fascism

For Such a Time as This

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

In the past decade, I have often thought of Uncle Mordecai’s advice to his niece Queen Esther. I paraphrase: “Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

And here, thousands of years later, are we, in the generations following the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. Here are we, who have been raised on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and his vision of the smallest and most vulnerable-seeming ones taking up the hardest task simply because it was laid on their shoulders. Our books and movies have been filled with people (often teenagers) taking stands against tyranny, fascism, Imperialism, oppression, and cruelty.

We’ve been primed and educated for the coming days.

Here are some of the things I am telling myself:
1. Limit your news intake to a few trusted sources.
2. Unplug as much as possible, especially from the dire and angsty and shrill.
3. Post and share images and stories–actual and fictional–of people resisting Empire.
4. Watch the inauguration or don’t watch the inauguration–do what your heart needs and don’t apologize to anyone for the choice you feel is right for you to make.
5. Differentiate between thoughtful satire and unkind snark.
6. At least, don’t punch down. Punch up. And keep it classy.
7. Express your feelings.
8. Listen to others expressing their feelings. Don’t minimize or explain them away.
9. Commiserate without contributing to negativity and panic.
10. Keep reaching out to your friends. Keep checking in on your friends.
11. Build larger and larger circles of community so no single person has to have the burden of holding you together when you fall apart.
12. In a time of destruction, create things.
13. In a time of cruelty, be inexplicably kind.
14. In a time of rampant lies, speak truth from your heart, and honor integrity.
15. Who do you admire? Emulate them.
16. Breathe, and breathe, and breathe. Stretch and breathe.
17. Use your power and privilege to shield and protect those with less.
18. Stand in the gap.
19. What are you willing to put on the line for others?
20. Do not let your voice be silenced.
21. Do not give money a voice.
22. stay grounded. Every day, meditate or pray or make a magic spell that goodness and peace will prevail.

Gratitude List:
1. Such a beautiful snowstorm (hmmm-I accidentally write snowstory, and I want to make that an official word, please)
2. So many circles of dedicated souls ready to stand up and speak out
3. Tea
4. I have finally found a tool that is helping me with task initiation and task completion. I am feeling so satisfied, and much more full of energy
5. Great horned owls calling through the darkness last night.
May we walk in Beauty!

“Things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” —Pema Chödrön

“How will we ever reconcile with those from whom we feel so estranged? How will we forgive the wrongs we believe have been done? How will we be able to trust one another again? Those are the kinds of profound questions that many of us need to have answers to…but the hurts are so new, the pain so fresh, we are not sure when or how we will ever come to a point of healing. To be honest, I do not have answers to any of these questions, not right now, but that does not trouble me. Why? Because I know, over time, the Spirit will bring us to the answers we need. She will show us paths to healing we never imagined. I am confident she will slowly guide us to wholeness in a manner that is most just and most empowering for us. Therefore, I do not feel anxious about how I will forgive or rushed into relationships I am not ready to embrace. I may not be able to trust others yet, but I do trust the Spirit, and that is enough for now. I will follow where she leads and when she leads, knowing that what I cannot comprehend now, I will understand later.” —Steven Charleston, 2021

“The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.
The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
Words can be used thus paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a symbolic or metaphoric usage. (They also have a sound—a fact the linguistic positivists take no interest in . A sentence or paragraph is like a chord or harmonic sequence in music: its meaning may be more clearly understood by the attentive ear, even though it is read in silence, than by the attentive intellect.)” —Ursula LeGuin

“Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings.
Move within, but don’t move the way fear
Makes you move.” —by Rumi (Barks)

“I think pleasure is really the gateway to feeling connected and inspired.” —Dreamwork with Toko-pa

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
―Mary Oliver

“Now is the time to resist the slightest extension in the boundaries of what is right and just. Now is the time to speak up and to wear as a badge of honor the opprobrium of bigots.” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Our lives are a partnership with Spirit. We can choose to be active in this partnership or passive. We can opt out at any time, but we can also increase our involvement. We can grow, change and learn. We can do more good than we ever imagined possible. The key is in the relationship we have with our partner.” —Steven Charleston, 2025

“A common woman is as common as a common loaf of bread, and will rise.” —Judy Grahn

“The plan, a memory of the future, tries on reality to see if it fits.” —Laurence Gonzalez

“I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing that like being for the first time see, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells un-flamed and disappeared. I was still ringing.” —Annie Dillard

“When you walk a path you love, there is something deeper calling you forward on it, like a beautiful question that can never be answered.” —Toko-pa Turner

“A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.”
―Lisa Kleypas, A Wallflower Christmas

“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism” —Martin Luther King Jr.

“Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles.
Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.
Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it.
Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?
Expediency asks the question, is it politic?
Vanity asks the question, is it popular?
But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“We are all silent witnesses to the drama of our own lives. We see behind the curtains. We know the origin of our story, the characters who fill its pages, and the main events that have carried us over perilous seas to where we find ourselves today. Only a small fraction of this saga ever gets told, even around the firelight of family, but we keep it in our hearts the way books were once written by hand. The story lives within us and finds its completion through us. We carry it forward in sacred procession, not knowing when our own role will end, but bound by faith to take our part for as long as love allows.” —Steven Charleston

“How will we ever reconcile with those from whom we feel so estranged? How will we forgive the wrongs we believe have been done? How will we be able to trust one another again? Those are the kinds of profound questions that many of us need to have answers to…but the hurts are so new, the pain so fresh, we are not sure when or how we will ever come to a point of healing. To be honest, I do not have answers to any of these questions, not right now, but that does not trouble me. Why? Because I know, over time, the Spirit will bring us to the answers we need. She will show us paths to healing we never imagined. I am confident she will slowly guide us to wholeness in a manner that is most just and most empowering for us. Therefore, I do not feel anxious about how I will forgive or rushed into relationships I am not ready to embrace. I may not be able to trust others yet, but I do trust the Spirit, and that is enough for now. I will follow where she leads and when she leads, knowing that what I cannot comprehend now, I will understand later.” —Steven Charleston

The Regime Requests

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

This is not intended to shame anyone for feeling despair or numbness or fear. It’s me telling myself to prepare to resist fascism more openly and energetically.

The Regime Would Like to Request
Your Compliance in the Following Matters:
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Curl up in a ball of despair and stay there.
Allow that slow-seeping sense of helplessness
to invade every pore of your being.
Practice extreme numbness.
Scroll mindlessly through your phones at all times.
Do not look out your windows.
Better yet, keep your blinds drawn.
Stay away from nature:
It won’t be around much longer anyway.
Stop making things. Buy stuff. Be good little consumers.
Distrust all your neighbors. Exercise suspicion.
Tell us everything you can about your neighbors.
Stop reading books! Especially history books!
Better yet, join our book-burnings,
every other Thursday on the public square.
Read instead these memes created
by the Russian bots, and listen to the news
vetted by our own minister of liberty management.
Do not complain. Do not organize. Do not resist.

Gratitude List:
1. A golden chilly bike ride this morning on the Rail Trail
2. All four of us under one roof for two nights
3. The people who are stepping up and leading the way
4. Feeling the Big Feelings even when they aren’t fun
5. Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuue sky!
May we walk in Beauty!

“We must do what they fear— tell the truth, spread the truth. This is the most powerful weapon.” —Alexei Navalny

“For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” —Carl Sagan

“But this moment, you’re alive. So you can just dial up the magic of that at any time.” —Joanna Macy

“I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” —Vincent van Gogh

“The most vital right is the right to love and be loved.” —Emma Goldman

“Love imperfectly. Be a love idiot. Let yourself forget any love ideal.” —Sark

“Everything I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything exists, only because I love.” —Leo Tolstoy

“Love is a great beautifier.” —Louisa May Alcott

“Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more.” —Erica Jong

“Fall in love over and over again every day. Love your family, your neighbors, your enemies, and yourself. And don’t stop with humans. Love animals, plants, stones, even galaxies.” —Frederic and Mary Ann Brussa

“I will start from here. That is an interesting spiritual statement when you stop to think about it. It means that whatever happened before, and whatever may happen in time to come, the past and the future are not the sacred space I actually inhabit. That space is right here, right now, in whatever condition I find myself. This is what I have to work with. This is where change and hope begin for me. Recognizing my location on the map of the holy is one more way that I claim my place of blessing and announce to the universe: I will start from here.” —Steven Charleston

” ‘They kept going, because they were holding onto something.’
‘What are we holding onto, Sam?’
‘There’s still good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.’ “
—Frodo and Sam

“Somewhere deep in the forest of grief
there is a waterfall where all your tears may flow
over mossy rocks, under watchful pines.”
—Beth Weaver-Kreider

“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.” —E. B. White

“There are certain things, often very little things, like the little peanut, the little piece of clay, the little flower that cause you to look WITHIN – and then it is that you see the soul of things.”
—George Washington Carver

Common Sense

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

This morning, I woke up from a dream in which I was helping someone to design a pamphlet titled Common Sense. It was like Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, but a point-by-point enumeration of all the reasons not to vote for a second term for this president. And now I feel burdened, like someone needs to do this, in the carefully-reasoned yet passionate style of Paine himself, simply presenting all the pieces. I have neither the time nor the internal bandwidth at the moment to do so. But someone ought to do it.

I’ve become increasingly alarmed in recent days at the worshipful fervor of the diehard followers of this man, at the increasingly cultic adulation by people who seem to be otherwise humane and caring. Every day he reveals more and more of his depravity and lack of human feeling, his selfishness and narcissism, his lying, his racism and xenophobia, his misogyny, his delight in division and violence.

I shouldn’t have read that Atlantic article about QAnon, perhaps, shouldn’t have let myself look at the polls, shouldn’t have listened to the radio yesterday, shouldn’t have let myself brood about the thing I heard someone say about how we need him in office because he is tearing down the broken system from within, shouldn’t have started pondering the cultic nature of his followers.

I’m really worried.
Someone should write the pamphlet.

