friends

The Shifting Colors of the Day

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

IMG_2252
Red.

Gratitude List:
1. (What made you laugh?) Listening to Sir Patrick Stewart read pop song lyrics in the voices of British Shakespearean actors on Ask Me Another last night.
2. (What startled you?) The way the scarlet of the poppies seems to reach through from another world into this one.  The way the deeper, more real red of the cardinal keeps catching my eye in the branches of trees.
3. (What awakened you?) The wisdom of friends, the dogged persistence of people
4. (What do you take for granted?) Light at the flick of a switch, water in the pipes, the trust and support of people close to me
5. (What brings you serenity?) The way light sifts through green, the play of breeze through leaves, the shifting colors of the day

May we walk in Beauty!

Bats and Feathers

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

An extra bonus gratitude today.  Just because.

Gratitude List:
1.  My postcards have begun to arrive!  I joined a postcard poetry project for August, writing a poem a day on a postcard and sending it to some random person on a list.  And I get postcards, too.  Feel like I need to up my game a bit.  I wrote a few early so that people get theirs on or near the beginning of the month.  The ones I received yesterday were so brilliant!  I’ll probably share a few of mine in September.
2.  The feathers.  It happened last year, too–for at least a month, I would find one feather almost every single day.  This week I have begun finding them again, like they’re placed there for me to find.
3.  Summer suppers: corn and homemade bread and tomatoes and peach cobbler and watermelon.
4.  Visiting with friends I haven’t seen for a long time.  Shared memories, new stories, figuring out the world.
5.  Fidelity
6.  Bats flying overhead in the twilight, like a physical representation of the conversation happening on the ground.

May we walk in Beauty!

Molding the Conversation. . .

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

So many threads of conversation this weekend, so much to think about.

During a long and intense conversation with friends this morning, one friend’s 12-year-old daughter sat at the table with a pencil and paper, doodling.  Trees and squiggles and a stylized heart.  Eyes and rain and a tree with a hole.  Tangles and webs.  At one point, the conversation turned toward the drawing, and we started asking her to talk about bits and pieces.  “I am molding the conversation into the drawing,” she said, pointing to a tear that she drew when we had spoken of sadness, to a cradling arm with the word Protection within its bowl, to the way the tree had its flaws, just as we all do, to a web that she said represented complexity within each person.  I felt so heard, so understood, so carefully held by this silent and thoughtful witness to our conversation.  What a vulnerable and tender gift to share.

I often doodle, too, when I talk with people, when I listen to others talk, and I think I understand a little of what she meant about molding a conversation into the pictures, though I have never done it with quite the intentionality that she did.  Wouldn’t it be an interesting exercise, with willing friends, to take this thoughtful girl’s idea into conversation with intention?  To have paper and pencils on a table while conversation is occurring, perhaps to pass a sheet around, each adding a piece to the doodle as the conversation moves along, and then to quietly listen as people talk about the ways they were holding the ideas and each other by the symbols and ideas that they drew?

Gratitude List:
1.  Being listened to and heard.  Friends who are honest mirrors.
2.  Ideas flying and soaring.  Heart-expanding conversation.
3.  Taking responsibility for my energy.
4.  The expanded kitchen/dining room to host friends around the table.
5.  Milkweed.

May we walk in Beauty!

Clearing, Culture, and Civilization

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

A little sun, a slight shift up the thermometer, and I catch my stride again, find my way back into my life.  I’m glad we got all those boxes of Giveaway ready earlier in the week.  I know that packing boxes would not have helped to lift me out of the puddle of winter blues–it requires too much psychic attention.  But carrying them out of the house and putting them in the trunk, taking them to Reuzit–that was a definite pick-me-up.  Now the energy flows through the house with a little more grace.

Beth’s Personal Remedies for Winter Blues:
(not guaranteed to work for everyone, but it might be worth a shot)
1.  Make Gratitude Lists
2.  Notice the shadows and footprints on the snow
3.  Do yoga tree poses.  Lots of tree poses.  And king dancer poses.  And warrior poses.  Laugh when you fall.  Keep trying.
4.  Get rid of Stuff.  Being a Manager of Stuff is energy-sapping at the best of times, but in Winter, it’s numbing.
5.  Sometimes: Give in to it.  Wrap up in a blanket on the recliner, read a book, and drink lots of tea.

