dream

Dream Passenger

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

In last night’s dream, a woman commandeered my car to drive somewhere way out into Nowheresville. This is the second time in two weeks that I’ve had a dream about someone taking over the wheel of my car so they could drive to their destination out in the middle of nowhere. It’s not a carjacking, because they fully intended in both cases to get out and leave my car to me when we reached our destination, but still, it’s uncomfortable to me to find myself a passenger in my own car. 

In the dream, a woman motions me into a parking lot at a convenience store, and I pull in, sort of catty-cornered, so I can hear her question. She starts talking even before I get the window open, asking me if I know the way to Lizard Point.

She has a sort of shopping cart filled with all sorts of things, including a baby seat with a baby climbing out of it. She just opens the door of my car and starts putting the baby seat into the back seat, so I grab the baby who is sweet and cooing, and I clean up the vomit baby has spit up all over itself. Before I know it, the woman is in the car getting ready to back out of the parking lot on the way to Lizard Point. 

I don’t remember the trip in the dream, but when we get to the building where she wanted to go, while the woman unloads her things, I go to get the baby out of the car seat. The baby has thrown up all over again, this time much worse, and there’s nothing in the car or anywhere to clean up the mess. The baby’s face is ashy white and I’m afraid the child has died or will die. 

At this point lucid brain kicks in, and I realize that I’m in a dream, that this baby is a symbol or metaphor for something instead of a living (dying) child, and that I can pull myself out of the dream so I don’t have to keep experiencing the horror of this image. It’s 3:00 in the morning. 

A note about Lizard Point: this is the name of a geography game that I sometimes play but haven’t for a while. If you like geography, and want to learn more, I recommend it or Seterra. Globle and Worldle (notice the extra L) are also fun. Especially in times like these when there’s lots of news of places around the world, I like that my brain can now see where on a map Ukraine or Yemen or Myanmar is. It helps me feel connected. 

One of my beloveds recently mentioned that they thought I’m a little too deferential, that I don’t speak up enough for what I really want. While I am working on saying things like, “I want,” “I need,” “I desire,” I’m also a Seven on the Enneagram, which means that pretty much anything can make me feel happy and content. So if I say, “Hey, let’s do this!” And you say, “Sure, but what about this instead?” I’m probably going to agree with the thing you suggest because both things will make me happy just being with you is what makes me happy. Still, I do want to take this person’s point seriously, and I wonder at these dreams in which someone commandeers my car, whether there is a message that I need to start saying, “No, I really want to do this.”

These dreams about someone else driving my car might also relate to the fact that we have a driver with a learner’s permit in the family right now. I am now mostly in the passenger seat, so that’s an image my brain would likely latch onto.

I could wake myself up from the horror dream of a dying child, but I wake into a world where children are dying, and it seems that people are too distracted, like the mother in my dream, to notice the constant crisis. And I feel utterly helpless.

Dreaming

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

In the dream, I find five tiny creatures, all rodent-like. They’re all different species, and all at different stages of development, but they’re all extremely vulnerable, and need someone to take care of them. I am afraid even to pick up the smallest ones, because they’re so tiny, I am afraid the pressure of my fingers will harm them.

I find a terrarium-type of container, and I am really gratified to see them eating and drinking, even the tiniest one, which is like a tiny ball of fuzz. Even so, I am uncertain whether the littlest ones can possibly survive.

The scene shifts, and I am checking on the tiny creatures the following day. Today, however, they are frogs. In the way of dreams, they’re the same creatures, but frogs. One of the older ones is swimming in the water on its back, cradling the tiniest one in its arms. The others have all grown, and they’re looking healthy and satisfied. Even as frogs, it’s clear that they’re different species. I am incredibly relieved that they’re going to survive, and amazed that they are taking care of each other.

I used to have dreams about taking care of lost kittens or gerbils or hamsters that kept getting away and into danger. This one was very like those, but with the difference that there was a resolution of their safety at the end.

I’ve been using a new motivational app the past week (called Finch). It’s been so much more effective than my various methods of to-do lists that always seem to get lost or ignored. I feel like the tiny animals are about the tasks and goals I set for myself. Finally, for the first time in a long time, I am feeling like I have the focus and energy to manage the basic details.

