A small pool in the base of twin trees along the new trail.
Today’s Prompts were Spider and Exotic. I don’t know if re-mything Spider Mystery is exotic or not, but this is what I came up with.
Spider by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Not all stories start the same. Try this one: In the ending. . . We’re bending the tale around a whole new fulcrum, following Hansl’s trail of crumbs from wicked witch to angry stepmother, or over other paths not yet traversed within the standard myth.
In the ending was Spider, marking her eternal spiral, spinning her infinite web, wrapping her magical bundles (don’t become one of those).
You wonder how she got to this moment, your mind on the lines that connect from beam to sill, from ledge to beam again. You want to know the structure, sense the essence of the plot, the way from there to here.
But when you live within the spin of infinity, beginnings become irrelevant. Endings, too, for that matter, fade to insignificance. The middle, that’s the place where twist and whirl tingle, where living blossoms out of nothing, and you catch the sticky thread of the moment, knowing you can shift from arm to arm of time, like Spider, who even now is watching you from the center of her web.
In the middle. . . Now there’s a thread to hand a tale by.
Yesterday, my friend Katie Hutchison College wrote a very moving piece about living in these times. I was so moved by her words that I asked her permission to post it on my blog. She graciously said I could. I used her image of “Mt. Everest” as my photo of the day.
Today’s bloom: anemone ‘Mt. Everest’. She hasn’t opened yet (perhaps later today). But this stage is beautiful, just perched on the edge.
At the end of the fourth Harry Potter movie, when it’s now clear that Voldemort is back, there’s a moment I love: the main characters are standing on a bridge, and Hermione, always able to see further ahead than the others, stops cold and says ‘Everything is going to be different now, isn’t it?’
To which, after a slight pause, Harry answers ‘yes. Yes, it is.’
The actors nail it. She isn’t fearful. Just…..wistful. Taking a moment to acknowledge what has changed. Taking a moment to think of the changes that are ahead.
He isn’t dismissive. There’s more a tone of quiet determination in his response.
It’s a remarkable moment precisely because the director had to streamline the book so much, and so many details were left out. I’m glad this small bit was included. The series is about, among other things, transitioning to adulthood, and this exchange says it all.
This sucks, and it will never be the same again, but we’re going to do it anyway.
Most thinking people understand now that this isn’t simply a weird, inconvenient two week holiday. The ramifications of this, economically and socially, are massive. And, of course, the ‘two weeks’ is long gone.
Did you ever, having messed up something or other in your life, wish for a do-it-over button? Did you ever read a story about someone who vanished and created a whole new life, and you took a moment to think hmm, yes, what would I change if there weren’t already all these pre-conceived ideas of who I am, if everyone surrounding me hadn’t frozen me into a mold? Who would I be, if I could be anything? I’m talking about the inside person, not the outside
Did you ever think “I’m trying so hard, now, not to be (insert character flaw of your choice here) but it’s impossible, because everyone’s already decided that I’m (repeat previous). And when I try to act in a new way it’s impossible, because they treat me like I’m still the old way, or they’re suspicious of my motives.”
Well! This is our moment!
People are different post-trauma. Things are different. Rules are different. Patterns are different.
While we grapple with what these changes mean for us, let’s not forget this: we can be different, too. But unlike all those other changes over which we haven’t much control, we DO get a say in our own upcoming, inevitable changes.
You have a blank sheet of paper in front of you and a nice sharp pencil with a perfect eraser.
If you know that you have always come across as cold and unable to show affection, but you don’t want to be that way – this is a once in a lifetime mulligan. Because nobody, but nobody, is going to question your sea change.
Been irresponsible? It’s a good time to shift gears. A crisis will do that to you. Haven’t been focused enough on the kids, other than micromanaging schedules? It’s perfectly understandable that this would shift your priorities. No one will give you crap for dropping out of some activities after this.
It’s a crisis, it’s a game changer, and Hermione nailed it: everything is going to be different now.
But not all of the changes will be bad.
