bridge between dream and daylight.

These are the nights of the dreamtime. The tender new sun is born into the hush of midwinter, and we can hold the quiet light within us as we walk, careful step by careful step, out of the labyrinth. The inward journey into the darkness has stripped us of our crucial identity, piece by painful piece. And now, as we step outward, the darkness offers us new gifts, images that come in dreams. As the days gradually lengthen, and the dark nights wane, what words and images will the journey offer you to put into your pockets for the coming year?” –Beth Moonbat Weaver-Kreider

Paxtang Boys and Proud Boys

December 14, 2020 / Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Today is a weighty day, a day with heft.

Here, in PA, we’ve got a wintry mix, clouding the sky and filling the air, adding a mood both festive and anxious.
Here in the US, we are rolling out a hopeful new vaccine for a viral pandemic that is currently killing more of us daily than the number killed on 9/11.
Here in the US, our Electoral College will cast their votes for a new president in an election more volatile than any since that of Abraham Lincoln.
Here in the US, many of us are still gasping in the wake of a seditious attempt by several states, the sitting president, and 126 elected House Republicans to destroy our democracy, an attempt thwarted by our judicial branch, in a display of the importance of multiple branches of government creating checks and balances on the abuse of power.
Here, on the planet, we gaze in awe at meteor showers and planets in conjunction, and a total solar eclipse visible from our southern hemisphere. Some of us are even now commemorating the stories and legends of sky-portents in the days of the coming of the Child of Light.
Here in PA (and in the US), we remember the murderous ride of the Paxtang Boys at dawn on this day in 1763, when they massacred six of the last remaining Susquehannock people in cold blood.
Over the weekend, we watched their heirs and legacies–Proud Boys and others–bellowing in the streets of our capital, attacking historically Black churches and desecrating Black Lives Matter flags. Will we stand up to them, this time?

Here is something I wrote last year about the Paxtang Boys’ ride and the ways in which we have loosed them again upon the innocent. Today, when the Proud Boys are marching, it feels more grimly apt than ever. At the end, I’ve included a poem I wrote after visiting the site of the massacre on this day in 2013:

On this day in the walk through the December labyrinth, I mark the death of six people in a small village fifteen miles from here on the other side of the river. On December 14, in 1763, a group of angry white men from the Paxtang area of Harrisburg saddled their horses in the darkness and rode to Conestoga, to a small village a couple miles from the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County, where they burned the houses of the few remaining members of the Conestoga group of the Susquehannock people, and brutally murdered the six people they found there.

Fourteen residents of the village were away at the time, and escaped to Lancaster City, where they requested protection. Officials placed them in the county workhouse/jail on Water Street in the City for their protection. Two weeks later, just after Christmas, on December 27, the murderers broke into the jail and massacred everyone, men and women, elders and children.

The Paxtang Boys, as they were called, gathered reinforcements over the following days, and rode to Philadelphia, intent on murdering Native people taking refuge there. Only the forceful eloquence of Benjamin Franklin, who confronted them outside the city, kept them from continuing their murderous rampage. As far as I know, none of the men ever had to face justice for their murders. And in my research, I have found no account of anyone who tried to protect the villagers, either in their village or in Lancaster’s jail. Other than the cold comfort of locking them inside a jail cell (which proved in the end no protection at all), no one was able to offer the last remaining members of the Conestogas safe harbor.

One of my deep shadows this December is a fear of how we have let the Paxtang Boys out to ride again: white people’s rage, racism, privilege, a sense of entitlement to power and economic security, greed and grasping, fiercely protective anti-otherness. I need to keep probing this shadow, exposing my fear of today’s Paxtang Riders, so that I can be ready to stand against them, to stand between them and the vulnerable people they are intent to destroy.

Today, so many who have been seeking safe harbor within the borders of my country have been denied that safety, have been turned away to wait in squalid camps where they are in danger of looting and rape and kidnapping and murder, have been separated from their parents/children by my government and thrown into cold cells, have been forced to hide for fear of deportation. I cannot escape the irony of the modern-day name of the road where the stone marker memorializes the Paxtang Boys’ massacre of local indigenous people: Safe Harbor Road.

How shall we prepare ourselves to be Safe Harbor in days when the Paxtang Boys are riding again?

Here is a poem I wrote in 2013, after I visited the site of the stone marker at the place where the massacre occurred, at the corner of Safe Harbor and Indian Marker Roads. The names of the six who died on this day are in the poem.