I was hesitant to try it because it felt like just one more thing to do, and nothing else seemed to work to motivate me or give me energy, and why would adding one more thing be helpful? Somehow, this particular thing helps to motivate me in ways other systems have not. The app is very game-like, giving energy to a little bird every time I complete a task. I’ve begun to feel very tenderly about my own vulnerable little learning self as I tend to the needs of this little creature by keeping up with my tasks. No wonder my dreamlife is giving me tiny creatures to nurture.

Moment of Hope

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s Poem is nonfiction:

Moment of Hope
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

It was a ripple
a glimmer
a golden ray
shimmering
just a moment
shining on the twilit waves
percolating
like a cooling stream
of water trickling
down my soul
just a whisper
in the wilderness
a fragment
of a fragment
of a fragment
of an almost-remembered
dream, and nearly
as ethereal,
yet almost tangible too
a brewing of hope
on the horizon

Gratitude List:
1. A moment of Hope
2. Remembering beauty and goodness
3. Chocolate-covered Holiday Star cookies
4. Music to calm the anxious spirit
5. Good stories
May we walk in Beauty!

Saturday’s Falling and Getting Up Again:
“Both when we fall and when we get up again, we are kept in the same precious love.” ―Julian of Norwich

“What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved–what then?” ―Carl Jung

“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.”
―Eleanor Roosevelt

“If I had influence with the good fairy, I would ask that her gift to each child be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”
―Rachel Carson

“Your problem is you’re too busy holding onto your unworthiness.” ―Ram Dass

“In giving of yourself, you will discover a whole new life full of meaning and love.” ―Cesar Chavez

“While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
―Eugene V. Debs

“I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too. Ma Joad: I don’t understand it, Tom. Tom Joad: Me, neither, Ma, but – just somethin’ I been thinkin’ about.”
―Tom Joad, from the movie Grapes of Wrath

“And don’t we all, with fierce hunger, crave a cave of solitude, a space of deep listening—full of quiet darkness and stars, until we hear a syllable of God echoing in the core of our hearts?”
—Macrina Wiederkehr

“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.” —Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

“The way that I understand it, dreaming is nature naturing through us. Just as a tree bears fruit or a plant expresses itself in flowers, dreams are fruiting from us. The production of symbols and story is a biological necessity. Without dreams, we could not survive. And though it is possible to get by without remembering our dreams, a life guided and shaped by dreaming is a life that follows the innate knowing of the earth itself. As we learn to follow the instincts of our inner wilderness, respecting its agreements and disagreements, we are also developing our capacity for subtlety. This sensitivity is what makes us more porous and multilingual, bringing us into conversation with the many languages of the world around us.” — Toko-pa Turner

Two dreams and a Prayer

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
I drew this sketch of a dream ten years ago, 25 November 2014.

Last night’s dream, 2 October 2024:
I’m on a farm, in a yard near the farmhouse, when a woman in a car comes racing down the lane, around a sharp curve between stone walls, spewing gravel in the wake of her tires. She spins the car around and backs it up beside a big barn and the rear end of the car gets caught on the low stone wall. She leaves the car running, tires spinning, gets out of the car, and starts to walk across the yard toward the farmhouse. Her sunglasses are askew, and she looks confused. I walk toward her. To comfort her? To help her regulate? To tell her to turn off her car, or scold her? The alarm goes off and it is morning.

Who is this woman? Is she a version of me? Is she the women of America? Is she the goddess herself? She didn’t seem particularly angry or anxious. Just impatient and confused. I think I need to find this out during the coming season.

In this season of ripening into darkness,
as worries whirl around me
like angry wasps,
I asked the Mother,
By what name shall I call you?
And I saw a the parade of Deerpeople
who wandered through the farm
on balmy summer mornings,
the shaman ancestor with her drum,
the dream I had of a woman
who was a deer
who was a tree
who was a shelter
to small animals and birds
in her branches and among her roots.

Oh Antlered One:
who calls me home to live
within the garden of myself:
Help me to find the still point
in this maelstrom of my anxious fears,
to follow where the sacred tug of griefs and rages
will guide me to the wisdom I will write upon the pages
of these my croning years.

