Weary

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

There are days/weeks when it just all begins to feel like you’re trudging uphill through mud to get to your destination. It’s hard to sort out the immediate from the long-term. What has to happen now? What should I be doing? Why am I baking another loaf of bread?

Sleep patterns get disrupted. A couple late nights means mid-day naps, which means tossing and turning the next night. It’s almost midnight, and I have finally finished the project I was working on. Why am I still awake at 1?

They say this is a good time to establish wellness routines. I walk. I do yoga. I breathe. How many days has it been so cold How many days of walking have I missed? One? Two? Five?

I know this is temporary, that it’s usually only a couple days of fog until the crisper air begins clearing my brain again. Meanwhile, I need to do little things that help me to cope. Set timers to work for an hour at a time and then take a break. Make sure I get the walk and the stretching in every day. And recognize that there are other things happening in my brain, even if the productivity piece is a challenge. I have been doing lots of thinking and meditating, building something inside rather than outside myself.

And you? How are you faring? What one thing will you do to give today a boost of energy?

“My hair is being pulled by the stars again.” —Anais Nin

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power.

“Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget… another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” —Arundhati Roy

“In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.” —Jonas Mekas

Rob Brezsny:
Think about your relationship to human beings who haven’t been born yet. What might you create for them to use? How can you make your life a gift to the future? Can you not only help preserve the wonders we live amidst, but actually enhance them? Keep in mind this thought from Lewis Carroll: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.”

Finding the Magic

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
I still have a lot to learn, and I didn’t take a lot of time on this one.

Gratitude List:
1. We had our first takeout in eight weeks yesterday. It was a treat!
2. Yesterday, a blue-gray gnatcatcher came searching for bugs in the cobwebs o the balcony, and sat still for a little while so we could get a perfect view. My eyes have never been good at discerning fast and distant birds, so warblers and their ilk are usually out of my purview. I just assume they’re all chickadees. So it was nice to see this sweet little one up close.
3. Josiah and I saw three bright orange orioles flying across the road during our walk yesterday.
4. Last week Josiah showed me somewhere where I can really easily remove backgrounds from photos to make pngs for digital collage. physical collage has always been a really exciting art form for me, and this has great possibilities.
5. Finding the magic.

May we walk in Beauty!

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” —Albert Einstein

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?” ―George Orwell

“Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it.” ―Mark Lawrence

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

“Go out in the woods, go out. If you don’t go out in the woods nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin.” ―Clarissa Pinkola Estés

“I am always doing what I can’t do yet in order to learn how to do it.” ―Vincent van Gogh

“Do one good thing every day that everyone else is scared to do.” ―Leymah Gbowee

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” ―Rabindranath Tagore

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” ―Margaret Atwood

“We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been—a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.” ―Starhawk

Jesus and the Women

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Jesus and the Women
A Mother’s Day Poem
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

His mother and his aunt made sure he knew more
than just the laws and canons of the men,
the patriarchy passed from father down
to son. They passed on their own mysteries,
from mother, from aunt, to these sons
they were raising. They suspected something big
was coming when Jesus and his cousin
came into their own, and they wanted them prepared.

And at his own wedding, when she upbraided him
for skimping on the wine, the gospels don’t record
his mother’s upraised eyebrow, quirked grin, tilted chin,
the way she swirled those robes of sky like hurricane
about her ankles as she turned and pointed to the empty
amphoras, then poked the steward in the chest, “Just do
whatever he tells you.” How the son hung his head
and shook it side to side, laughing. “Fill ‘em up
with water,” he told them, hands out in front of him,
like surrender. “No one can fight my Mama on this one.”

Martha had her say, too: “Bro! You’re bringing all these people
into the house! There are chairs and tables to set up,
children to tend to, food to be cooked and served.
Can’t you tell Maggie to help me with the work?”

