Portent

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments
Shining Through

This moment actually happened last night as I was driving home. My mind made a meaning of it, where perhaps someone else might not have noticed the way the eagle flew, or watched the crow fly after. I think my point is that it’s not just that I am overly whimsical or that the spirits of the land had a specific message for me, but that we make the meaning we see, and that that does have portent and meaning because of the context we give it. And that perhaps not being ready to see, not paying attention, deprives us of inner connections we could be making.

Portent
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Last night as I crested Mt. Pisgah ridge
beneath a wispy crescent of a moon,
an eagle flew low across my vision
from west to east, across the moon
across the gold-splashed indigo dusk.

I’d caught my breath when
flying north to south, a solitary crow
crossed the eagle’s path
and disappeared into the growing dark.

I could say it was important. Potent.
A portent. Was I the only observer?
Was it a moment meant for me,
an implication for my mind to find?
Had I not been meandering homeward
at that very instant, would there have been
a meaning in that moment?

If a tree falls, and all that, right?
What I do know is
that within the world of me
there is now
a great X inscribed
by black wings
across an indigo sky,
saying, “Here, here, here.”

“You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap.” —Fannie Lou Hamer*****”Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow*****“Silence is a frightening thing. Silence leaves us at the mercy of the noise within us. We hear the fears that need to be faced. We hear, then, the angers that need to be cooled. We hear the emptiness that needs to be filled. We hear the cries for humility and reconciliation and centeredness. We hear ambition and arrogance and attitudes of uncaring awash in the shallows of the soul. Silence demands answers. Silence invites us to depth. Silence heals what hoarding and running will not touch.” —Joan D. Chittister*****“The present moment is the intersection of eternity with time.” ―Beatrice Bruteau*****“Only the present moment contains life.” ―Thích Nhất Hạnh*****“I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful—an endless prospect of magic and wonder.”―Ansel Adams*****“I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.” ―Hermann Hesse, Demian*****“I went inside my heartto see how it was.Something there makes me hearthe whole world weeping.”―Rumi (Barks)*****”Did you ever hear a tree pushing out of the ground or the snow falling? Great things happen in silence.” ―Mother Angelica*****”Everything belongs, even the “bad” and dark parts of yourself. Nothing need be rejected or denied. No one need be hated. No one need be excommunicated, shunned, or eliminated. You don’t have time for that anymore. You’ve entered into the soul of the serene disciple where, because the Holy One has become one in you, you are able to see that oneness everywhere else. Almost like magic!” ―Richard Rohr*****“Our work is to show we have been breathed upon—to show it, give it out, sing it out, to live it out in the topside world what we have received through our sudden knowledge, from body, from dreams, and journeys of all sorts.” ―Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes*****“We found ourselves in a realmwhere dreams are formed,destiny is chosenand magic is as realas a handprint in the snow.”―Libba Bray

Forest of Hours

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
Yes, I am obsessed with my mushroom friends.

Today, my friend Jindu wrote a poem of time and story and God, and I let that wave roll over me as I sat down to write my own poem. I think I let the poem tell me enough about myself to make me a little uncomfortable, maybe light a fire under me.

Forest of Hours
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

The clock has berated me all day,
complaining about my betrayal of time,
scorning the way I keep getting lost
in the forest of hours,
claiming I should be familiar
with the pathway home by now.

I am not time’s fool, you know,
nor God’s familiar. I’m no black cat,
no ignorant—or innocent—
child in the fairy tale. I know what I’m doing.
I’m wasting not time, but self.

I’m listening for the sound God makes
as she sings through the branches
of these hours that surround me.
I know in my bones that the story
has a hole in it somewhere, know without asking
that the wolf is standing there
right behind my left shoulder, and also
that there is a well in a stone tower
within a grove of oak
that holds the secret,
if only I can find the key
to fit the door.

But who is telling this story?
I could have sworn it was God,
but maybe I’m just fooling myself, brother.
Maybe the wolf has been lying to me
all along. Maybe God rides a broomstick
through the waving branches.
Maybe the story is telling itself.

Perhaps the clock has a point.
I am, after all, a middle-aged poet
with nothing much to show for my life’s work
but these rags, this tarnished key,
and the sense that I’ll find the secret
of the story in the next bright clearing.

“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” —Samwise Gamgee

“When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad.” —Miles Davis

“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” —Frida Kahlo

A little story by Amrita Nadi:
At the end of a talk someone from the audience asked the Dalai Lama, “Why didn’t you fight back against the Chinese?”
The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up at us and said with a gentle smile, “Well, war is obsolete, you know.”
Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he added, “Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back. . .but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you.”