Wordpool Poem: Scrolling for Words

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I think I may have made up that title: Wordpool Poem. But the practice of this playful prompt for starting a poem has been around a long time. Early in the days when I was beginning to call myself a poet, I read an exercise by Gwendolyn Brooks in which she gave six words and said to set a timer (was it for five minutes? Eight?) and write a poem using her wordpool.

Here is the edited and refined result of that exercise, as it appears in my 2013 book, The Song of the Toad and the Mockingbird:

Chasing Chickens
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

I’ve counted my chickens.
A dozen times or more they’ve dashed—
Dashed, I tell you—
Into blackberry canes,
Wings whirring.
White clouds of dust engulf me.
Their voices chuckle
from the cliff’s edge.
Don’t tell me about chickens.
I’m green, baby. Green.
And I don’t know how
I’m getting home from here.

I love how the imperative of fitting those random words into a poem set me off-kilter enough to write something that felt new and fresh, and held the angst and anxiety of my life at the time in a layer beneath the surreal “story.”

Here is my take on the Wordpool poem game: Scrolling for Words–

Open up one of your social media pages. If you aren’t on social media, find a book or magazine. Set a timer for one minute. Your goal is to harvest 8-10 at least mildly interesting words in one minute. Turn the timer on, and scroll (or skim, if you’re using printed text), copying down words that catch your eye. Pace yourself. You don’t want to end up with 30 words, and if you end up with fewer than 8, you might want to start over.

Once you have your wordpool (at least 8-10!), reset your timer for 8 minutes. Your challenge is: In that 8-minute time period, write a poem using your words. (You may change forms and parts of speech as you go.) Take a deep breath, unhitch the horse of your brain to go racing through the meadow, and GO!

Write, write, write, don’t think!

What a ride! What a rush! Can’t stop, can’t ponder, can’t let the brain take over! But now here’s the grace. Take whatever time you need to edit and revise. Shift line lengths. Listen for sounds that you can enhance or repeat, rhythms you can lean into. Just try to keep your wordpool words there in some form.

Here is my revised and tweaked poem, with the wordpool words in bold:

Chasing the Vision
by Beth Weaver-Kreider, July 2024

I believe in the fire of that vision, in the possibilities
you created when the other world trickled through,
its light sifting into the collection you’d made of saints’ icons
in glass canning jars, the blue of that other place shining in your eyes.

I believe in the small angel who crawled through your doorway,
sank into the feral dreams of your four-poster bed,
in the way you harbored those ghosts in your head,
how you’ve been feeding the schemes of the trickster
and learning a new way to exist in the between.

Behold! today you will see a new thing (no false vision this),
never seen by human eyes: a wing on a fawn, or
a cryptical creature of moss and fur, fangs, and scales, and dream.
Make the most of the message before it dissipates
like mist over the River on those impossible mornings in fall.

Amazingly, somehow–despite the fact that my brain was unhitched and frantically seeking to just get all the words in–this poem feels like an accurate and holy weaving of several conversations I have had in the past week about magic and mystical and cryptical experiences. I’ll come back to it another day to see if it is finished, if it needs more work.

As I tell my students: Break the Rules. The rules are there to give you a specific field in which to play, but you can discard or change the rules I’ve made up at any point that you feel life they’re holding you captive.

Variations:
1. Use a random word generator online. Ask it to give you a set of random words.
2. Eavesdrop. Collect a batch of words throughout your day to use as a wordpool.
3. Try using the same wordpool for two different poems.
4. Generate a wordpool with a friend, and write your own poems using the same pool.
5. For a little harder challenge, begin each line with one of the words in the wordpool.

Gratitude List:
1. My amazing kids, who figured out what was wrong when the water stopped, and fixed the pump.
2. Mystical encounter with a fawn (mine did not have visible wings like the one in the poem)
3. A lovely group of folks in my magical doll-making class yesterday. Meeting online friends in person. Making new connections.
4. People who respond to crises with kindness, by unleashing more goodness into the world.
5. It’s okra season! And even if our heirloom tomatoes aren’t ready, Flinchbaugh’s sells them!
May we walk in Beauty!