“Whoa! First of all, let’s get this straight. No one tells Maggie
what to do. Maggie does what Maggie wants,
and furthermore, Mama said we’ve got to get the men
into the kitchen, too. Zaccheaus, will you grab that roast?
John, rearrange those chairs, will you? Uncle Nick,
can you catch that baby there before she toddles
out the door? Come sit here with us, Mar, and tell them
that idea you had about community gardens in Bethany.”

And when the party ended in the wee hours of night
and they were cleaning up, Martha handed him a dishcloth:
“Everybody wants a revolution,” she said and slapped him on the back.
“But no one wants to do the dishes.” He chuckled as he did them.

Then there was beloved Maggie—Don’t quibble with me
about Miriam and the Magdal-Eder and the names
of seaside towns. This is my poem, and I say
he called her Maggie like the rest of them, except
in the dark, when those healing hands were wrapped
around her. Then, “Mary,” he said, and “Mary,” again,
which is why the name went through her like knives,
like the sunlight which pierced her eyes on that morning
in the garden. But that came later.

“Why does the rabbi let his wife walk about,” they grumbled
in the synagogue, “with her head uncovered?”

I can see him rolling his eyes. Can’t see you how he
rolls his eyes? How he responds: “We’ve been over this
and over this. No one tells Maggie to do or not do anything.
Maggie speaks. Maggie writes. Maggie lets her raven hair
swirl about her shoulders in the sun. You might
as well tell thunder when to speak or to keep silence.
Maggie’s got a perfect mind, and Maggie will do
whatever Maggie pleases to do, and that pleases me.
Listen to this poem she wrote yesterday:
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the barren one
and many are my sons.
I am she whose wedding is great,
and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.”

And when the time had come, they gathered—
mother, aunts, sisters, wife—and they waited
and they watched. They knew what they had to do,
as women do who have received the mysteries of women
from generation to generation, and passed them on,
as women who have borne pain and healed pain
from the beginning of time. They stayed at the cross,
they went to the garden, they carried life forward
in the way that women do, in vials of oil and jars of herbs,
in loaf and grail, in words of thunder, and in mysteries
that you can see if you but look behind the veil.

Gratitude List:
1. My wise and compassionate mother
2. All my beloveds who mother me in so many ways
3. The experience of mothering. The joys and delights outweigh the wrenching sense of inadequacy, the shameful awareness of all I have done wrong in this gig.
4. All those birds out there. Some people say they think that global shelter-in-place has contributed to more songbirds. Anecdotally, I would say that could well be true.
5. Coffee

May we walk in Beauty!

“I stand before what is with an open heart. And with an open heart, I dwell in possibility.” —Macrina Weiderkehr

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
― Ida B. Wells-Barnett

“Somewhere in the world there is a treasure that has no value to anyone but you, and a secret that is meaningless to everyone except you, and a frontier that possesses a revelation only you know how to exploit. Go in search of those things.

Somewhere in the world there is a person who could ask you the precise question you need to hear in order to catalyze the next phase of your evolution. Do what’s necessary to run into that person.” —Rob Breszny
*“Pain travels through families until someone is ready to feel it.” —Stephi Wagner

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?” ―George Orwell

“Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, that person sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” —Robert F Kennedy

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil it multiplies it.” —Martin Luther King Jr

“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.” —Frederick Douglass

“Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.” ―Jane Goodall

Faerie Ring

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You have to look closely to see the Faerie Ring, but it’s there. The clumps on the upper left are hidden in the grass. This is, of course, why they’re so dangerous–you could stumble into one unknowingly and not come out for years. . .

A friend of mine has asked me to avoid saying “rules” when I write about shelter-in-place, because that sounds too martial, too authoritarian. I sort of understand. But “guidelines” feels wrong, too, because so many people seem to be taking them as just that, and ignoring them, going out without masks, not maintaining social distance, acting as though this is all gone. Part of me wants to say: May it be so. May it be gone. But we don’t make a thing “gone” just by declaring it so.