“There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze.” —Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life

“Always there is something worth saying
about glory, about gratitude.”
—Mary Oliver, What Do We Know

Do your little bit of good where you are;
its those little bits of good put together,
that overwhelm the world.
—Desmond Tutu

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” —Jeannette Rankin

When we see the Beloved in each person,
it’s like walking through a garden,
watching flowers bloom all around us. —Ram Dass

“You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles. You slipped into this dimension as a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs. You blasted into this realm as a lush explosion of ecstatic gratitude. And it is your birthright to fulfill those promises.
I’m not pandering to your egotism by telling you these things. When I say, “Be yourself,” I don’t mean you should be the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and stand alone at the end of time on top of a Mt. Everest-sized pile of pretty garbage.
When I say, “Be yourself,” I mean the self that says “Thank you!” to the wild irises and the windy rain and the people who grow your food. I mean the rebel creator who’s longing to make the whole universe your home and sanctuary. I mean the dissident bodhisattva who’s joyfully struggling to germinate the seeds of divine love that are packed inside every moment.
When I say, “Be yourself,” I mean the spiritual freedom fighter who’s scrambling and finagling and conspiring to relieve your fellow messiahs from their suffering and shower them with rowdy blessings.” —Rob Brezsny

“The root of joy is gratefulness…It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.” ―Brother David Steindl-Rast

(W)Rite of Revolution

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

My friend Jindu and I are going to write a poem a day for a month. I kind of petered out on the November prompt-a-day process, partly because I didn’t hook up with anyone else to keep me accountable, I think.

I am seeking my poetic edge right now. I think I have settled into a dreamy voice that feels truthful and real to me, but I also want to push myself to dance it more toward the edges, to use the knife of poetry to cut through the lies which have overtaken out communal political life. I want to do, as Toni Morrison suggests: “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I listened to the This Jungian Life podcast episode on QAnon yesterday. The analysts spoke of the mad shaman archetype, cult leaders like the Rajneesh or Jim Jones, and political cultists like Donald Trump. These mad shamans tap into and seem to control the prevailing group subconscious, so I put the political ones in my poem.

In shifting my voice a little, I lose the sense of what is incisive and rich versus what is schlocky and overdrawn. I think I really like this one, but I’m not sure whether it works or not. I am really good at taking constructive criticism, so if you have suggestions for making it better, or if you think it simply doesn’t work, I would value your thoughts.

(W)Rite of Revolution
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

It’s an insane season on the world stage
when the mad shamans have throttled reason,
caged the people’s psyche
to manipulate the narrative, to stir up
snakes’ nests of impotent and undirected rage
that has no urge for revolution.

When old men commit their treasons in broad daylight
with a populace too cowed to call it out,
and the well of civic sense is poisoned
and dissent is disallowed, then
we are ripe for revolution.

Can we write a revolution,
shake up a sleeping people
with glowing word-bombs and poetic lines of fire?
Can we rhyme our way to wakefulness?
Express defiance in the rhythms we lay down?

The ancient prophets called down fire from heaven
with poetic furor, and each stage of history
has its poets in the streets, calling out for justice,
eyes ablaze and wild hair whipped by Armageddon breeze.
The bodies of the tyrants’ victims line the empires’ alleys,
and naked truth has been outshone by sexy lies.

When all they know is violence, can we stand
within the golden pillars of our words, unweave
the strands of their intimidations with our poetry,
ignore the pomp and vain bravado of the ones
who make their final stand in halls of power,
reveal instead a vision of a just and equal future,
turn our backs on old men’s lies? Set Truth,
in all her naked glory, back in the center of our discourse?

Set the poets and the prophets loose in all the streets,
from Washington to Lagos, to Moscow, to Beijing.
From Caracas to Jerusalem, to London, to Riyadh.
Free the words on crumpled pages, creaking laptops,
throats constricted from the tyrants’ iron claws.
Create new incantations to freedom and democracy.
Unravel the curses of the mad shamans, unweave
their version of a twisted history.
Write a new page.
Stage the revolution
in the realm of dream and vision.