And It’s November

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

It’s been a minute. Or, as a colleague of mine might phrase it: What a year this week has been. I got caught in the grip of November, and there were too many things on my plate, and there was sadness, and it was November. So I am behind on the poetry. About five days, I think. I’m not sure whether this fits any of the interim prompts, but I really like it. It says something, or some things, about dreaming, and living, and November.

You know that dream
where you’re driving backwards
down a mountain
in the dark and in the rain?
And it’s November.

And your eyes won’t open all the way
and there’s a tunnel up ahead
and you’re going the wrong way
on a one way road
and it’s November.

And the children in the back seat
are screaming in terror
and the road is impossibly narrow
and a sudden fog arises
and it’s November.

You know that feeling
where you’re driving backwards
down a mountain
in the dark and in the rain?
And it’s November.

Gratitude List:
1. The kid is home!
2. Decorating the hall with my colleagues
3. Holidays
4. Oak leaves
5. Cheddar cheese
May we walk in Beauty!

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
—Nelson Mandela

For a day, just for one day,
Talk about that which disturbs no one
And bring some peace into your beautiful eyes.
—Hafiz

“Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.” —Doris Lessing

“Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than silence.” —proverb

“All religions, all this singing, one song. The differences are just illusion and vanity. The sun’s light looks a little different on this wall than it does on that wall, and a lot different on this other one, but it’s still one light.” —Rumi

The magic of autumn has seized the countryside;
now that the sun isn’t ripening anything
it shines for the sake of the golden age;
for the sake of Eden;
to please the moon for all I know.
—Elizabeth Coatsworth

“. . .fairies’ gold, they say, is like love or knowledge—or a good story. It’s most valuable when it’s shared.” —Heather Forest, The Woman Who Flummoxed the Fairies

“Sacred is another word for energy. Some physical spaces are sacred because they vibrate with the energy of the Spirit. Some rituals are sacred because they connect infinite energy with finite creation. Some memories are sacred because they transmit the energy of those who are now our ancestors. Some visions are sacred because they are the energy of hope, transforming our lives, right before our eyes.” —Steven Charleston

The Greywoman

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

In the first part of the dream, there is a premonition of fire. We (I am with a group of people I love) are in a small house in a tiny village high on the side of a mountain in West Virginia. It’s not Philippi, where I spent a couple years of my childhood, but I know it’s WVA. I wake up from sleeping in my dream, my head filled with fire. I see the town, the whole mountainside blazing. In my dream within a dream, the house was engulfed in flames, and I was screaming that there wouldn’t be enough time to get out. I felt the pure knowledge that I was going to die. When I wake up from the dream-in-a-dream, I know that the conflagration will be started by extra rail ties that were stacked up beside the railroad tracks. I can see the initiating spark on the one tie as it tumbles down the mountainside.

But we have things to do, a funeral to attend in the larger town down at the foot of the mountain. I think that town is in Virginia because of who we meet at the funeral. All along the road to the town, I keep looking for signs of fire, keep thinking I smell fire., but nothing happens, and the dream is no longer about fire.

The funeral is for a young woman in her late teens. I don’t know how she died. At the doors of the little church (it’s one of those tiny churches which is basically all sanctuary) stands my Great Aunt Lydia. In life she wasn’t more than 5’3”, but here she is almost six feet tall, ramrod straight, solid, protectively fierce.She is dressed all in grey with a grey hat on her head (though that was not the tradition in her church in real life). I realize that she is the one who is in charge of the funeral. She hugs me, lovingly but business-like: she has a job to do. A tiny woman in green hugs me. I realize she is also a great aunt, but I can’t remember her name. She says she is Aunt Carol (there is no Aunt Carol in my waking life family tree).

In the church, I sit a couple pews behind my grandmother. We don’t greet each other, but it is not awkward or rude–we’re there for a purpose. Most of the people in the church are elders with a few middle aged folks scattered in. The funeral starts, and the youth group comes out of a front room. They’re in charge. They do a series of chants and songs and games, like you’d do in camp or youth group. It’s playful and spirited, and I know Aunt Lydia approves. Two of the younger youth begin a dance battle, and then the elders intervene a little and gently turn it into a sort of line dance or quiet conga line to forestall the energy getting out of control. Everyone understands that this is the youth group’s way of celebrating the life of their beloved friend.