Come with me now, Bright Souls
and we’ll sit in a circle together
silently a while. Then we talk.

Light six candles
for the people of the longhouse
who died that wintry dawning.

The air is filled already
with too many words.
The day carries so many mutterings
on the wind, on the wings
of the vulture, drifting
above the broken fields.

Sheehays, Wa-a-shen,
Tee-kau-ley, Ess-canesh,
Tea-wonsha-i-ong,
Kannenquas.

If we are to keep awake,
to live in the place
where the heart stays open,
then perhaps we must look
into the teeth of the story.
Together we gaze at those shadows.
Together we speak their names.
Together we listen for the sparrow’s call.

At the place of the great stone
I did not speak their names.
I left my shell there at that place
in the glittering sun.

Some days I cannot bear the darkness,
but I will close my eyes and sing
while you keep vigil near me.
And when you falter, too,
I will have found the strength renewed
to witness the tale while you sing to me.

Perhaps you will not believe me
when I tell you: As I drove
that road toward the River,
six deer ran across blue shadows
cast by afternoon sun on snow,
over the fields to the road.
They paused a moment to watch
the golden fish of my car approach,
then slipped across Indian Marker Road
and were gone, past the still pond
and into a fringe of wood.

Shouldn’t Be Surprised

December 4, 2020 / Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Why am I surprised? Why am I always surprised?

After four years of watching people I thought were philosophically and spiritually interested in wisdom and truth and justice cast off their moral and ethical clothing, shed their philosophical and ideological grounding, I shouldn’t be shocked at the callousness and cruelty, the active denialism and cult-like disengagement with humanity. But I am. I expected people to be better, and I keep holding out hope that the cruelty and denialism have just been glitches.

But I don’t think so.

People who railed against the “holocaust” of children represented by the seed of life in a zygote have been shrugging their shoulders when born children are torn from their parents’ arms and locked in cages–ill-fed, cold, untended, subject to sexual abuse.

People who spoke fervently and passionately about a fertilized egg’s right to life are actively fighting against programs which offer health care and living wages to the families of born children.

People who called themselves pro-life, who dogmatically claimed to stand for the tiniest little possibility of living humanity in a fetus, saying, “It’s only old people who are dying.” Refusing to wear a mask because it somehow infringes on their rights, when wearing that mask could be the difference between life and death for someone they expose.

People who seemed like educated, thoughtful adults absolutely denying the science and the demographics and the numbers of a disease that is killing thousands of people every day, actively passing on the outright lies.

People who talked about a gospel of “Good News” for all the world, ignoring the suffering of a world in the grip of a global pandemic. Laughing at people who take it seriously, scoffing at mitigation efforts, actively encouraging others to behave in dangerous and irresponsible ways.

I have known that there were nominal Christians who fought for power and wealth and white supremacy instead of Goodness and Love and Peace. That’s nothing new. And there are plenty of Christians who are acting like they care about Jesus, who are standing for justice and caring about life. I guess I just thought there would be more who, when confronted with real life-or-death situations–with a global pandemic, with a profane president, with a world of suffering–would actually decide to walk humbly with Jesus, to do justice, and to love mercy.

“The Dwarfs Are for the Dwarfs”

November 29, 2020December 2, 2020 / Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

Re-reading Lewis’s Narnia series is a struggle for me today. There are thealogical implications and structures that make me cringe, and racist and xenophobic stereotypes that offend me deeply. Still, often when I am trying to sift meaning out of events and experience, Lewis’s analogies appear into my consciousness to help me make narrative sense of what seems to be senseless. I know I have used this analogy before, have written about the bone-headed refusal of the dwarfs in The Last Battle to See the new reality, to engage with the truth of what was right in front of their faces, because they simply could not accept the truth that their eyes presented to them, but so often these days, I see similar intellectual acrobats who are unable to make sense of the reality they face because they cannot find their way out of the reality they have created for themselves.

In The Last Battle, at the moment of the very end of the world, everyone enters the door of the shack, expecting to see Aslan or his opposite (serious thealogical cringe). When the dwarfs enter, all they see is the dark interior of the shack. With the sounds of thousands rushing past them into eternity, the dwarfs sit down in a circle and talk amongst themselves about how deluded everyone else is, how everyone else has allowed their imaginations to run away with them. Griffle and his friends cannot see the reality that is in front of their faces because they have created a reality that they refuse to interrogate, and so they are stuck in the shack.