We have all been imprisoned by some burden that can now be lifted, because in a very real way we’ve just been handed a Get Out of Jail Free card.
Go. Bloom.
Gratitude List: 1. The great and tender wisdom of my friends 2. I slept very deeply last night. I always feel, after a bout of insomnia, that I need to re-train my body to sleep. 3. Friday 4. Dogwoods in bloom 5. Yeast. We couldn’t find it in the big grocery store or in the little local shop in town, so I am capturing my own flock. It will take a few days, but I’m glad there are options. I’ve done this before, so I’m excited to try again. During times of quarantine, so people get a new puppy to tend and train. I wrangle wild yeast.
May we walk in Beauty!
“First is the fall. Then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God.” —Julian of Norwich
“Nothing is more beautiful than the uniqueness that God has created. You don’t have to create the beauty—you’ve already got the beauty. You don’t have to create the freedom—you’ve got it. You don’t have to create the image of God in you—you have it. You don’t have to win over God’s love—you have more than you know what to do with.” — Father Thomas Keating
“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.” —Henry David Thoreau
“Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.” ―St. Francis of Assisi
“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.” ― Mary Oliver
“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.” ―Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” ―Ursula K. Le Guin
“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” ―Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who’s confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now.” ―Joss Whedon
“The world is remade through the power of fierce women performing outrageous acts of creative rebellion.” —Louise M. Pare
The prompts today are “bar” and “The Last _______.” Yesterday, I was mulling what the lore of these days might be, and the word Apocalypticon floated through my brain. It turns out there’s already a book by that name, but I thought it might be a good name for a poem.
The Apocalypticon: The Last Revelation by Beth Weaver-Kreider
One That spring, Grace found her first morel on the west-facing slope of the ridge. Everyone was finding them, actually, that spring. Everyone was eating morels, and Emily planted a gangster garden. Bootleggers and mob bosses graced her green. All we had seen before was somehow new now, more verdant.
Two One of us began receiving messages from a golden koi who circled slowly beneath the lilies of a lake. She would not tell us what the Lady told her, only: “Take what you need. Too much is at stake.”
Three I did battle with poison ivy that spring, apologizing a hundred times a day for cutting her thousand arms, but ivy laughed in crimson leaves and grew like the Revolution was at hand.
Four Some of us sat with our demons, telling old tales of battles long gone, bellying up to the bar of lost memories, or singing them to sleep with old songs, while Clare chanted exorcisms in the sleet on windy mountains pushing back the forces that threaten to submerge the story. I know of two who nearly lost the trail, wandering far into the shadows.
Five We stopped using the word normal, re-wove older linguistic threads, spun ancient stories into the chapters we were writing. We re-worded our vocabularies, re-ordered our syntax, re-discovered voices we thought had forgotten how to speak.
Six We caught our own flocks of wild yeast, planted potatoes in neat rows, learned new words for magic and for prayer, exploring layer after layer of mysteries, parting the curtains, and watching the ways of the moon.
The grumbling is getting louder. The anxiety is rising. People are starting to toss the words “rights” and “freedom” around. People are afraid that this is all power-plays by the leadership to cow us, subject us, hold us in our places. And why shouldn’t they be afraid? When have we ever known the (mostly) rich (mostly) white (mostly) male ruling class to work on behalf of the people, to remember their sweetly quaint little title of “public servant”? Who should we trust?
The doctors. And scientists. We can, hopefully, trust the scientists and the physicians. And the story. Trust the story. Watch how it has played out across the globe. Remember Italy. Remember China.
It’s very likely that some of the governors are working out of self-interest and electability, that some are too cautious and timid, that others are hungrily consolidating power in a time when people are vulnerable. So I will trust the leaders who seem to be trusting the doctors and the scientists and the story. It hasn’t been difficult to find an example of a leaders who isn’t trusting the science, who is inexorably manipulating the narrative to feed his own ego and his own power. And if you want to start talking about freedom and rights, let’s begin with the ways in which he has been harming the freedom and the rights of the common people since the day he took office. I’m going to cast my lot in with the governors on this one.