“We live in a world of theophanies. Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels, but this can only happen if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure.”
—Macrina Wiederkehr

“It was one of those days you sometimes get latish in the autumn when the sun beams, the birds toot, and there is a bracing tang in the air that sends the blood beetling briskly through the veins.” —P.G. Wodehouse

“You deserve a lover who takes away the lies and brings you hope, coffee, and poetry.” —Frida Kahlo

“I touch God in my song
as the hill touches the far-away sea
with its waterfall.
The butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough.”
—Rabindranath Tagore

Clarissa Pinkola Estes:
“We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?
“One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds beacons, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of of soul in shadowy times like these—to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.”

“Speak to your children as if they are the wisest, kindest, most beautiful and magical humans on earth, for what they believe is what they will become.” —Brooke Hampton

“Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things.
Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God.
Every creature is a word of God.
If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature—even a caterpillar—
I would never have to prepare a sermon.
So full of God is every creature.”
—Meister Eckhart

Yes
It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could you know. That’s why we wake
and look out–no guarantees
in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
—William Stafford

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” ―J.R.R. Tolkien

The Vampire Poem

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’ve been a little obsessed with the vampire dream I had the other night, with the idea that I knew in the dream that I was watching the images appearing as I read a poem. I needed to have the poem. Because it has an old folk tale feeling, I kept getting caught up in archaic-sounding language. The rhythm and rhyme kind of happened naturally as I began, and even though it felt a little like a light-hearted cadence, I just plugged on. I’m sort of happy with it.

The moon was high on a cool fall night,
and my child walked home in its silver light.
Her clothes were ragged and her feet were bare
and the moon laid a crown on her raven hair.

Approaching the field called “Soldier’s Rest,”
she saw an old man in soldier’s dress.
He too was tattered, from head to toe,
and he sat on a stump, with his head bowed low.

With a deferential nod as she passed by,
my youngster caught the old man’s eye.
“Stop for a while,” he called from his seat.
“I’ve a tale for you I’ve ached to repeat.”

Long she listened in polite fascination
while the elder unspooled his bitter narration
of stabs in the back and egregious wronging,
of betrayals and rages, unrequited longing.

After his recital, she begged his kind pardon,
and turned toward home, our small cabin and garden.
As soon as I heard her open the gate,
I gathered her into my arms. It was late,

and I bolted and barred the front door for the night
as she told of her encounter with the angry old wight
and showed me through cracks in the shutters the spot
up the road in the moonlight where the elder still sat.

We’d hardly turned and were crossing the floor
than the old one materialized through the door.
I guessed in an instant his vampire constitution,
but how could he enter without invitation?

He’d twisted her natural child’s civility
into the requisite welcome for entry.
Icy fingers of fear grabbed my throat and my spine
and my child sank to the floor with an anguished cry.

Through the snail-stepping hours of that longest of nights
I tended my child as he drew out her life.
I tried every hex, incantation, and prayer
to make him release her from his vampiric stare

but all I could do was to keep her alive
with my own spirit-breath. I cannot describe
the exhaustion and horror of each minute that passed
as I waited for dawn when my power at last

could unmake him. But then at the moment I thought I was lost
the first rays of morning broke in, and crossed
the vampire’s shadow. I saw him whiten like death,
and my beloved daughter drew one long deep breath.

I built up the fire and opened the door,
and our tormentor groaned and rose from the floor,
floated upward and out, and faded like song
as we heard the first notes of the first bird of dawn.

Take care, my friends, of the boundaries you keep.
The old tales ask for kindness, but vampires will creep
through your civil demeanor with evil inventions,
so be canny and wise and make clear intentions.

Thursday’s Words:
“If the Rhine, the Yellow, the Mississippi rivers are changed to poison, so too are the rivers in the trees, in the birds, and in the humans changed to poison, almost simultaneously. There is only one river on the planet Earth and it has multiple tributaries, many of which flow through the veins of sentient creatures.”
—Thomas Berry

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” —Kurt Vonnegut

“For a Star to be born,
there is one thing that must happen;
a nebula must collapse.
So collapse.
Crumble.
This is not your Destruction.
This is your birth.” —attributed to Noor Tagouri

‪”So much of bird flight is really expert falling, slipping into that delicate space within the argument between gravity and air resistance. That natural alchemy transforms a plummet into a glide. Someday, I hope to learn to fail like birds fall.‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

Gratitudes:
1. My order of Africafe came today. I opened it up and the smell took me home.
2. All these mushrooms! So many, and so many varieties!
3. So much gold, and red. So much shine when the sun slants in.
4. People who carry on and do what they know is right even when they get blocked at every turn.
5. The life of Lucille Bridges, who gave her first-grade daughter Ruby the support she needed to face hostile crowds every day on her way to school. Ms. Bridges died today at age 86.