All along the way, the dwarfs, clannish and tribal, can only see the interests of themselves and those like them. Lewis gives them more range than he does his specifically evil characters. You’re allowed to like them, to wish–along with the children and Prince Tirian–that they would let themselves See beyond the structures of reality that they have created. But in the end, they’re imprisoned–as Aslan points out–by their own false reality.

I keep thinking of the dwarfs these days as I read bits and pieces of the rants from people who believe this virus is a hoax meant to line the pockets of Bill Gates and his cronies. They’ll give you web sites and articles and Youtube videos that explain how the virus is really not a thing, how it’s played up by Big Pharma because: insert merger here, only old and weak people are dying [really, I am still hearing this], Bill Gates, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. . . They write whole essays in the social media threads. They sound like college professors. Or the Unibomber. Or evangelists. They’re the mansplainer of mansplainers, although some of them are women. They will explain to you in great detail how none of this is happening, how some nebulous cabal has created this whole thing in order to rule the world [cue super-villain laughter]. They’re not going to be fooled again, they tell you.

“You must think we’re blooming soft in the head, that you must,” said Griffle. “We’ve been taken in once and now you expect us to be taken in again the next minute.”
(The Last Battle)

Instead of the shaggy golden face of Aslan, however, the image we behold in the space we have entered today is a life-threatening virus, and it’s overwhelming hospitals and taking lives at an increasingly rapid pace. And for some unfathomable reason the maskless masses continue to sit in their circle saying, “The dwarfs are for the dwarfs,” refusing to see the danger that is right in front of their faces. I too have little faith that the pharmaceutical companies have more interest in public health than in their own wealth and power. I don’t believe that corporations are capable of basic altruism. Still, the global goal at this point is to eradicate this virus to the greatest extent possible, and public health requires a vaccine, requires mitigation efforts. Please don’t sit in the circle with Griffle and Diggle and their friends, denying the reality of what is around you.

Gratitudes:
1. Belonging: This is something I wrote in previous years, but still rings true today–
“I don’t always feel like I belong, or like I understand the unwritten rules of certain groups, even though I think I am a pretty good observer of human nature. So when I am in a group whose rules accept everyone’s awkwardness and oddness unconditionally, which loves each one not in spite of our oddities, but because of them, then I feel safe. Then I feel belonging. I am especially grateful to those of you who know how to extend unconditional welcome in ways that make everyone believe they belong.”
2. Birdwatching at our little feeder station. There’s a whole family of red-bellied woodpeckers, along with the newly-arrived flock of juncos, titmouses (titmice?) and nuthatches, chickadees, goldfinches, sparrows, doves, downies, cardinals, a blue jay, and several fat squirrels.
3. How physically cleaning a space seems to create inner space. I need the creative jumble of clutter, but putting it neatly away also makes creative spaces.
4. My mother’s old Singer sewing machine. I have been putting it to great use lately, making what my friend Kris calls Frankendresses–I love that term.
5. This web of loving hearts. Thanks for being part of it all. Cast a line to someone today. Let’s make a glorious net, a new thing, a hopeful future.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“Healing comes in waves and maybe today the wave hits the rocks. And that’s ok, that’s ok, darling. You are still healing, you are still healing.” —Ijeoma Umebinyuo

“No matter where we are, the ground between us will always be sacred ground.“ —Fr. Henri Nouwen

“The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.” —Gretel Ehrlich

“‪The fact that these words and the jumble of lines that create their letters has no real, inherent meaning outside of a human context, yet they hum with life, is a wonderful reminder that what we imagine can easily become real and powerful simply because we decide it should be so.‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“Writing at the library. Surrounded by thousands of books, windows into other minds. Some of these writers are living. Some are not. Neatly ordered rectangles of concentrated human life and intellect. A book is certainly a kind of ghost and libraries are pleasantly haunted places.” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“The beauty of the world…has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” —Virginia Woolf

I know nothing, except what everyone knows —
If there when Grace dances, I should dance.
—W.H. Auden

“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic—the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.”
—Charles de Lint

Stay Home, Stay Safe

November 26, 2020November 26, 2020 / Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

A Poem, Some Gratitudes, a Dream, and a Quotation Collection:

Listen, Friend:
I will not tell you that
god has a purpose for your anguish.
Your tragedy was not divine will
sending a lightning bolt to wake you up
or to teach you a lesson about trust,
whatever the street preachers tell you.