The science seems to be offering us a different picture, one in which we could be facing quarantines and sickness and death for a long time to come. I also want the governor (of PA, where I live) to take us more quickly to yellow and then to green. But I want my parents to be safe, I want the random people who seem to die from this for no apparent reason not to die, I (selfishly) want us to avoid a second peak so I can go back to my classroom in the fall.

Call them what you will–guidelines or rules or orders–please follow through a little longer, for all of us. Wash your hands. Stay home. Plot the Green Revolution. Practice caution and simplicity. Get along without. Keep us all safe.

Gratitude List:
1. This morning at the feeder: goldfinches, bluebirds, doves, downy woodpecker, chipping sparrows, indigo bunting. An indigo bunting in the sun seems lit from within by blue fire. An indigo bunting in the shade sucks all color into itself, holding all the shadows around it within its little bunting shape. What a magical creature.
2. Yesterday I did my Ten Breaths inside a fairy ring of mushroom clump beside the stump of the poplar tree. It was a perfect circle. The faeries did not whisk me away to the Faerie Queen’s realm, perhaps because I have long been a friend of their beloved poplar, perhaps because I am not imaginative enough for their purposes.
3. A family of vultures have taken up residence in the edges of the bosque across the road. Such somber and thoughtful folk they are.
4. The amazing crimson of that little red Japanese maple, and the scarlet of the cardinal up on the hillside above, and the glowing scarlet fire of the head of that red-bellied woodpecker.
5. Nothing in this part of the hollow died of freeze last night. This morning is crisply frigid, breezy and shining.

May we walk in Beauty!

“No matter where you are from, your dreams are valid.” —Lupita Nyong’o

TO MAKE A PROMISE
by David Whyte

Make a place of prayer, no fuss,
just lean into the white brilliance
and say what you needed to say
all along, nothing too much, words
as simple and as yours and as heard
as the bird song above your head
or the river running gently beside you,
let your words join to the world
the way stone nestles on stone
the way the water simply leaves
and goes to the sea,
the way your promise
breathes and belongs
with every other promise
the world has ever made.

Now, leave them to go on,
let your words alone
to carry their own life,
without you, let the promise
go with the river.
Have faith. Walk away.

“Feminism requires precisely what patriarchy destroys in women. Unimpeachable bravery in confronting male power.” —Andrea Dworkin

Justice Delayed

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

Don’t get me wrong.
I am glad that those men have been arrested.
There’s an aroma of justice to that part of the story.
It’s just that it’s so late in the story.
It’s just that it took a leaked video.
It’s just that it took concerted and focused public outrage.
It’s just that it took so long.
It’s just that it has happened before,
and it will happen again.
And again.
And again.
And what will it take for justice,
each time it happens?
And how does justice happen
if there’s no video to leak?
And is delayed justice any kind of justice at all?

Something is broken in America.
It’s been broken for a long time.
It’s never not been broken.
But we keep saying we have fixed it,
living like it’s been healed.
Acting shocked when we see how broken it is.
And then another round of outrage,
hoping that some sort of justice will be done,
and shrugging with relief and disgust
when the arrests are finally made,
knowing it’s never enough,
never soon enough.

I don’t know how to finish this.
I’ve run out of words.

Birthing Day

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

Fourteen years ago today, this person came to join us. I’m grateful every day.

Gratitude List:
This amazing child. That’s my gratitude for today.
Fifteen years ago, I lost my first pregnancy, over a period of about a week. One year later, to the week, this marvel of a human came into our lives. From the first hours of his time here, he was curious and awake, observant and engaging. He’s goofy and gorgeous, compassionate and tender. He loves his people and his cats. He spends hours thinking about how things work. He teaches me daily how to be a better person.