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

Unsettled

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments
The pholiota limonella at the center of the Wheel of the Year have gotten expansive. I have given them names, but they’re the names of some elven folx who appeared to me in a dream, and in the fairy tales it’s kind of rude to use the truenames of the fae, unless you’re trying to keep them at bay, so we’ll call them Meadow and Chief for now.

In last night’s dream:
I am reading a poem, by Whitman or Sandburg or someone like that. I see the lines on the page as the images of the dream unfold.

A small girl is walking a path home to her cabin in the full moon light. (Why are small children always out at night in these stories?!?)

As she is passing a field which was a battlefield in the Civil War, she comes upon an old man, dressed in the tattered remnants of a soldier’s uniform, sitting on a stump in the moonlight. She listens politely while he tells her his story of woe and bitterness.

After his telling, she makes her way home, where her mother bolts the cabin door behind her. She tells her mother (the narrator of the poem) about the old man, and they look out the window to see him sitting there, way in the distance, in the moonlight. As she finishes telling her mother the story, suddenly the old man is in the cabin with them.

The poem (dream) ends with the mother reflecting on how sitting in the bitterness of old battles can turn a person into a vampire.

I think it’s a dream about the danger we’re in right now, with a bitter old soldier who lost his battles, stewing in his rage. He’s always been an energy vampire, and now he’s been mostly ignored for days. He’ll be hungry. Telling his story to each other only feeds him.
In the dream, the girl did not invite him in, but he came in anyway, perhaps taking her polite listening as a tacit invitation. Let’s draw our boundaries tightly now, and refuse to let ourselves be drawn in to the old battles again, refuse to listen to his story. We’re in a new place now, a safer place than we were, but we need to be vigilant and aware in order to truly make it safe.

I think that part of what startles me about this dream is that in the fairy tales, you’re supposed to be polite, supposed to listen to the elders, supposed to offer assistance to the poor. This was so clearly not that. Her politeness was all the invitation he needed to enter her space. The time for passive politeness is past. White people, especially, have allowed such evil to blossom through passive politeness, through our lack of confidence in confronting lies and abuse.

My friend Anna reminds me to stand within my truth, leaning neither forward nor backward, to feel myself surrounded by a golden light. One of the many helpers who has appeared to me in a dream is an angelic being made of golden light, with great glowing golden wings, so I feel myself surrounded by my dream-friend’s light, like the golden glow of an autumn morning, when the mists are just rising off the fields and everything is awash with light. This standing in one’s truth, Anna reminds me, is like the essential core of nonresistant philosophy, to know what you believe, and to hold to that, not getting caught up in all the rages and distractions of those who oppose a vision of justice.

I am unsettled today. I feel like it’s time to stop celebrating and start looking around, keeping our noses to the wind, not losing our commitment to standing in the center of our own golden light of truth, but all senses alert to the dangers around us. It began with my dream, the sense that some attention paid to the tattered soldier has given him the “right” of entry. On one hand, I want to let the old ghost fade quietly away into the moonlight without giving it any more attention. On the other hand, I have a sense of impending doom settling on my shoulders this afternoon, a feeling of havoc about to be wreaked, chaos to be unleashed.

I know that is his pattern, to promise destruction and wreckage, and then watch in delight as all the worried citizenry gathers to put out the fires. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. I think it’s time to let it go, to believe that someone is watching and ready to give warning out in the dark night, that everyone is positioned to do their very own job.

In the meantime, in the waiting, in the transition,
we give our attention to our work:
we continue to call for justice,
we keep rooting out white supremacy wherever we see it, especially in ourselves,
we dismantle the patriarchy,
we protect the vulnerable,
we care for the children,
we teach critical thinking and analysis,
we starve the vampire.

Gratitudes:
1. The golden light of autumn
2. The golden leaves of autumn
3. The golden pillar of energy that helps us to stand within our truth
4. The golden shine of the mushrooms in the Wheel of the Year mandala
5. The golden heart of you

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

Time’s Layers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments
Original image by: Bria Goeller and good trubble (Black owned design shop out of California). The shadow is little Ruby Bridges from Norman Rockwell’s iconic 1963 painting “The Problem We All Live With.”

Some of the people I love are truly terrified of this moment, are feeling deep heaviness because of the apparent results of this election in the US. I don’t want to gloat, don’t want to add to their pain and worry. But I do want to celebrate. I do want to sigh with relief. And I wish I could assure you, if this is a frightening moment for you, that everything will be okay.

