Tag: Erebus

Finding the Magic

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes
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

She Is On Her Way

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes, Musings
This is Erebus the Carpet Otter. He looks like he is wearing the Fool’s Cap. He has fangs and a soul patch.

Some Thoughtful Quotations for Today:
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope,
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.

And wait without love. For love would be love,
of the wrong thing.

Yet there is faith.
But the faith and the hope and the love, are all in the waiting.

And the darkness shall be the light
and the stillness the dancing.

—T.S. Elliot

“One’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes.”
—Andrew Wyeth

“There were as many truths—overlapping, stewed together—as there were tellers. The truth mattered less than the story’s life. A story forgotten died. A story remembered not only lived, but grew.” —Patrick Ness (from The Crane Wife), via Terri Windling

“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)

“You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.”
―Vandana Shiva

“It falls to each of us to be those anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy; to embrace the joyous task we’ve been given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours. Because for all our outward differences, we all share the same proud title: Citizen.” — Barack Obama

Gratitude List:
1. Chanteuses. Women who can sing from a stage and make it sound that they are singing from your own heart.
2. Last day of the semester.
3. The music and poetry of Joy Harjo. A student mentioned today that I can get Joy Harjo albums on my apps!
4. The color gold–deeper and wiser, perhaps, than sun or butter yellow. Perhaps a little less fun-loving than those others, but a perfect color for the day.
5. Complexity.

May we live in Beauty!

Advent 7: Approach with Curiosity

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Advent, Musings
This is a picture of my cat Erebus through the window between our kitchen and the breezeway. Behind him are some of the houses of Legoland, but my own reflection is caught within the shadow of him, and behind me is the reflection of the window to the outside.

One of the dangers for me in this season is numbness. There is so much to do; there are so many details to keep track of, so many people with needs to respond to. Compounding this, the cold and the closing darkness make me draw inward, pulling inside myself. It can be easy to forget to feel, to live in a survival mindset, moving from task to task with an automatic and robotic air, just trying to hold on and make it through.

It helps to be conscious and deliberate in my response to the pull toward hibernation, not denying the desire, offering myself small oases of hibernation in the context of the busy life I must continue to lead. Stop and breathe. Stop and read a poem. Stop and draw a picture. Stop and smile at someone. I need to change the pace, stepping at the rhythm my body and psyche demand rather than the rush and bustle that the frantically commercial outside world demands.

It also helps, here in this winter labyrinth, to hone and practice curiosity, letting the mind out to play, opening the heart more fully to wonder and delight. Look up from the relentless task list in front of you, and let your gaze wander over the world outside the momentary ruts. Notice the colors and textures. Take an interest. Be curious. It helps to combat the dullness.

I have developed an obsession with taking photos of reflections, and reflections of reflections. In the picture above, I am caught in the reflection of a picture of my cat through a window. His name is Erebus, which is the personification of darkness and shadow in ancient Greek cosmology. Even the shadows have a wonderful variety of shade and hue. Shadows and reflections of shadows are doorways, places where worlds meet, tangible and intangible places of possibility.

How will you be changed if you decide to walk through one of those doorways?

Envisioning:
(At the beginning of Advent, my pastor asked us to hold the swords-into-ploughshares vision in our heads, to look for stories of people choosing that vision. For the next little while, I am going to look for such stories as my daily morning meditation.)

This week, I have come across several articles about Rain Dove, a model who responds to critics and detractors with what one writer called ‘relentless kindness.” Rain Dove is non-binary, and receives quite a lot of hateful responses to their social media posts about their own life. A recent incident in which an angry parent posted an angry and blaming note to Rain Dove about their influence on the parent’s child turned into an honest conversation about being present for a child who needs tender-hearted adults. Rain Dove began with humor to diffuse the anger, then probed gently and non-judgmentally to find out the root of the parent’s anxiety. Then they asserted repeatedly that it seems obvious that the parent must really love and care for the child and want what’s best. I want to be like Rain Dove, practicing a vision of a world in which we approach each other with relentless kindness.