“We are not just made by God. We are made of God.” —Julian of Norwich

“In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.” —Jonas Mekas

“Awake, my dear. Be kind to your sleeping heart. Take it out into the vast fields of Light, And let it breathe.” —Hafiz

“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go.’” —Maya Angelou

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.” ―Maurice Sendak

“The best teachers are those who tell you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.” —Alexandra K. Trenfor

Parallels

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Portals everywhere.

I have been thinking about parallel stories in the last couple of days. Margaret Starbird begins her book, Woman With the Alabaster Jar, with a retelling of the story/legend of Mary Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea fleeing across deserts to Egypt to safety. And I couldn’t get out of my mind the images of the Flight to Egypt, of Mary and Joseph–the parents of Jesus–fleeing with a donkey and the child of promise across the deserts to safety.

The Flight into Egypt, 1305 - Giotto Art Print, Canvas

Jesus is the sandwich of the stories. In one, an elderly Joseph and his young bride Mary flee with their newly-born child from Herod’s wrath. In the other, an elderly Joseph and his friend’s young bride Mary flee to protect her child or soon-to-be-born child (Jesus’s child) from the wrath of the whole Empire. Knowing how the stories of the second flight were part of medieval European lore, I wonder how many of the Flight to Egypt images from that period may have intended to hold the mystery of the second as well as the first.

There are many historical explorations of the likelihood of Jesus’s marriage and the suppression of this knowledge by 3rd and 4th century patriarchs. I won’t go into that discussion here, except to note that when a story is forced underground, it will find its way to remain within the human collective unconscious. It will show up on the other side of the looking glass. Joseph and Mary flee with the child of promise into Egypt. And beneath that story, reflected in pools of history, wavery and unclear, but there all the same, another Joseph and another Mary flee with another child across the deserts into Egypt.

Gratitude List:
1. Meaningful work. Six years ago today, I interviewed for a job that would change my life. Grateful that I got the job.
2. Ellis. Fourteen years ago today, I began a long and arduous labor that ended with a most incredible young person coming into the world. He arrived unconventionally, and he took his own time, and he opened his eyes and lifted his head and gazed at the world within hours of his arrival. And that’s how he’s been ever since: He moves to his own drumbeat, he’s got his own timeline, and he’s obsessed with figuring out how everything works.
3. That touch of flame in the branches: oriole.
4. Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeen
5. Moon: Tonight is the Full Flower Moon.

May we walk in Beauty!

“One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else.” —K.L. Toth

“Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters.” —St. Bernard of Clairvaux

“A woman with opinions had better develop a thick skin and a loud voice.” —Anya Seton

“The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.” —Alexandra K.Trenfor

“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living, I want to know what you ache for. It doesn’t interest me how old you are, I want to know if you are willing to risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine. It doesn’t interest me where you live or how rich you are, I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and be sweet to the ones you love. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and truly like the company you keep in the empty moments of your life.” —Oriah Mountain Dreamer

The Bridge

In a trivial gesture, in a greeting,
in the simple glance, directed
in flight toward other eyes,
a golden, a fragile bridge is constructed.
This alone is enough.

Although it is only for a moment, it exists, exists.
This alone is enough.
—Circe Maia
translation from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval

“If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” ―Roald Dahl

“To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” ―Mary Oliver

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” ―Vonnegut

You Are the Dragon

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How will you enter?

You are the Dragon, You are the Cave
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

The thing you learn, of course,
before you strap your sword belt on,
is that the princess you pledged to save
is only yourself in another guise,
that the dragon you swore to smite
is simply your own roaring ego
belching flame in the mouth of the cave.

You are the villagers rioting in the streets,
and calling for the dragon’s blood.
You are the bells that pealed from the towers
when the dragon circled above the town.
You are the sword,
the shield, the very cave,
the small frightened mouse
trampled in the fray.
You are the village.
You are the mountain.
You are the day itself,
quiet witness to the story.

Gratitude:
Finding a tenuous balance.