Bad things happen, and they keep on happening.
Why, just yesterday, I saw a story
about some mother’s child gunned down
in the streets in the daylight
and people stood by and took videos
with their new camera phones.
There’s no god in that, right?
No good in that, no god.

And I don’t know what Moses and his king were thinking,
but I can tell you that this plague is not some
divine retribution by a heavenly pharoah
trying to teach us all a lesson,
though there are lessons aplenty to learn,
if only we can open our eyes and see,
then see again, and deeper.

I still hold that there’s a Creative Force
that set the Universe in motion, a Love
that watches us and even extends Itself toward us
when we’re in the throes of agony,
even sends occasional lightning bolts
of insight when we’re at the edge of holding on.

I don’t know why the good ones die young
or why tornadoes always seem to hit the trailer parks
instead of the mansions on the hills,
why the rich fat cats recover from the virus
after all their disregard of caution,
and those who are already suffering
lose the ones they love.

But here, in all the chaos of unknowing,
is this web: A line from me to you, another
cast to the next one that you love,
and one of mine, and on and on,
a tender, joyful, fierce and loving web
of hearts that hold and notice
even in the midst of all that is being destroyed.

Gratitudes:
1. Health care workers. They’re stretched thin right now. Spare them some love.
2. This man, who plans meals for special occasions just like his mother always did.
3. Making things. I sewed all day yesterday. It made me happy.
4. Finally! After seventeen years here, we are getting the septic system replaced. The pipes are in, and all that remains is to finish hooking up all the extra pieces and to put the dirt back where it belongs.
5. Reflections

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

In the dream, I am in a large crowded theater where people are preparing a play. Everyone is excited. They’re throwing themselves into their roles. I am kind of on the sidelines, supporting, encouraging, wishing I could be part of the fun.

I can’t participate, because no one is wearing masks or social distancing. Also, I am supposed to be in quarantine, so why am I in a crowded theater?

I go sit in a little room with a few others who aren’t in the main cast, and suddenly realize that even I am not wearing a mask. Fortunately, I have one in my purse.

I know where this one came from. Yesterday, I scrolled past something that a friend of mine posted about the Covid Phone alert yesterday, and she and her friends were mocking it, scorning the governor, encouraging each other to get together with their families and friends today. But I know that people are going to get sick as a result of their irresponsible actions today, and some of them are going to die because they ignore the warnings. I know that my beloveds who work in hospitals are preparing themselves for the terrible decisions they are going to be needing to make in the coming weeks about who gets treatment, and who doesn’t.
I have SO MUCH to be grateful for, and I AM grateful, and joyful. But I am also worried and sad, and angry at my friend and her friends for being so cavalier about something that will claim people’s lives. Please make safe and responsible choices today, friends.

[Later Edit: I promise I won’t resent you if you are gathering with the responsible people of your bubble, tending to each other’s mental health as you responsibly gather. I know there are grey areas here. My sulks are reserved for those who simply ignore it all and pretend nothing is happening, and who scorn those who are taking precautions. Still, I wish safety for all.]

Thursday’s Thankful and Thoughtful Words:
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” —Meister Eckhart

“‘Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.” —Alice Walker (h/t Tony Brown)

“Perhaps you were brought to this place for just such a time as this.” —paraphrase from book of Esther

“We have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. We have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. it is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, I think, to be an organ and a blade. But, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. We make horrible mistakes. It’s how we learn. We breathe love. It’s how we learn. And it is inevitable.”
—Nayyira Waheed

“Only those who attempt the absurd
will achieve the impossible.”
—M. C. Escher

“A seed sown in the soil makes us one with the Earth. It makes us realize that we are the Earth. That this body of ours is the panchabhuta-the five elements that make the universe and make our bodies. The simple act of sowing a seed, saving a seed, planting a seed, harvesting a crop for a seed is bringing back this memory-this timeless memory of our oneness with the Earth and the creative universe. There’s nothing that gives me deeper joy than the work of protecting the diversity and the freedom of the seed.” —Vandana Shiva

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower
by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Joanna Macy

Listen
Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Go Back to the Shire & Start Again

November 21, 2020November 21, 2020 / Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

When I was a teenager, and we got our first Apple Computer, we bought a Hobbit adventure game. It was one of those where you have to successfully execute a series of tasks in order to level up. You started at Bilbo’s house in the Shire, and you needed to get certain supplies to get on your way, and then you’d go through adventure, and you’d get to the trolls, and you had to figure out how to defeat them, but it you had forgotten to pick up a key that you had passed way back near the beginning, you would fail at getting into their lair for the next step, and so you would have to go way back to the very beginning again, and you’d have to remember to pick up the key, but then you might forget to open a door somewhere where you were supposed to pick up your sword, and so you’d fail again somewhere along the way and you’d have to go back to the beginning again and start over. I don’t think I ever got as far as Rivendell. The goblins always got me.