Can you watch Van Jones struggle to maintain composure, and then just give himself up to emotion, as he talked about the relief he feels, and not celebrate a little? Can you hear the relief of LGBTQ+ folx and not feel some relief yourself? Can you hear womxn who finally see themselves represented in the White House, BIPOC folx who see this strong womxn striding toward a seat at the table, and not be grateful for their joy?

And I look at this image of the shadow of Ruby Bridges cast by Kamala Harris, the gift and the burden of representation that Harris now carries, the fact that so many of my beloved young womxn--BIPOC especially, and white as well–will see their futures laid out before them with more possibility and clarity because of Ms. Harris. Today, I have been reading the words of some of these brilliant young womxn in my life as they express their great joy in this political moment, and celebrating with them.

I think of how Ms. Bridges has supported and continues to support young BIPOC people throughout her life, doing the thing that must be done, stepping into the moment as she did on that first day of first grade, no matter how lonely the prospects. And I also think of the layering of time, of Kamala Harris, this steady presence from the future, walking in that open space behind the young Ruby, and of all the BIPOC womxn who surround her.

And what shall the white womxn do? We middle-aged and elder ones? That crowd of rage-filled white supremacists still stands on the sidewalks, some jeering and insulting, and some quietly trying to make “peace” and look innocent. Our job, my white sisters, is–I think–to stand between the crowd and Ruby and the womxn who walk with her. To silence the crowd, to question the ones who want to make nice on the outside while holding the hatred inside. To question the haters within ourselves. To amplify and magnify the voices of Ruby and her sisters.

Tonight, I might get some Philly cheesesteaks and ice cream to celebrate the end of our “long national nightmare,” but then, I will roll up my sleeves and get to work.

Gratitudes and Prayers:
* Grateful that the person from whom I heard the first official word that this election was being called was my mother. That feels right and safe to me.
* Grateful for a womxn, a BIPOC womxn, is headed for the VP’s desk.
* Praying for the safety of the President Elect and Vice President Elect.
* Praying that we will see the work before us with clarity, and set to it with a will.
* Grateful for truth.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly. May it be done in Beauty.

Breathe and Pray

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

This morning, I wrote this:

Beloveds, I don’t really have much in the way of words to offer this morning, to wade through the bog of my own anxiety to offer hope or resilience. I’m here in my bog, listening. I need to be a teacher today, especially for students who are equally as enmired as I am.

Here in the anxious bog of me today, I sit like an angry old spider. I cast a line from me to you. Catch. Send out webs of your own. While we wait for things to ravel or unravel, we weave and spin and hold our own webs as steady as we may. We are stronger when we are together.

Black lives STILL matter.
Love is STILL love is STILL love.
Your name and pronouns STILL belong to you.
Your body is STILL your own.
You STILL have agency.
The Planet STILL needs us.
The elderly and vulnerable STILL need protection from the coronavirus.
STILL, nobody is illegal.
Justice is STILL important.

This morning felt so dire, so much a repetition of 2016. Jon and I both woke up at 2:30, and made the perhaps unwise choice to check the returns. My heart was racing, and I figured I wouldn’t get to sleep until I saw something to confirm or allay the anxiety. Look the wolf in the eye, they say. I felt in a visceral way how the anxiety and sense of tragedy of the 2016 election had lodged in my body, and how it replayed itself in the night four years later.

This afternoon, there are a few more reasons to hope. The morning, said Vassilissa’s doll in the Baba Yaga stories, is wiser than the evening. Today, the afternoon is wiser than the morning. Get some distance. Get some rest. Get some perspective.

It’s not over, and won’t be for a long time, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve completely shattered the Democracy quite yet. And the popular vote seems to be pretty definitely against the tyrant.

Here’s the one thing that sticks with me, however, like a grief: It wasn’t a clear and obvious win. My neighbors, good people and salt of the earth in so many ways, have not–by and large–passed the test, choosing instead to vote for white supremacy and patriarchy, for homophobia and transphobia, against the poor and the ill and the immigrants. And I do not know what to do with that.