This doesn’t have to be an American frontier epic contest between your fear and your freedom. That’s an old and worn-out trope, and it’s a false dichotomy, a fairy tale told to us by end-stage capitalism. The governors are not Big Bart riding into town with all guns blazing, ordering the women and children to cower in their homes. In this story, we make the choice to stay home, to wait, to isolate, in order to protect the vulnerable ones among us, in order to protect our health care workers.
As far as I know, my parents and my immuno-compromised beloveds are all safe. But if we resume business as usual too soon, they may all be in danger, and those you love, too. It’s not about whether or not you or I personally fear death. It’s about whether we have the deep communal compassion to do something that protects the most vulnerable among us. Remember, this is the Exile for the Good of the Realm.
Gratitude List: 1. The Iron Lady Trail. My Project Manager says I shouldn’t call it that, that it’s still unnamed, but he initially called it the Iron Lady, and so I’m calling it that for now. Josiah is marking and clearing a series of deer trails in the woods above the pond. He calls himself the Project Manager, and her has enlisted his progenitors to assist with the cutting of poison ivy and brambles. Yesterday after our schoolwork, we cleared a side trail that links the Iron Lady (I mean Unnamed) Trail to a second entrance to the fields. This one emerges from the woods beneath a curving limb of a cherry tree. For too long, the poison ivy has kept us out of the woods. We are going to try to keep the trails maintained so we can have some passages through the woods. 2. The passion with which my kids follow their interests. It can be tiring to listen to hours of discourse on the minute differences between the Tesla models, or how to build a very detailed something-or-other in Minecraft, or the many reasons why a particularly obscure piece of technology is either illegal or shady or brilliant. Still, I love that they can be passionate about things that have near-zero interest for me. 3. Homemade oatmeal protein bars. I don’t know why I got away from making them. And of course, I have no recipe, so I have to go back and recreate it. The ones I made last night are too crumbly. But they taste good! 4. The veils of green appearing through the woods. 5. I am loving the poetry-writing process right now. It’s very much like the energy of April 2012 (I think that was the year), when I felt something click and sizzle. This is perhaps less giddy, more grounded, but it tingles. I’m especially grateful for my poet-community right now.
Take care of each other. Walk in Beauty!
The Soul, it sees by synesthesia Tasting light caressed by song A touch is like a descant fire resonant and strong. —Craig Sottolano
“I’m not as cooperative as you might want a woman to be.” —Carrie Fisher
“The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.” —Adrienne Rich
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. -—Raymond Carver’s Late Fragment, inscribed on his tombstone
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation.
The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last.
All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you. —David Whyte
“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” ―Mother Teresa
“Walking. I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.” ―Linda Hogan
“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” ―Leonard Bernstein
Today’s prompts were fun to mash up: “dream,” and “middle of the week.” Also, I had my Creative Writing students write a list poem today, so I wanted to try one of those, too. Pile on the fun.
Transformation by Beth Weaver-Kreider
On Sunday, she dreamed she was inside an egg, arms and legs curled tight, and light (diffuse) swirling through the veil of shell around her.
On Monday, she dreamed she walked a pathway underneath an overarching fern. Fronds unfurled where dragonflies hovered above, large as dragons.
On Tuesday, she dreamed of thorn and bramble, rose and blackberry sending tendrils grasping, catching clothing, and bright crimson drops of blood.
On Wednesday, the fulcrum of the week, no dream disturbed her sleep, no portents woke her, no messages arrived through the veil between.
On Thursday, the forest of her dreams darkened and wolves prowled just beyond her firelight. Wolves howled in shadows, eyes a-glint.
On Friday, she died in her dreaming, yet stood at the edge of the clearing, watching her body where it lay among mayapples and mushrooms.
On Saturday, the dream spread a wide gleaming sea in her path. She stepped into a coracle boat, ivory, smooth as eggshell.