When my son and I were sent home from school yesterday because of a Covid exposure, I felt like we had fallen into that game all over again.

I knew we should get tested. That only makes sense, right? The way to prevent the disease is to make sure that people who are exposed get tested, so we make sure they aren’t passing it on to their families, and on and on. So we went on a Quest for a Test.

Call the Urgent Care. Sorry, no more appointments for testing today. Are you experiencing symptoms? Then you probably can’t get tested anyway. Sorry. [Go back to the Shire and start again.]

Call the doctor’s office. Sorry, no more appointments today. Call first thing in the morning and we just might be able to get you an appointment that would get you an order to get swabbed sometime next week. [Go back to the Shire and start again.]

Call the kid’s insurance company. Yes. He should get tested. Go to the York Expo Center Drive-Through testing site. His insurance pays the whole thing. And by the way, he’s due for his well-child check-up and a dental appointment, and he can get a free flu shot at Rite Aid. [Angel sound. Door opens. Pick up swab test. Pick up flu shot. Pick up well-child check and dental appointment.]

Drive to York Expo Center. No one is there. Find people on other side of huge parking lot. “No, there hasn’t been a drive-through test here for months.” Sorry. [Go back to the Shire and start again.]

Call MedExpress again, in York and Lancaster. No. Sorrysorry. No. Call doctor’s office again. No. [Sit in the Shire and think about how ineffective you are at your life.]

Take a nap and wake up with a terrible headache and the sniffles. Wonder if you probably have Covid. Isolate yourself in the bedroom for the night. Call MedExpress again and tell them you have symptoms. “Try calling in the morning.” [Go back to the Shire and stop bugging people.]

Call MedExpress in the morning, as they suggested. Busy. Call. Busy. Call. Busy. Repeat. Repeat. Call the doctor’s office. Busy. Call. Get partway through automated phone ladder. Wrong choice. [Go back to Shire.]

Call doctor’s office’s Very Confusing Phone Labyrinth again and again [Go back to the Shire. Go back to the Shire] until you get a voice. [Angel sounds.] “We can get you an appointment for Monday.” [You don’t have to go all the way back to the Shire, just to Bree.] Anything, please, yes, but is there no chance we could see someone today? Pause and go on hold. “Yes, I’ll schedule you both for an appointment at 11:00.” [Angel sounds. Doors open. Pick up sword and key.]

Ten minutes later, receive a call from doctor’s office. “The doctor would actually like you to get swabbed this morning so you don’t have to wait until next week. Come to the office, but drive around to the back, in the employees’ entrance, and get in the car line to get tested. Stay in your car.” [We have broken through to a whole new level now, Bilbo!]

Swabbed and teary-eyed, we head for home, pull up our video conference with a very pleasant but tired-sounding doctor. My symptoms are not consistent enough with Covid to concern him, especially since I tend to get headaches, and I have allergies, and people are catching cold right now. We don’t need to isolate within the house–the others have been exposed to us for five days already since our exposure. We’re to quarantine until November 30 (though a negative test might free us sooner), and the others in the house can come and go as they please, as long as they take all the precautions. We do not need to wear masks in the house any longer, and the cats are grateful. [You have made it to Rivendell. Rest well, small hobbits.]

So that is where we are. Because school was to go virtual beginning Monday anyway, we’ll just work from here and hope the wi-fi holds up. If I get a negative test, I might be able to teach from my classroom using the school’s wi-fi for the week following Thanksgiving.

Heron Feather

November 21, 2020 / Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I am finding new rooms in the house of my voice while I write with Jindu. When I respond to something in one of his poems or something he has said, and then weave it into the sense and the sound of my next poem, the writing gets electric and lively in ways I can’t often set myself up for when I write simply for myself.

