goldenrod

Remembering How to Fly

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

“You’re always you, and that don’t change, and you’re always changing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”  ― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
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“Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'” –Kurt Vonnegut
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“I know there are people who don’t read fiction at all, and I find it hard to understand how they can bear to be inside the same head all the time.”  ― Diane Setterfield
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“Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.”  ― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
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“A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.” ― Diane Setterfield
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(Yesterday, my friend Christi sent me this exquisite poem)
A Small, Soft Feather
by Joyce Rupp

a small, soft feather,
still warm
from bluebird’s wing,
falls onto the receptive
forest floor.

lightly it lands
under a thick-branched oak;
quietly it waits,
unnoticed, unattended,

until a sister of earth pauses,
beckoned by a flutter
of unseen energy.
she bows her kindled heart

stoops ever so slowly,
and the remnant of the blue bird
comes home
to her generous hand.

days later another earth sister
opens an envelope;
resting inside, waiting,
is the blue of sky
in shape of a feather.

from warm wing
to great oak,
to earth sister
to friend,

comes the soft blue signal,
and in a sparkle of recognition
a woman, weighed down
with too many wants,
remembers how to fly.

Gratitude List:
1. One of the four major projects that 3rd graders do at Wrightsville Elementary is a report on an African American historical figure. Josiah had already decided that he wanted to do his report on Ruby Bridges. But we watched “Hidden Figures” last night, and he thinks he might do his report on Katherine Johnson. Can’t go wrong either way.
2. Goldenrod
3. Saturday morning with a talkative boy and a playful cat
4. Walnut leaves dancing down the wind. Mabon approaches.
5. Words

May we walk in Beauty!

Goldenrod and History

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

lizzie
It has been a least a couple weeks since I have posted a purple lisianthus. I love the complementary colors–purple and gold–pulsing there beside each other.

Here is a poem I wrote last November.

Waiting for History to Repeat Herself
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Waiting for History to repeat herself
is turning me into a statue of salt.

She sits next to me in the cafe,
stirs a load of sugar into her brew:
“It takes the edge off the inevitability,”
she tells me. “Inevitability is bitter, Girl.
It twists my gut into knots.”

She pours the cream,
sloshing it all over the counter,
and grabs a scone from her plate.
Her elbow sends the coffee mug
careening to the counter’s edge.

“I knew that would happen,”
she says, waving her butter knife
a little too close to my face.

I want to grab her, yell,
“Slow down a minute, Hon.
Relax. Take your time to settle in.
Concentrate on what you’re doing
right here in this moment,”

but she seems to be reading my mind.
“Impossible,” she blurts,
scattering crumbs across the counter top.
A dollop of jelly plops off her scone
and into her coffee. “I can’t slow down,
can’t settle, can’t give you time
to catch your breath on this one, Babe.”

Outside, snow curls out of the mist,
and voices call out sharply.
I’ve heard them all before:
Protect the Fatherland.
Eliminate the immigrants.
This is the time to show our
strength, to flex our iron arm.
Be very afraid.

“It’s beginning,” says History,
one elbow in the puddle of coffee,
the other in the wayward jam.
“I’ve heard it all before, Girl.
It’s the same damn grind,
over and over again.”

I sip my coffee black.
“Inevitability, Sister.”
She draws out the syllables
and hands me the cream.

Gratitude List:
1. Goldenrod! Have I said goldenrod? It’s everywhere now, and it shines. How it shines.
2. Those sunrises that seem to cover the whole spectrum of color
3. Commiseration.
4. Father Serafim and his choir of Assyrian singers
5. Goldenrod. I think the fairies live in patches of goldenrod.

May we walk in Beauty!

Parenting as a Spiritual Path

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

meow
I caught him in the middle of conversation. He always has quite a lot to say.

Remember that boy that I brought to tears the other day because of the homework? Last night he finished the project, and got most of the daily homework done, too. Trust the child to find his way, Mama.

It’s just that he reminds me so much of myself, I think. I have always struggled with deadlines, and the stress of the last minute. Still, it is partly the looming deadline itself that brings the fire of inspiration for me–why should it be different for him?

Parenting is a spiritual path, isn’t it? It requires self-awareness in spades.  Self-control. Patience. It brings deep love and gratitude at every step. I keep feeling like I am getting it wrong, begin to feel that shame of inadequacy (and what shame is worse than the shame of letting another human down?), and then suddenly grace appears, and mercy, and whole new rooms open up.

Gratitude List:
1. Pawpaws
2. Getting the work done
3. Last night was Back-to-School Night at school, where the parents walk through their students’ schedules. I think it was just too hot for lots of people, but I did get to have some wonderful conversations with many parents. I love to talk to the parents about their students.
4. The sunrises have been so beautiful. Magenta and violet, gentle and heart-opening.
5. Friday.

May we walk in Beauty!

August Gold

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

sunfloers

Sometimes I have been fortunate enough to see the moment a spider launches outward into incomprehensible space, spinning out a thread and trusting the wind to carry her on to some distant new world where she can re-anchor, can start building her bridge between known and unknown. I have often thought of spider strands as prayers, cast outward across those chasms between myself and the world’s pain, or the aching heart of a friend. This morning, however, a new thought arises: The spider travels with her silken strand. She anchors herself to a branch or a wall and she leaps, undaunted and fearless, into the void between.

What does it mean to commit to our prayers like spiders, throwing ourselves outward, trusting our anchors, sending something of ourownselves with our words and our thoughts and our dreamings?

Gratitude List:
1. August Gold: The sunflower fields that surround Liza’s house, how they lift their golden faces to the sun. Also, the emerging goldenrod blossoms along the roadsides. Did you know that if you are an August sneezer, it’s likely not the goldenrod?  I always thought it was until I heard about ragweed. Goldenrod leaves and buds actually make a tasty tea that can help to lessen the symptoms of seasonal allergies to ragweed.
2. Feathers. Wings. Wind.
3. Going to the Hellam Carnival with the family. We finally convinced the boys to stop longing to play the games where one in a thousand people wins a gigantic ugly unicorn. Instead, we played a game near the food concessions, where a local church had set up one of those tables with glasses and bowls and vases. You stand around the ring and try to toss dimes into the items, which you can take home if you get a dime in them.  The boys loved it, and we now have an interesting assortment of wine glasses and ice cream dishes. Cheap fun. Plus, we bought used books at the library stand, and I met a local family who does T-shirt design, and I want to see if I can use them for my school club T-shirts rather than some company far away.
4. How everything connects. Your heart  and mine. The hummingbird and the vulture. Poems and stories and art. The thin spidersilk of prayer, spun out across impossible chasms.
5. Time. I need to stop fighting it, stop racing it, stop seeing it as my enemy. We live in it, swim in it, exist in the arms of time. Children grow and change, sleep happens or doesn’t, the work will get done if we trust and engage in it.

May we walk in Beauty!