This morning, I found this image that I altered a year ago. That’s another thing about Mary Magdalene: she went out actually searching for the Beloved. Like Rumi and Hafez, she followed the trail of her longing. Thomas hid, Peter went back to work, the Emmaus travelers whispered their grief. Mary went searching, asking, into the cave itself and out again into the sunlit garden.
I love this series of stories, the Mary Magdalene story, the Emmaus story, the Thomas story, the Peter and the Fish story, and anticipate them with glee every year–Jesus, the Holy Fool, going from beloved to beloved with the Easter-eggiest of Easter eggs. Surprise! It’s me! Certain surprises are deeply heart-opening. The veil is suddenly torn down. The stone explodes from the entrance of the cave and light streams in. I love how Jesus sets up the epiphanies with the exact surprise each person needs: the gardener turning into the sunlight and speaking her name, the ghost-like appearance in a room where he had not been and the physical touch Thomas demanded, the wise comforter and breaker of bread for confused and grief-weary travelers, the stranger on the beach cooking fish to challenge and reconcile Peter. Everybody got what they needed in the surprises he gave them.
Springtime brings epiphanies and surprises: the sudden glimpse of a morel in the leaf-litter (I’m still looking for my first), the flash of red on a blackbird’s wing, the bursting of bloom on the dogwood that was naked just three days ago. The new and different slant of sun on the sidewalk, the particular springiness of the breezes and winds, the warmth in the air. May spring surprise you even during isolation. May your hear the Beloved calling your name. Remember: Even as you search, the Beloved is seeking you.
Gratitude List: 1. Last year on this day, I wrote about the musical thrill when leading singing in church, of being in front of all those earnest and joyful voices. I miss that. There will be lots of singing in church in The After. 2. I have always been incredibly grateful for the way we work as a team at school—faculty, guidance, administration, staff—to support students and their families, and now, more than ever, I am deeply moved by the net that we create (we’re trying hard to create) together. 3. Mr. Redwing just puffed out his flaming sleeves from atop the feeder stand and whistled merrily. 4. While I have noticed that I am holding tension in my body in ways I never have before, I am also learning new ways to stretch and breathe in order to release tension. 5. I think today might be a grocery day. We’re trying to make the time Between last longer and longer, but these kid eat a thousand things and guzzle milk like water. And as scary as it is to send someone out and to bring things in, grocery day is a shift of the rhythm. And we’re out of yeast, just as I was hitting my stride on the baking jag, so maybe there’ll be yeast tomorrow. At least there will be more flour so I can consider starting my own yeast.
Take care of each other. Walk in Beauty!
“Let me tell you what I do know though… I know mountains grow because of their fault lines. I know lakes turn that gorgeous shade of turquoise because of their silt. I know jewels are formed under pressure. I know trees can grow through rocks, and rivers can break canyons. I know there are 120 crayola crayons to choose from, so you can color yourself any which way you like. I know the earth smells fabulous after a hard rain, and I know she breathes. I know out of the destruction of forest fires, new and stronger ecosystems can emerge. I know there is life in the deepest depths of the ocean and her tides can soften stone. I know there can be no shadows without light. I know the passion is in the risk. I know time heals, and most things will be okay eventually. I know you are made of the star stuff, and I know out there somebody loves you; exactly the way you are, even if you haven’t found them yet. I know all these things, and tell them to you — in case you forgot to remember.” —Jacquelyn Taylor
“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” —James Baldwin
“We have tried to create a watertight social system so that mercy is not needed, nor even attractive. Mercy admits and accepts that not all problems can be solved by our techniques, formulas, and technology. The ‘superfluous’ opening of the human heart that we call mercy is essential for any structure or institution to remain human and humanizing.” —Richard Rohr
“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.” —Anne Lamott
“Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends.” —Hafiz
“Now I see the secret of making the best person, it is to grow in the open air and eat and sleep with the earth.” —Walt Whitman
“Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.” —John Muir
“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.” —Roald Dahl
“A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as she is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things she would not have thought of if she had not started to say them.” —William Stafford (but I have changed the pronouns to feminine)
“America stands for exactly what Americans will stand for. History doesn’t write itself. It must be lived and practiced.” —Jesse Williams
There are the people who keep saying, “When things get back to normal.” I hear the sense of loss, the sense of things thrown out of kilter, in that–the longing to be able to be back with the people we loved, to go to the places we have come to love, to play and interact, to look people in the eye. I hear, and feel, the terrible anxiety of the livelihood losses created by a world on pause. Yes, I too eagerly anticipate the time when things get back to that normal.
