fire

Follow Love

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

DSCN9176
I like to set my camera to “Fireworks” and then “draw” with fire.

There will be days, Bright Spirits,
when you will not know which way to go,
when the voices will tell you to follow a path
where light shines righteously through branches
and others are striding with purpose.

“This is the right way, the truest path,”
they will call to you, and they will wave their hands
and motion you to join them on their journey.
But you will sense something lurking there
in the hard, sharp edges of the light
and you will know that it is not your road.

But how will you know your own way?
Follow Love.  It will never lead you false.
It may whisper to you from the shadows
of a little-trodden tracks through brambles,
or call you across the wide and shining spaces
over rocky mountain passes,
leaving cairns and altars
to help you find your way.

Follow the roads where Love calls you.
Love will guide you where you must go.

Gratitude List:
1. The team of teachers and support staff and administrators who care for our children.  They pay attention, they notice, they plan and adapt and respond to the children’s needs.  It makes me want to commit even more fully to notice each of my own students with clarity and intention.
2. First family fire in the fire pit.  Making s’mores.
3. My first view this morning when I opened my eyes was a windowful of pink, where the dogwood tree is vigorously blooming.
4. In-service day.  Yesterday’s in-service offered some good time to collaborate, and learn from, and bond with colleagues.  I really do like the people I work with.
5. The flock of deer that ran across the road and leapt the stream into the bosque.  (My family tells me that I must call them a herd, but I feel like a herd is thunky and stolid, but a flock is fluttery and wispy, like the deer that crossed my road.  So my family will have to put up with my word.)

May we walk in Beauty!  May the rains water the earth and refresh us all.

Taking a Walk

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Random thoughts from a walk around the farm this afternoon:

–This Step-Counting contest at school is doing what it is supposed to, getting me out and walking.  I am afraid I am letting my team down with my low, low numbers.  I am more sedentary than I admitted to myself–grading and FB and granny squares and playing Legos keeps me sitting in one place.  A lot.
–On one hand the pedometer feels like a ball and chain.  I check it every half hour or so throughout the day, and I am feeling incredible pressure to get up and walking.  On the other hand, it pushes me to get outside and walk, which I don’t usually take the time for, so it’s freeing me, too.
–I like being on a walk.  I live having been walking.  I like having walked.  I just don’t like going walking.  It’s the anticipation and the getting myself in gear part that I don’t like.
–There were tracks everywhere in the last bits of snow and slush: deer, squirrel, bird, bird, bird, and canid.  Maybe that last is fox, maybe dog, maybe coyote.
–I haven’t seen a coyote in years, though Jon saw a pair of them only a couple weeks ago.  I was pretty desperate to find evidence of them in the tracks today.  One set of tracks had a really largish print, and the claws pushed deep into the snow.
–I found a grey-ish owl pellet and broke it apart to look for the mouse bones. But then I realized it was probably a misshapen piece of raccoon poo.
–The bees are sleeping.  I wonder how they’re surviving the winter in their hive.
–I found two unopened pods in one of the milkweed patches.  We brought them down to the house.  Jon has been collecting milkweed seeds with the hope that he can get some to grow in the spring to give away.
–One Small Boy came up to me and said, “Best snack ever!” as he crunched a chunk of ice in his left hand and then chewed off a bite of the kale in his right hand.
–That yellow frost-nipped kale looks about as winter-bitten as I feel right now.

 

Gratitude List:
1. Wind that scours
2. Fire that transforms
3. Water that purifies
4. Earth that supports
5. Spirit that inspires

May we walk in Beauty!

Entering My Prime

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today I turn 47.  Forty-seven is a prime number.  According to Wikipedia, it is the 15th prime number, it’s a safe prime, the 13th supersingular prime, and the sixth Lucas prime.  It is apparently a highly cototient number, and it is “strictly non-palindromic.”  Wikipedia also tells me that 47 is a Keith number, a Carol number and a Thabit number, related somehow to the amicable numbers 17296 and 18416.

Well, anyway, I seem to be entering my prime today, and it looks like I have a lots of mathematical research ahead of me if I really want to understand fully what that means.  But here I go.  Whee!

Gratitude List:
1. Aging.  I wouldn’t want to stay one age all the time.  As my numbers go up, it can occasionally be a little startling to me to see how fast they seem to be rising, but I wouldn’t want to stay in one place.
2. Silver hairs.  My friend Elizabeth calls them Unicorn Hairs.  I will wear mine proudly.
3. Fire circle on the hill.
4. Monarchs flitting about.  Fly well, Bright Ones!
5. Great Horned Owl calling in the trees.
6. That moon!

Five Sacred Elements

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

<Prompt 17: Write an element poem>

I call upon the air,
the breezy inspirations,
the winds that bring ideas,
that cut through the muddle
like a sword of sharp steel.

I call upon the fire,
the passion that ignites,
creative force that excites
the Muse and drives
the enterprise, the energy
that awakens the spirit.

I call upon the water,
deep peace and dream seeking,
realm of the heart, and
keeper of intuitions.
The flow and the flood,
the ocean around us.

I call upon the earth,
the ground of our being,
the rocks and the stones,
the caves, and the bones
of the ancestors.

I call upon center,
great mystery and spirit,
the hub and the wheel,
the home and the fulcrum,
the life-force, the bringer
of balance and union.

Gratitude List:
1.  That lunch.  Wow.  Good friends, never enough time for conversation, food from all over the world.
2.  Lifetime friends.
3.  Good singing
4.  Old Turtle
5.  Feathers.  No, stones.  Both.

May we walk in Beauty.

Blessing

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

May the bright breeze of morning rouse your heart to singing,
May the fire of the noonday warm your heart to hopefulness,
May the cooling rains of evening wash your heart to freshness,
May the enclosing arms of the earth hold you through the midnight.

Walk in paths of the winds that awaken,
Walk through the fires that burn off the scars,
Walk in the waters that cool and renew,
Stand with your feet firmly planted on earth

Until you hear the voice of the wind,
Until you breathe the essence of the fire,
Until you smell the message of the waters,
Until you feel the heartbeat of the earth,
Until you see the sun rise
within you,
within you.

Prompt for Monday:

Write a poem about a secret or a lie.  I might tell a lie about myself, or make up a secret, or tell a REAL secret, perhaps.  But you’ll never know, really, what the truth is, eh?  Care to join me?

Gratitude List:

1.  A gripping historical account of the assassination of President Lincoln told by my 12-year-old nephew.  And the way my brother explains the patterns of ancient human history.
2.  The brightness of the half-moon, and the stars, tonight.
3.  Reading Mara’s poetry–awash in the language, in the imagery, in the mystery.
4.  A cloud above the Susquehanna, shaped like an eagle with a fish in its talons.
5.  Noticing.

May we walk in Beauty!

Passel of kids