I don’t feel like I can muster appropriate Gratitudes today. Perhaps a couple Commitments might stand in:
1. I commit to not respond smugly if Biden wins. I will express relief and hope if it happens (because I am human and must live my emotions), but I will not be smug, and especially I will try to be open to the pain and confusion of people for whom that is frightening, even though I do not understand it.
2. No matter who wins this election, I commit to standing for justice and compassion, for Black and Indigenous People and other People of Color, for LGBTQ+ folx, for women, for immigrants, for poor and houseless people, for all who are harmed by our systems. I commit to pushing whoever is president for the next four years (and other elected officials) to do right by the people, especially whose who have not been truly free and equal.
3. I commit to harbor no illusions that the lesser of two evils is the savior.
4. I commit to walk this together with you, my Beloveds, and to ask for help when I am sinking.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly. In Beauty.

American Jesus

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This is pretty harsh and grim, I know. It needs to be said. American Christianity has been bastardized and mis-interpreted. Jesus has been thrown out of the church and a false god has been put in his place. This new (and ancient) god is a white supremacist and a misogynist, a liar and a fraud who begs for power and influence, treads upon the heads of the poor and the marginalized, scoffs at the ill and the incarcerated, turns away the foreigner, laughs at your pain.

American Jesus:
People were bringing the children to Jesus so he could bless them, but Jesus said, “Make the children suffer who want to come to me!”

And he told the disciples to separate the children and their parents, like the sheep from the goats, and lock them up far away from each other.

And the disciples said, “Lord, shouldn’t we keep track of which ones belong together?”

And he said unto them: “They should have known what would happen. They have it coming to them.”

*****
And he went up onto a mountainside, and he sat down and began to teach them, saying,
“You know all the stuff I told you before, about being peacemakers, and being kind, and loving your neighbor as yourself? Yeah, that. I didn’t really mean all that. As long as you call yourself ‘pro-life,’ the other stuff doesn’t matter. Also, don’t bake cakes for gay people, mm-kay?”
*****
And someone from the crowd asked him, “Lord, what is the greatest commandment?”
And he answered them saying, “You have heard it said that you should love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself, but I say unto you that the greatest commandment is this: Follow the leader! Follow the money! Follow the power!”
*****
Outside the Temple gates, they came upon a blind man, who called out, “Son of God, have mercy on me!”
And he stooped and gathered dirt from the ground, and spit in it, and threw it at the blind man, saying, “Loser! Blindness and sickness are for losers!”

Prayer: Season of the Election

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I wrote this prayer to say in my school’s chapel service the week of the election in 2016:

Election Day Prayer
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Oh God, Creator of the Universe,
Creator of stars and planets and people and nations:

Make us to be spinners of webs of prayer and webs of kindness,
catching each other,
wrapping each other in silken threads
to keep us from falling.

Make us to be builders of bridges of peace,
bridges of grace,
creating firm pathways so all may walk safely
over the chasms
or meet in the middle.

Make us to be wanderers
willing to walk in the wild places,
seeking each other when distance
has broken our circles.

Make us to be dreamers and planners,
wishers and makers,
singing songs of hope and possibility,
devising a future where everyone
may find a home in Love.

Amen.

Gratitudes:
For the amazing variety of wild things that I have never seen, but might someday.
For the afternoon sun shining through the quivering leaves of the little tree in the neighbors’ lawn.
For the quiet peace of a day working at my desk at home.
For the people who are working for justice.
For all the ways in which my beloveds keep me grounded.

May we love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly.

Speaking Justice, Enacting Peace

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

Talking to myself. You may listen in:

Meet it All with Love
Have a care with your words.
Speak justice.
Speak truth.
Words ignite.
Words incite.
Words inspire.
Have a care.

Don’t be afraid.
To act is to risk.
To not act is to risk.
Weigh and measure.

Meet it all with love.
Find joy in every place you can.
Be a prophet.
Be a fool.
Step into the gap
and become a bridge.

Avoid vengeance.
Provoke for change.
Provoke to love.
Provoke for epiphany.
Be a gadfly
and a peace-maker.
Be a prophet and a lamb.
Wise as a serpent,
harmless as a dove.

Enact peace.
Overturn the tables.
Rage and heal.
Meet it all with love.

American Parable:
Once a shepherd brought his sheep back to the fold after a long day of grazing in the high fields. As they entered the fold, he carefully counted each one, until he reached 99.

Oh no! One short! He must have lost one somewhere on the mountain! What would the other shepherds think of him if he lost a sheep? How would he ever live it down?

He stood a while in thought, then said, “Meh. What’s one sheep when I have 99 others? It was probably old or sick or weak anyway. A loser sheep. It is what it is.”

He locked his gates and doors, ate a hamburger from a golden plate, and went to bed.