Gratitude List:
1. Facts. Science. Truth.
2. Journalists
3. Compassion, empathy
4. My deeply thoughtful colleagues
5. Three-day weekend

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

We are listening for a sound
beyond us, beyond sound,
searching for a lighthouse
in the breakwaters of our uncertainty,
an electronic murmur
a bright, fragile I am.
Small as tree frogs
staking out one end
of an endless swamp,
we are listening
through the longest night
we imagine, which dawns
between the life and time of stars.
—Diane Ackerman

“Those that don’t got it, can’t show it. Those that got it, can’t hide it.” —Zora Neale Hurston

“If you are not free to be who you are, you are not free.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“Before you speak to me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people; before you tell me how much you love your God, show me in how much you love all [of your God’s] children; before you preach to me of your passion for your faith, teach me about it through your compassion for your neighbors. In the end, I’m not as interested in what you have to tell or sell as I am in how you choose to live and give.” ―Cory Booker

“I need a God who is bigger and more nimble and mysterious than what I could understand and contrive. Otherwise, it can feel like I am worshipping nothing more than my own ability to understand the divine.” —Nadia Bolz-Weber

“You who are so-called illegal aliens must know that no human being is ‘illegal’. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?” —Elie Wiesel

“Emergence never happens all at once. It is a slow stepping into the expanded capacity of your next self. You may need practice at releasing in those places you’ve grown accustomed to bracing which, like a tight swaddle, was comforting in its limits. But when the time to remain hidden comes to its natural end, you must begin to inhabit your new dimensionality. Breathe into the fullness of your gaining altitude and consider that what presents itself as fear may actually be exhilaration. As your future approaches you, worry less how it may receive you and say a prayer instead for your becoming approachable.” —Toko-pa Turner

“I was often in love with something or someone,” wrote Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. “I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me.”

“Oh what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox. This is what is the matter with us, we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.”
—D.H. Lawrence

Lord’s Prayer:
Translation by Neil Douglas Klotz, Sufi
O Birther! Creator of the Cosmos,
Focus your light within us— make it useful:
Create your reign of unity now-
Your one desire then acts with ours,
as in all light, so in all forms.
Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.
Don’t let surface things delude us,
But free us from what holds us back.
From you is born all ruling will,
the power and the life to do,
the song that beautifies all,
from age to age it renews.
Truly— power to these statements—
may they be the ground from which all
my actions grow: Amen.

Suggested Readings

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

peacock

In the wake of the political conventions, I’ve been looking at what has been happening inside myself.

Because of the sense of doom that I feel about Donald Trump as a political candidate, I have allowed myself to fall again into snarky and mean talk about the candidate.  It’s so easy, right?  And somehow it begins to feel that if I say it all loud enough and long enough, the people who are supporting him will listen up.  But that’s how he himself maneuvers his own agenda onto the landscape–repeat, loud and long, and repeat again.  We aren’t going to bring about a revolution of respect and justice and simple goodness by standing around blustering and yelling, no matter how cathartic it feels.  This article by Omid Safi (click here) on the On Being blog spoke to me about keeping the discourse on a high level.  As Michelle Obama said, “When they go low, we go high.”

Also, because I have been a supporter of Bernie Sanders, I have been feeling a struggle within as I watched the DNC.  On one hand, I relate powerfully to those angry, grieving Sanders supporters who wouldn’t settle down and get on with business.  On the other, I was annoyed at how the booing and the grutzing came across on the national screen as belligerent and fractious–there has to be a better way to carry the revolution into the next stage than through petty disruptions.  I also noticed within myself a real turning toward Hillary Clinton, a sudden eagerness to throw in my towel with her camp, an excited delight to finally vote for a woman for president.  Still, it was extremely helpful to me to have a thoughtful conservative friend question me very politely about how wary of her I have been in the past because of her connections to mega-corporations and her support of Monsanto and big ag.  This morning I got around to reading this really insightful article from my friend Jonathan Matthew Smucker (click here) about how the political polarization these days tends to be along populist/establishment lines rather than simply along conservative/liberal lines.  I will vote for Hillary in November, but I will not do so with a sense of having sold out my progressive values or embraced politics-as-usual.  I will vote for her because a Democratic landscape will offer a more open field for progressive ideas to flourish and grow than the fascist landscape offered by her opponent.  (And I will smile as I do it, because I finally get to vote for a woman, and that, too, is revolutionary.)

Gratitude List:
1. That vaseful of peacock feathers we came home to.  Someone left them on the table in the garage.  If it was you, thank you!
2. Playing up at Sam Lewis State Park with the family, climbing rocks, launching the flying toys we bought at NASA, playing Sharks and Humans on the jungle gym (the sharks always win).
3. This beautiful place where we live, how rolling hill leads to valley and hollow, which leads to rolling hill and rolling hill, off into the distance, with skuthers of mist and fog caught between.  The River.  The broad valley across the way.
4. Re-interpretation.  Finding new and satisfying ways to say old things.
5. That Rose of Sharon bush out there, white and pink and violet flowers shining out all over.

May we walk in Beauty!