There are the people who are critiquing the privilege in that statement. Getting back to what normal? they ask. I need to keep interrogating this for myself. I respect this critique. I want the new normal that comes when all this is over to open doors for more people. I don’t want to go back to a normal that privileges capital over humanity, that privileges the makers of abstract capital over the creators of actual necessary things, and the ones who make society flow smoothly.
There are the people who are celebrating this abnormal as a breathing time for the environment. Less pollution of all kinds–less particulate matter in the air, less noise, fewer lights–offers wildlands and wild creatures a chance to rebound, to heal. We are seeing the Mother’s graceful ability to heal herself. It’s happening before our eyes. There is hope. I don’t want to go go back to a normal that mindlessly plunders and destroys the Mother for capital gain.
I’ve begun thinking about it as The After. What do we want the world to be In The After? How can we honor the deep desire for a “normal,” a stability, a rhythm and routine that so many are expressing, and also strive for a new way of being? Can we make the kindnesses and the mutual aid a matter of course? Can we make the idea of everyone working together for the safety of our most vulnerable one of the established standards of the After? Will we find ways to walk the Earth with more respectful silence, so as not to disturb Her children? Will we give up plunder and competition in favor of sharing and co-existence? Perhaps now, the voices of the ones who have always striven for justice and equality, for kindness and ecological awareness, will be heard above the clamor.
What is the world you want to live in? We have been living in a pause, the world on hold, but there will come a time when we begin to move again, when we step out of the pause into a new something (a new normal, perhaps). Let’s commit to making The After a more just, more tender, more egalitarian, more eco-conscious world. Speak up now. Tell your ideas now. This is the gestation period, the time to be forming and visualizing and developing the normal that is to come in The After.
Gratitude List: 1. Visionaries 2. Dreamers 3. The people who implement ideas 4. Kindness 5. Hope
May we walk in Beauty!
“Grief is normal. It’s not like you’ll have a life someday with no grief. Life is all about loss, but grief is the medicine for that loss. Grief is not your problem. Grief is not the sorrow. Grief is the medicine. The people that have grief cultural awareness are always turning all of their losses into beauty in order to make more life instead of just trying to get through it and then forget about it.” —Martin Prechtel
“The only weapon we have is our bodies, and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don’t turn.” —Bayard Rustin
“My turn shall also come: I sense the spreading of a wing.” —Osip Mandelstam, Russian poet and essayist
“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” ―Washington Irving
“Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a-priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.” ―David Whyte
“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
“The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling—their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
“Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” ―Arundhati Roy, War Talk
“And this brings us back to the Hen Wife—that figure of magic who dwells comfortably among us, not off by the crossroads or in the dark of the woods; who is married, not solitary; who is equally at home with the wild and domestic, with the animal and human worlds. She is, I believe, among us still: dispensing her wisdom and exercising her power in kitchens and farmyards (and the urban equivalent) to this day—anywhere that women gather, talk among themselves, and pass knowledge down to the next generations.” ―Terri Windling
Today’s Prompts are Sacrifice and Purpose. In this one, I followed where the sounds and rhythms led me rather than working for a particularly tight meaning.
Let Loose by Beth Weaver-Kreider
At what price, this sacrifice? What personal cost, what cross, what losses must she bear, to wear the mantle she’s been handed?
And how much of it is her choice to give voice to all the stories offered her in dreams? What seems to be the answer to the question she’s been dancing since she woke?