That’s the end of the dream. It’s been a while since I have had such a potent dream. This one feels like something. You know how it is? My mind has been on Maui, so perhaps that’s why the fire dream. Still, I wonder if there was a message about learning to interpret my intuitions. What I love most is the sense of being surrounded by the great aunts and grandmothers, and how they were watching out for the young ones, letting them be their glorious selves and experience their grief in their own ways, but also guiding.

I was aware throughout the walk to the church and while I was seated in the church, of the weight against my waist of the pouch holding my magical doll.

And here am I, in the waking world, with a life that is spent in guiding teenagers to be their best, most fulfilled and joyful selves. I think the spirits and ancestors are offering their help.

The other day, one of my beloveds asked during a conversation, whether the rest of us thought that people are generally acting from their best selves. This has been the conundrum I ask myself when I wake in the middle of the night to try to make myself go back to sleep. Last night, before the dream, during my insomnia hours, I began to think about how, if we’re not examining our inner selves, if we’re not in touch with our own motivations, we’re probably more likely to act in self-preservation and self-aggrandizement, in a bid for attention and fame, or power and domination, or wealth. Or worse, to see others abased or demeaned. Did I experience a little glee last night when I heard about the indictments? Part of me excuses that as human nature, especially because it represents justice being done to a group of people who were actively manipulating others for power and domination. But part of me also asks myself to do a little better. To keep doing better.

Gratitude List:
1. Messages in dreams
2. Help from the ancestors
3. Road trip: Today is my last day of summer and I am going to go to the National Shrine at Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto in Emmitsburg, MD. Before I head west, I am going to drive to Columbia to the statue of Quan Am.
4. The way people circle round to create a bowl to hold each other
5. The morning’s quiet breezes and walnut leaves twirling down
May we walk in Beauty!

“Whoever you are,
now I place my hand upon you,
that you be my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear.
I have loved many women and men,
but I love none better than you.”
—Walt Whitman, “To You”

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” —Salman Rushdie

“I used to say, ‘There is a God-shaped hole in me.’ For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.” —Salman Rushdie

“Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.”
—Hafez

“The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word manifests itself in every creature.” —Hildegard of Bingen

“Dare to declare who you are. It is not far from the shores of silence to the boundaries of speech. The path is not long, but the way is deep. You must not only walk there, you must be prepared to leap.” —St. Hildegard of Bingen

“The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change.” —Howard Zinn

“Dominance. Control. These things the unjust seek most of all. And so it is the duty of the just to defy dominance and to challenge control.” —Robert Fanney

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” —Alice Walker

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.” —Alice Walker

“I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way…I can’t apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to… We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful…We realize that we are as ourselves unlimited and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose.” —Alice Walker

“There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.” ―Linda Hogan
****”
“Underlying symptoms that typify the Midlife Passage is the assumption that we shall be saved by finding and connecting with someone or something new in the outer world. Alas, for the drowning midlife sailor there are no such life preservers. We are in the sea-surge of the soul, along with many others to be sure, but needing to swim under our own power. The truth is simply that what we must know will come from within. If we can align our lives with that truth, no matter how difficult the abrasions of the world, we will feel healing, hope and new life. The experience of early childhood, and later of our culture, alienated us from ourselves. We can only get back on course by reconnecting with our inner truths.” —James Hollis

“Having a lover/friend who regards you as a living growing criatura, being, just as much as the tree from the ground, or a ficus in the house, or a rose garden out in the side yard… having a lover and friends who look at you as a true living breathing entity, one that is human but made of very fine and moist and magical things as well… a lover and friends who support the criatura in you… these are the people you are looking for. They will be the friends of your soul for life. Mindful choosing of friends and lovers, not to mention teachers, is critical to remaining conscious, remaining intuitive, remaining in charge of the fiery light that sees and knows.” —Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

“The Crone has been missing from our culture for so long that many women, particularly young girls, know nothing of her tutelage. Young girls in our society are not initiated by older women into womanhood with its accompanying dignity and power.