Speaking of getting rid of stuff, I found this great little list at the Pachamama Alliance:

Not Shopping List     I posted it on my Facebook site, and people began to add to it:

Recycle
Dumpster dive
Joyfully do without
Wildharvest
Re-vamp, re-fashion, create

So many good ideas.
What would you add?
How can we support each other in community
to do these things rather than settling for the easy path of buying more
plastic junk that won’t last and that we don’t really need, and probably don’t
really want, if we’re really honest with ourselves?


Gratitude List:
1.  A good tutor.  I feel much more confident about my computer savvy after just an hour of good help.
2.  Fish tacos
3.  Conversations about grief, sharing stories, opening hearts.  I have such wise, compassionate friends.
4.  Conversations about Culture and Civilization–more good semantic distinctions to be made.  Civilization has gotten us into a peck of trouble, has it not?  How does it differ from culture?  What do we pass on to our children–what culture do we share with them?  I have such wonderful, thoughtful friends.
5.  The light within us all.  I don’t know how to write this one, because it comes out of a really challenging conversation about why people harm other people, even when they know better, about why people engage in bullying behavior.  I recognize too, that I have shadows myself, some unhealthy shadows.  That’s crunchy.  But liberating.

May we walk in Beauty.

Katydids and Naked Ladies

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

2013 August 175
Phoenix

Gratitude List:
1.  All those naked ladies tiptoeing through people’s gardens right now.
2.  Katydids
3.  Friends who take care of me.  Thanks, Nancy and Abigail!
4.  Mosquitoes.  Okay, not really.  But think of all the wonderful people they feed!  Bats and swifts and swallows and. . .  So yes, mosquitoes.
5.  Night sounds of August
6.  Growing older, growing up

May we walk in Beauty!

Bluebirds and Miracles

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Gratitude List:
1.  Bluebirds.   When I went out to tend chickens this morning, a pair of them sat in the little tree nearby and talked to me.  The wrens yell, “Here’s where I belong and don’t anyone get into my space!”  The yellow-throat sparrows call, “Here!  I’m here!  Won’t somebody please notice me?”  And other birds sing joyfully and exuberantly.  But bluebirds sing so quietly and sweetly, you could almost miss them: “Everything’s going to be okay, you know?  Here, let me tell you a little story.”  And there’s a bluebird that signals my father when his meal-worm feeder is empty.  But then when it’s filled and the bird has eaten all it wants, it comes back and sits on a little perch my dad put up outside his window–you can’t tell me that bird isn’t there to say thank you.  Oh, and there’s a pair inspecting the birdhouse out back for a potential nesting site.
2.  The laughter of chickens.  Okay, so they don’t actually laugh.  They sort of fuss and dither and clook about the daily fare.  They’re probably a little too simple-minded to get the joke, so they don’t laugh much.  But Jessica thought that’s what I wrote yesterday (see below), and I love the whimsy of the thought of laughing chickens.  Delightful.
3.  Meeting an online friend in person.  These connections we make with other people (in physical life, in computer realms) are like spiderwebs–gossamer, exquisite.  Treasures.
4.  Cerulean.  I’m back to bluebirds.  Isn’t that an exquisite color when the sun shines on their shoulders?  Thoreau said that the “bluebird carries the sky on his back.”  Oh yes he does.
5.  Milagros.  Doesn’t that just sound like a pleasant word?  Even before I looked up the meaning, and having heard it in various contexts without knowing its meaning for sure, it was a word I wanted to carry around for a while.  It’s Spanish: miracle, wonder.  Paul Simon could have just said that these are the days of milagros.  Oh, “the way we look to a distant constellation that is shining in the corner of the sky.”

May we walk in beauty like the bluebird walks on air.

 

February 25, 2013

Gratitude List:
1. The laughter of children
2. The curiosity of chickens
3. The steadfastness of friends
4. The healing powers of the body
5. The nourishment of food
Namaste

2012 August 018
Sunny in the summertime

Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

1.  The college gang.  What a great bunch of people!  22 years later, they’re still an incredibly thoughtful and playful and whimsical and compassionate group of people to hang out with.
2.  Memory
3.  Ziggy Marley
4.  That feeling of intense relief when the headache is gone
5.  Red-tailed hawks

Namaste

Gratitude List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

1.   Coming away from a funeral inspired to be a better person.
2.  The eyes of my friends–sparkly, thoughtful, wise, twinkling, tear-filled, winsome, deep, compassionate. . .
3.  Singing with my siblings.
4.  That Moon and Jupiter last night.
5.  Pancakes.
Namaste.