I mostly feel that I will never actually find true “balance” in my life. See how I even put it in quotation marks? It’s like a Shangri-la that doesn’t really exist, more mythical even than the faeries who tend the life force in the world of the farm, balance is an unattainable ideal that I strive for, long for, push myself towards, and never quite reach.

But that’s kind of okay. In fact, it’s perfectly okay, really. There are moments when, like the Equinoxes, everything seems to align, to fit, and I can breathe for a moment, but let the tension drain from my muscles, let my gaze drift, and I fall off the tightrope, no matter how balanced I was for a moment.

This has been one of the frustrations of teaching for me, the need to constantly keep those muscles tense, that gaze intense, in order to “succeed” with “balance” at being an effective teacher/person. And when I am “succeeding” most fully at teaching, the other pieces of my life are tumbling off the tightrope around me: parenting, writing, creating, joyful living, kindness. And then teacher tumbles down, too, and I bounce in the net with all the other parts of me that I long to incorporate. I gather myself up, and begin the arduous climb up to the rope again.

Right now, after a hard day of climbing yesterday, I am once again on the tightrope, feeling the muscles tense, the gaze focus, holding all the pieces that I am trying to incorporate.

If my goal is simply to stay balanced, I won’t make it–that’s too much tension for my spirit too maintain over the long haul. But there’s joy in the learning, gratitude in the process, and I have a destination to reach. So here we go. Muscles tense (I know a little better how it should feel this time), eyes focused, one foot stepping out onto the rope. . .

May we walk in Beauty!

“There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect. The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitably reveals itself. Something deep in the human soul seems to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it we are able to trust and open ourselves.” —John O’Donohue

“In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.” —Phil Ochs

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” ―Jane Goodall

“Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.” ―Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Perspective

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Gratitude:
Small things
The chill of morning
Varying the perspective
The tenderness of Jericho Brown
How morning shadows lead you to the sun
May we walk in breath and Beauty, fully aware

“If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for for verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it. This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not “what does it say?”, but “what am I looking for?” I suspect Jesus knew this when he said, “ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.” If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.” ―Rachel Held Evans

“My interpretation can only be as inerrant as I am, and that’s good to keep in mind.” ―Rachel Held Evans

“I am writing because sometimes we are closer to the truth in our vulnerability than in our safe certainties.” ―Rachel Held Evans

“There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect. The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitably reveals itself. Something deep in the human soul seems to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it we are able to trust and open ourselves.” —John O’Donohue

“Prayer leads you to see new paths and to hear new melodies in the air. Prayer is the breath of your life which gives you the freedom to go and to stay where you wish and to find the many signs which point out the way to a new land. Praying is not simply some necessary compartment in the daily schedule of a Christian or a source of support in a time or need, nor is it restricted to Sunday mornings or mealtimes. Praying is living.” —Henri J. M. Nouwen

Be still and know that I am God
Be still and know that I am
Be still and know
Be still
Be
—Fr. James Martin

“Empathy is the lifeblood of our fragile humanity, dear friend. It is the thing that sustains us all, and in moments like this it is more precious than ever. The world needs people like you who are willing to have their hearts broken; people who wake every day prepared to be wounded on behalf of another, because they know that this wounding allows someone to be seen and heard and known when they most need to be.” —John Pavlovitz

“Draw thy pen. Slay the beast.” —on a sign at a protest march

Doctor Who : “You want weapons? We’re in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!”

“In her book “Women Who Run with the Wolves,” Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes suggests that we all need to periodically go cheerfully and enthusiastically out of our minds. Make sure, she says, that at least one part of you always remains untamed, uncategorizable, and unsubjugated by routine. Be adamant in your determination to stay intimately connected to all that’s inexplicable and mysterious about your life.

“At the same time, though, Estés believes you need to keep your unusual urges clear and ordered. Discipline your wildness, in other words, and don’t let it degenerate into careless disorder.” —Rob Brezsny, on Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky.” —Kahlil Gibran