Without the Crone, the task of belonging to oneself, of being a whole person, is virtually impossible.”
—Marion Woodman, Dancing in the Flames, The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness

How the Dream Rises

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

The prompt was to write a dream/reality poem. I’ve never been a fan of poetic lines centered on the page, but somehow this one asked for that. You have to begin reading at the bottom, and rise to the top.

Gratitude List:
1. How dreams wake us up
2. Hot tea on a chilly night
3. Sorting out the feelings
4. Dawnsong in Spring
5. Anticipating Oriole’s Return
May we walk in Beauty!

“An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times. I think that is true of painters, sculptors, poets, musicians. As far as I’m concerned, it’s their choice, but I CHOOSE to reflect the times and situations in which I find myself. That, to me, is my duty. And at this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved. Young people, black and white, know this. That’s why they’re so involved in politics. We will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore. So I don’t think you have a choice. How can you be an artist and NOT reflect the times? That to me is the definition of an artist.” —Nina Simone

“A loving silence often has far more power
to heal and to connect than the
most well-intentioned words.” —Rachel Naomi Remen

“The secret to waking up is unscrambling the word earth.” —anonymous

“I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.” ―Rachel Held Evans

“What a comfort to know that God is a poet.” ―Rachel Held Evans

“Geometry is the archetype of the beauty of the world.” —Johannes Kepler

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” —John Keating (Robin Williams in Dead Poet Society)

“You are the Ground of all being
the Well-Spring of time
Womb of the earth
the Seed-Force of stars.
And so at the opening of this day
we wait
not for blessings from afar
but for You
the very Soil of our soul
the early Freshness of morning
the first Breath of day.”
—John Philip Newell

“Be wary of any influence in your environment that dismisses or judges your enthusiasm. Without it, you would become anaesthetized to life itself. Anyone who demands this smallness of you is in danger themselves and may have contracted this insidious, deadening monotone. Enthusiasm is the vitality of spirit, expressing itself through us, and its grace in our voice should be welcomed and cherished. The word originates in the early 17th century, from the Greek enthousiasmos meaning ‘possessed by god.’ Now, more than ever, the world needs your enlargement, your weirdness, your fiery crescendos of rebellion from boring.” —Toko-pa Turner

“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

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” —Louise Erdrich

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

Harvesting from the Dreamtime

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

The Dreamtime this year has been. . .dreamy. We have Covid in the house, so we cancelled all our plans to attend family holiday gatherings this year. It was definitely sad, and yet we’re all homebodies, so we’re fine, other than feeling like we missed out, and missing our families.

And although it has been dreamy, we have been getting stuff done. I’ve been knitting and crocheting, painting, organizing, learning a lot of Swahili. Jon’s been spackling and painting and fixing stuff. Josiah has been getting his room ready to repaint.

Yesterday, I finished going through files from my previous job: I let that be a ritual of release. Whoosh! It’s out the door, into the trash, out of my life. I kept a few things–poems, articles, notes of encouragement. So, of course last night in the dreamtime, I was finding space for myself in buildings, and trying to negotiate what my feelings should be in the context of other people.

Here’s the dream: I am going to a funeral with a friend. I think that she was probably closer to the one who died than I was, so when she decides to wait in the hall before our group goes in to sing, I wait out there with her. But she looks bored, like she doesn’t really care about what is happening. I long to be in the service, so I leave her with some others in the hall and go in. When we get up to sing our special music, the man who is holding the hymnal for a couple of us in the singing group keeps shifting it away so I can’t see it. I keep shuffling to get a better view and he shifts it away again. I think we must look ridiculous to the people in the audience, so I just shift into the back row and ignore hymnal-guy. He’s left standing awkwardly alone in the front row.

In the second half of the dream, I am finding office/living space in the basement of the church where the funeral was. There’s a lovely big heavy curtain walling off my personal area from the rest of the basement, giving me privacy. Someone is concerned about the smell of shrimp. We discover five or six large (lobster-sized) peeled shrimp lying around my space. They smell strongly–not rotten, just shrimpy. The dog has been chewing on them, but doesn’t really like them. I think maybe we can clean this stuff up, and hope the odor doesn’t last.