What purpose does it serve, this nervous laughter, crafting tales that avoid disaster, trails of crumbs to follow home when all’s played out.
Could she have stayed within the boundaries? Prayed more devoutly? Sounded pious when her soul was out of kilter? Filtered out the deeper truths that led her out beyond the fields?
No, she was meant to wander further than the walls the maps required. She was tired of living tamely in domesticated trance. She had to dance into the open, throw her fancy to the winds, take her chances where she could and race the storm across the wildlands to find the answer to her ache.
Artists, left to right: Owen Couch, unknown, Robert Lentz, Richard Stodart, unknown (If you know the makers of either of the unknowns, I would be grateful to learn.)
She has always been one of my favorite characters from the stories of Jesus, along with Photina, the Woman at the Well. Women who lived raw and wild, undomesticated and on their own terms. There always seems to be something more, something deeper, something I can’t quite hear or understand, like a powerful dream that’s just fading before I can remember the details, or a word that sits on the tip of the tongue without finding its way into the open air. Mary Magdalene holds a Mystery that is always one step deeper into the veil of mists, one more curtain to encounter, one more step into the wilderness.
All the attempts to nail down her mystery, to put words to it, always leave me a little cold, compelling as they are: Maybe she was Jesus’ wife or lover. Maybe she was the real writer of one of the canonic gospels. Maybe she is the Holy Grail. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Mary Magdalene sits, like the High Priestess, before the curtain of mysteries, and only as I gain wisdom will I be granted the clue or the code or the shaft of golden sunlight that will admit me to the next stage of understanding. Like all the deepest mysteries, like the Deep Self, she lives in the realm of image and symbol, offering egg and thunder, grail and alabaster jar, skull and hair and tears. Best understood on the level of a dream. Best spoken in poetry, perhaps.
That moment of Mary’s epiphany is the mirror of every moment of yearning and longing and ache. Deep grief gives way to confusion and an intensification of grief: Where have they taken the body? And then the moment when the Beloved calls her by her name. I can never write that without getting chills and tearing up. Thomas, Peter, The Emmaus Travelers–those surprises are all coming, all delightful. But this one moment of sunlight in a garden and the sound of her/my name in the voice of the Beloved–it needs no pinning down, no explanation.
Gratitude List: 1. Wind. Yes, it’s scary, and I don’t really need more anxiety right now, but it’s so beautiful and powerful. After the big winds, I always think, “Wind-shriven,” the world scoured clean. 2. This long weekend. I have not yet gotten my lagging work completed, but I have had three marvelous days of baking and sewing and trail-work and playing with the family. 3. The story of Mary Magdalene. I need her Mystery and Epiphany now, perhaps more than ever. 4. Making plans even in the midst of this uncertainty. Putting programs and ideas and lesson plans into online formats is so much less than ideal, but I feel myself growing and thinking in new ways. In the after, I will be informed by the ways my brain has been forced to adapt in these months, and hopefully that will contribute to a glorious new normal instead of a return to an old normal. 5. Martin Prechtel’s ideas about Grief and Praise. I am going to have to buy some of his books.
May we walk in Beauty!
“I pray to the birds. I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day—the invocations and benedictions of Earth. I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.” ―Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” ―Emma Lazarus
“Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.” ―Ernest Hemingway
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” ―Robert Frost
“What I have seen is the totality recapitulated as One, Received not in essence but by participation. It is just as if you lit a flame from a live flame: It is the entire flame you receive.” ―St. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022)
“We love the things we love for what they are.” ―Robert Frost
“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.” ―Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” ―Sarah Williams
“Resist much, obey little.” ―Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
“Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.” ―e. e. cummings
“If we do not mean that God is male when we use masculine pronouns and imagery, then why should there be any objections to using female imagery and pronouns as well?” ―Carol P. Christ
“Subversive language, however, must be constantly reinvented, because it is continually being co-opted by the powerful.” ―Carol P. Christ
Mockingbird Chronicles 