Heron Feather
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

On my altar are bones and
a blue heron’s feather a shard
of broken pottery a snake skin
five seeds three pennies and a
statue of an ancient goddess
I made from clay some milkweed
fluff a pen I love to write with and
a paintbrush tools of the trade
some sea shells and a stone
from the path to my house
in the village where I was born.

Some of this is a lie but all
of it is true and when I die
you may keep all my lies
but put the stone into my
left shoe so I will know
where to go and put the heron
feather in in my hand so I can
fly there but don’t make plans
for a long time yet I have lots
of magic yet to make I think
this is what it really means
to be alive.

Gratitudes:
1. Glad we decided to go to virtual learning when we did. My son and I were sent home early today because we were exposed. I’m grateful that my school takes tracing seriously. I hope I can get a test tomorrow.
2. My students are such tender and sweet-hearted folx. I’m going to miss seeing them in person, but I look forward to seeing their whole faces for a while on Zoom.
3. Writing with Jindu. I am learning so much about poetry from writing with someone with such a rich sense of craft and word-work. It is such an honor.
4. Wordplay and artplay
5. Lancaster’s ExtraGive. Every year my town has a day of giving, and people give to their favorite charities, together, and every year it raises more money for people do to good in the world. It gives me hope.

Stay safe, Beloveds!

“…when women speak truly they speak subversively–they can’t help it: if you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you subvert.
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.
That’s what I want–to hear you erupting. You young Mount St. Helenses who don’t know the power in you–I want to hear you.” —Ursula Le Guin

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” —Muriel Rukeyser

“Oh to meet, however briefly, the greatness that lives under our surface. To summon enough bravery to be without armour and strategy, for the chance at meeting that irreducible power. Oh to make of our terrified hearts a prayer of surrender to the God of Love; that we remain safe in our quivering ache to be near that Otherness, even for a moment. To touch that ancient life who will never relinquish its wilderness, who lets instinct make its choices, whose knowing lives in bones and whose song is a wayfinder.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa

“The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love.”
―Parker J. Palmer

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
―Emily Dickinson

“One of my favourite teachings by Martín Prechtel is that ‘violence is an inability with grief.’ In other words, it takes skillfulness to grieve well, to grieve wholeheartedly. It requires us to bravely, nakedly come to face all that is lost, keeping our hearts open to loving just as fully again.
“When we make war, lashing out in rage and revenge, it is because we are unwilling to make this full encounter with grief. It is easy to enact the same violence which has taken so much from us―including towards ourselves―but the greater work is to let that which is missing enlarge your life; to make beauty from your brokenness.
“Whatever you hold in the cauldron of your intention is your offering to the divine. The quality of assistance you can generate and receive from the Holy is governed by the quality of your inner offering. When you indulge in fear and doubt, you are flooding the arena where love is attempting to work.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa

“Our true home is in the present moment.
To live in the present moment is a miracle.
The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green Earth
in the present moment.”
―Thich Nhat Hanh

“An awake heart
is like a sky that pours light.” ―Hafiz (Ladinsky)

“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” ―Oscar Levant

Once Were Women

November 20, 2020 / Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Not entirely sure how the strangeness of this poem came about. I found the trail and followed it, is all.

Once Were Women
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

There was a woman who lived in a very
small house. She had small rooms
and small chairs and her door was
small and her windows were small
and when she spoke, her words
came out small and her life was just so
small and no one was surprised
when she ran away from her small house
and went to live in the wilderness.

That other woman lived in a crooked place
and her paths were crooked and her
couch was crooked and the pictures
were crooked on her walls and crooked
was her way of walking and when she spoke
the words tumbled crooked from her mouth
and everyone understood when one day
she stood up straight and stretched her spine
and went to live with the small woman
out in the wilderness.

The very tall and thin woman with
a thin, thin smile, one day she smiled
wide and went to live with the women
who lived their wild lives in the wilderness.
And the woman who tried to be invisible:
she let herself be seen one day and she
ran out to join them, too, and the woman
who used to start every sentence with “Sorry.”
And the one who ate only leaves,
and the one who had headaches,
and the one who bought all the shoes,
and the one who painted everything grey,
and the one who swallowed her song,
and the one who was afraid of the rain.
Off they ran, and they became wild
as the animals, and some of them became
animals and some of them became
raindrops and some of them became
the red oak leaves quivering in the wind.
And they lived.
Happily.
Ever.
After.