Perhaps I am hoping that the “odor” of the really negative energy that still remains will not mar my new experiences. I not only have to rid myself of the old files and things, I still need to deal with the lingering bad energy. In the early morning, I found myself dreaming–again–of explaining carefully to someone why I was forced to resign my job.

I’m glad that I made decisions during the funeral part of the dream to do what I needed to do instead of being led by others’ notions, to let myself be emotionally involved in letting go instead of sitting outside, to step out of the dance of someone else’s manipulations.

This year, I am not feeling the desire to choose a single word or theme for the year. Usually I end up with layers of themes anyway. A week ago, I had a moment with a friend when the words Curious / Cure / Curator came into focus together. I’ve been playing also with the connection between Curative and Creative. And there’s another one to add: Connective.

So maybe this year does have an overarching theme after all: Harvesting and Foraging for words and ideas that suit. It’s a free association process, following the bright trail of words and images, expanding the dreamtime from the high holy days of late December and early January to the whole year. I’ve started painting cards with some of the words. Perhaps I’ll stop after ten or fifteen. Perhaps I’ll do a word a day for the whole year. Maybe I’ll end up with my own personal oracle deck.

Curious curiosity cure curator curative creative creator envision vision embolden bold badass connective secret spaces wonder welcome belonging wildness winsome wisdom widen spiral. . .

Gratitude List:

  1. Holding a little house finch in my hand as it came back to awareness and life after hitting the window. How its heart beat against my fingers. How its eye shifted around to find me. How it settled into the warmth of my hand. How it suddenly lifted and flew off. Such perfect feathers. Such lightness of being.
  2. Rumination time
  3. How prayer and magic connect us
  4. Zoom. Even though Covid kept us from family, we could still participate in some important conversation
  5. Dreaming myself into the cure
    May we walk in Beauty!

“Beauty is not a luxury but a strategy for survival.” —Terry Tempest Williams

“Your suffering needs to be respected. Don’t try to ignore the hurt, because it is real. Just let the hurt soften you instead of hardening you. Let the hurt open you instead of closing you. Let the hurt send you looking for those who will accept you instead of hiding from those who reject you.” —Bryant McGill

“Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.” —bell hooks

“I came from a family of repairers. The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and repairs it.” —Louise Bourgeois

“When you have an ancient heart and childlike spirit you must feel deeply, but go lightly. To trace and learn the language of waves. How all the seas carry secrets, yet still move freely. I am still learning how to be water.” —Victoria Erickson

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” —Viktor E. Frankl

“We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew… Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful… and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.” —Desmond Tutu
*:
“I’m restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.” ―Anaïs Nin

Leave your windows and go out, people of the world,
go into the streets, go into the fields, go into the woods
and along the streams. Go together, go alone.
Say no to the Lords of War which is Money
which is Fire. Say no by saying yes
to the air, to the earth, to the trees,
yes to the grasses, to the rivers, to the birds
and the animals and every living thing, yes
to the small houses, yes to the children. Yes.
―Wendell Berry

“If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So like children, we begin again…

to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.”
―Rainer Maria Rilke

Martha Beck: “The important thing is to tell yourself a life story in which you, the hero, are primarily a problem solver rather than a helpless victim. This is well within your power, whatever fate might have dealt you.”

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.

It seems that we Christians have been worshiping Jesus’ journey instead of doing his journey. The worshiping feels very religious; the latter just feels human and ordinary. We are not human beings on a journey toward Spirit, we are already spiritual beings on a journey toward becoming fully human, which for some reason seems harder precisely because it is so ordinary.” ―Richard Rohr

“What if nostalgia is not a fruitless dwelling on those irretrievable moments of the past, as we are taught, but an attempt by sweetness to reach you again?

What if nostalgia is really located in the present, like a scent or ambience which is gathering around you should you avail yourself to it.

As anyone who has been heartbroken knows, there comes a time when, long after loss has been well-lived with, a small melody of love always returns. And to your surprise, you may recognise the tone of that love as the very same love you believed you lost.

It’s then that you know that your love was always your love. And if you let yourself be unguarded to it, nostalgia may find its way back into the generosity of your presence.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa

“We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle and difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent.” —bell hooks

Wise Friends and Wise Dreams

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

In last night’s dream, there are four photos of me with clouds behind me. It’s clearly exactly the same smiling image of me, but the clouds behind me are different: In one, they’re sort of happy and flowery, in another they’re simply bland and grey, in one they’re dramatic, and in one they’re clearly in the menacing form of a shark.