Gratitudes:
1. I came downstairs this morning and Youngest (who is in a negative and defiant phase), said, “Ooooh! I like all those colors!”
2. We saw a fox on the way to school! I took a dirt connector road that I’ve been avoiding because the farm cats on that road don’t seem to have enough fear for cars, and trotting down the road ahead of us was Red Tod himself. He ducked into the underbrush before we passed.
3. There’s a Moms group at our school that gave each teacher a gift bag this week: yummy snacks, coffee, tea, mints, trail mix, a Post-it notepad, and a shiny silver pen. It was a big morale boost.
4. At least now that we’re definitely going virtual for a while, it will relive me of the sense of something impending. This feels like a really good call. I was just beginning to feel unsafe.
5. Having hard conversations–I feel like I am growing in my ability to engage conversations without getting defensive and without trying to appease, just sitting with the challenge of it, saying my part, and listening empathetically. (I hope I didn’t jinx myself by saying that.)

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“Walk fearlessly into the house of mourning, for grief is just love squaring up to its oldest enemy.” —Kate Braestrup

“Honesty matters. Vulnerability matters. Being open about who you were at a moment in time when you were in a difficult or an impossible place matters more than anything.” —Neil Gaiman

“Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors, but today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.” —Kahlil Gibran

“To write is to ask questions. It doesn’t matter if the answers are true or puro cuento. After all and everything only the story is remembered, and the truth fades away like the pale blue ink on a cheap embroidery pattern.” —Sandra Cisneros, Caramelo

“With guns, you can kill terrorists.
With education, you can kill terrorism.” —Malala Yousufsai

“The [one] who moves a mountain
begins by carrying away small stones.”
—Confucius, The Analects

“We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?” —Wendell Berry

Line From a Song

November 19, 2020 / Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

For the first line of this one, I stole a line I loved from Jindu’s poem from yesterday. I love how my own poetic voice is stronger and more on fire when I write with someone else.

A Line From a Song
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

There’s a line from a song I don’t remember,
something about the way November closes in,
how thin the space between breaths, how roses
still bloom in this bitter wind, but death stalks
the room I’m in, walks in winter’s shadow.

I know that somewhere in the middle of the song
was a line about longing for what I cannot have,
about the wrong door leading to the right room,
or the other way around. I’ve found I remember it
better when I hum it right before I go to sleep.

But sleep is the best drug I know, when
I can achieve it, when I can believe that I’m not
just escaping the rattle and whir of my days.
Sleep whirls the vortex that tosses the flotsam
of poetry into the day, and I’m remade.

Gratitudes:
1. One of my students asked my advice about her outfit yesterday because she said she thought I was “fashionable.” That’s not a word I think anyone has ever used or me before, and it was startlingly sweet.
2. Also yesterday, a student knocked on my door during a class and asked if he could borrow my skull. I have a plastic skull in my classroom–named Yorick, of course (alas! poor Yorick!)–and I sort of live for moments when I can participate in surreal shenanigans like that.
3. Giant burgundy leaves on a little oak tree.
4. Writing poetry with others.
5. Horchata.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“When Tolkien needed someone to place in the face of the great rising evil in his story, he chose the small ones. You and I are the small ones, friends. Let’s join hands and stand together. Let’s work together, speak together, sing and whisper and shout together.” —EWK

“We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.” —Terence McKenna

“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” —Audre Lorde

“Don’t operate out of fear, operate out of hope. Because with hope, everything is possible.” —Winona LaDuke

Our deepest fears are like dragons
guarding our deepest treasure.
—Rainer Maria Rilke

Praise Song
by Barbara Crooker
Praise the light of late November,
the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;
though they are clothed in night, they do not
despair. Praise what little there’s left:
the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,
shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow
of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,
the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky
that hasn’t cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down
behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves
that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,
Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy
fallen world; it’s all we have, and it’s never enough.

“Look at everything
as though you were seeing it
either for the first or last time.
Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.”
—Betty Smith

Mockingbird Chronicles

Holding the Bowl of the Heart

Season of Dreaming

Merry Misty Solstice

Paxtang Boys and Proud Boys

Shouldn’t Be Surprised

“The Dwarfs Are for the Dwarfs”

Stay Home, Stay Safe

Go Back to the Shire & Start Again

Heron Feather

Once Were Women

Line From a Song

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