I’m wrangling these days with what it means to be honest and real in the midst of crisis. On one hand, I think it’s important not to put on a false face, to not pretend like nothing’s wrong when things are crumbling. I have always been grateful for people who let me in, who share the deep realities, even when they’re painful. I want to follow their modeling.

On the other hand, it’s not safe for me or others for the shark-cloud or the rainclouds to be obvious all the time. We wear the sunny face to protect ourselves and others. It would be exhausting to be wearing those drama-clouds all the time, and it would control every conversation. And I don’t want everyone to see those.

So there’s a balance, and I feel like I am only learning the way to sort them out. I might thundercloud you when we’re in a light and airy space, or look cheery and chipper when I really want to tell you how much everything just sucks.

I think this uncertainty about how to feel the Big Feelings and still be “socially appropriate” is something some of us never quite learn to sort out. Every time I live through something momentous, it’s always the same. Perhaps it’s my social awkwardness coming out. So many of our children’s books deal with how to feel Big Feelings–we probably ought to all have a shelf of those in our houses.

I received a card from a friend yesterday in which she gave me the excellent advice to give myself time and rest on this part of the journey. “If you had broken your leg two weeks ago,” she wrote, “would you really expect yourself to climb the hills around your house now?” Sage advice from a wise woman. Also, I am a seven on the Enneagram, and pain avoidance is my specialty, but, as another friend told me: “You’ve got to feel it to heal it.”

Between my wise beloveds and my dream state, some good reminders to sit with the strong emotions, not to simply pack them away and ignore them.

When you are in crisis and the world seems to crumble around you, may you, too, feel the protecting arms and gentle words of beloveds to hold you through your storms.

Gratitude List:
1. I heard Oriole this morning! My best friend bird is back in the holler! No matter how chilly the day today, I am going to have the doors open at least for a little while, so I can listen for him.
2. The healthy green of the new leaves on my Mary Magdalene (Lenten) Roses. Really, the healthy green of everything right now!
3. Wise, wise beloveds.
4. I went to the Junior Recital of one of my students at Millersville last evening. Such incredible talent. I am awed and delighted at the many different gifts of these almost-adults.
5. Sometimes when you’re sad, people feed you. Nothing like a lemon muffin to bring some loving zest to the first morning of another week.
May we walk in Beauty!

“A woman who has uncovered and honors her intimacy with the earth through developing a relationship with nature or through the power within her own body carries a wisdom of infinite mystery and potential. She moves through life with one foot in a strange ocean, one on the solid land of her ordinary life.This is not just an idea, but a way to live. Mystics, artists, and mothers of young children know this ability to be half-absorbed in unnameable creative forces.” —Hilary Hart

“The only time incorrectly is not spelled incorrectly is when it is spelled incorrectly.”

“There is no such thing as one-sided generosity. Like one ecosystem, we are each at different times receiving or purging, growing or pruning. In those moments when you believe you aren’t receiving enough, consider what you most want to receive might be the thing you need to give away.” —Toko-pa Turner

“Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.” —Henry David Thoreau

“Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art. Yet we so easily take this gift for granted. That is why so many spiritual traditions begin with thanksgiving, to remind us that for all our woes and worries, our existence itself is an unearned benefaction, which we could never of ourselves create.” —Joanna Macy

“What if the Creator is like the poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s God: “like a webbing made of a hundred roots, that drink in silence”?
What if the Source of All Life inhabits both the dark and the light, heals with strange splendor as much as with sweet insight, is hermaphroditic and omnisexual?
What if the Source loves to give you riddles that push you past the boundaries of your understanding, forcing you to change the ways you think about everything?
What if, as Rusty Morrison speculates in “Poetry Flash,” “the sublime can only be glimpsed by pressing through fear’s boundary, beyond one’s previous conceptions of the beautiful”?
Close your eyes and imagine you can sense the presence of this tender, marvelous, difficult, entertaining intelligence.” —Rob Brezsny