Such a wind. Such a wild, wild wind. Corn husks spiraling down out of the sky, leaves rising in my rearview mirror like something out of a German luxury car ad, that move-along shove from behind as you walk from the house to your car.
A devil-may-care wind, a witches-are-passing wind, a scouring, powerful rowdy wind, the kind that could blow down the towers of injustice, pull kings from their thrones, and lay waste the structures built of lies. No house of cards can stand in the face of that wind.
Gratitude List: 1. The softness of milkweed fluff 2. The view from my parents’ new apartment 3. Rest 4. Smoothie for supper 5. Reminders to seek joy May we walk in Beauty!
Hiking the Chestnut Grove Trails by Beth Weaver-Kreider
It is both disconcerting and charming, the soft grassy pathways disarming the sense of disquiet, the riot of goldenrod, foxtail, and milkweed, native plants seeded along the human-formed hillsides
the wide expanse of grasses, ponds, brambles, and shrubs with scrubby trees and a diverse plantation of oaks. The smoke from farm and industry jar the view, but here too you can see the River, and an eagle gliding,
riding the thermals along the opposite ridge, can see almost as far as the bridge, and down to the dam, more emblems of how humans have transformed the landscape, bearing witness to hundreds of years
of human interference, how it all settles uneasily into these spaces of wildness and cultivation.
Gratitude List: 1. Good brisk walking on the hobbitiest of trails 2. The Susquehanna River 3. So many varieties of oak! 4. Time with a friend who understands my language 5. Cheese on toast May we walk in Beauty!
I crossed the border into the Republic of Heretics, and discovered a savage and beautiful country.
I handed over my badge, my Confession of Faith, and my halo, removed my uniform, and put on a robe of ragged motley,
took up the pen and the wand, the seed and the bowl, and made my home in the wildlands beyond the hedge.
I ran naked with outcasts through ruined cities, and when trespassers came from the other world
we circled around them, stared into their rabbit eyes, and ran on in our wayward ferality. I had cast off shame
like outworn garments, had no need of the bound ones and their domestic pronouncements.
How I howled when the moon rose over that country. In this place, I can feel my bones, and the blood in the rivers of my body.
The first line of Liz Berry’s “Republic of Motherhood” in the current issue of The Poetry Foundation’s magazine Poetry arrested me, and I couldn’t stop thinking of it. Each new shouldered identity becomes a border crossing, a new country. I often felt like an outsider in The Republic of Motherhood, though it has been a joyful and fulfilling place for me. Still, I have never felt so much belonging as I have since I have taken on the identity of Heretic, and joined the ones who howl at the moon.
As I was working on my poem, I was caught by how quickly the synonyms for wild get very negative–savage, brutal, fiendish–and how the synonyms for tame tend toward blandness. The set which seems to break that mold, and which I want to work with more deeply in the future is unbroken and broken. Wild and unbroken, broken and tame. I like the word ferality. And wildishness.
Gratitude List: 1. Good company 2. YouTube videos that inspire art 3. My very creative and caring colleagues 4. Grace. Let’s all give ourselves a little grace today 5. So many good books to read! May we walk in Beauty!
was i chasing down a startled deer in the dawn or myself i chased
we locked our gazes for a moment or more then he turned and ran
he performed the role of hunted while i became this story’s hunter
how my heart lifted when he disappeared into the corn
Gratitude List: 1. The tang of pomegranate seeds 2. The curve of that wooden bowl from Tanzania 3. The thrill at the first line on a clean page 4. The promise of sleep in a couple hours 5. the satisfaction of a good, deep stretch May we walk in Beauty!
Finding the Way Through the Poem by Beth Weaver-Kreider
All these keys at my fingertips. Which will open the door of the poem? Which combination will turn this moment from a frenzied search through random rooms to a purposeful path through the maze?
Most days, I just begin opening them, door after door. Try this one, then this. Sometimes, I find a rhythm, a pattern to follow, a repetition, a thread of idea.
Or, like now, I feel myself reaching the dead-end of the hallway, time is running out, the patterns are tangling, and I have missed the essential clue.
I’m not looking for a way out. I’m looking for the way through.
Gratitude List: 1. My students. They’re witty, charming, thoughtful, wise, intelligent, brave, resilient. . . I have so much to learn from them. 2. Livestreams from African water holes. 3. I’m trying to keep my glucose levels under control. Today I realized that one savored bite of a Stroopy is actually almost as good as snarfing down a whole one. 4. Feeling more confident in my body. 5. Painting with watercolors. May we walk in Beauty!
A new Netflix show that makes me want to walk in the treadmill (’cause that’s when I watch shows)
Layers: colors, clothes, ideas
Challenges: Can you read X number of books in a year? Can you consciously eat your five servings of fruits and veggies in a day? Can you up the amount of time you spend moving your body every day?
Today is the last day of November’s Poem-a-Day. As always at this point, I am ready to be free of the daily discipline of poeming for a little while. And today was long, filled with beauty and good family time celebrating the life of my Aunt Gloria, and many hours on the road. So I’m happy to finish the poem process today.
Tomorrow, however, I will begin a new series, suggested by the Advent materials we received at church last week. Every day for the next 25, we have been given a word (one each day) to meditate on and to illustrate with a photograph. So I might post some or all of those here.
Here is today’s poem: First Lesson of Poeming by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Grasp the idea, I mean the corncob, firmly, but not so firmly that you harm the tender kernels inside, and pull it firmly, but ever so gently, downward and away from the stalk.
Holding it in your palm like the golden treasure it is, begin to pull away the layers of husk. Some people tear the husk down in two or three neat strokes, but you should take your time, noticing the way the tough and weathered outer husk gives way to tender green beneath, the way the silk shifts with each layer you remove, the grass-sweet corn smell released, and finally, the rows of sweet kernels, golden and waiting.
Gratitude List: 1. Cousins and aunts and uncles 2. Aunt Gloria’s wise words: “Go with the flow.” 3. Cousin Karen’s wise words: “Stay curious.” 4. Traveling with my parents to the Shenandoah Valley, on a golden day. 5. Cherry Delight May we walk in Beauty!
“I don’t always feel like I belong, or like I understand the unwritten rules of certain groups, even though I think I am a pretty good observer of human nature. So when I am in a group whose rules accept everyone’s awkwardness and oddness unconditionally, which loves each one not in spite of our oddities, but because of them, then I feel safe. Then I feel belonging. I am especially grateful to those of you who know how to extend unconditional welcome in ways that make everyone believe they belong.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
“To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine voice. Our primary need for the various life forms of the planet is a psychic, rather than a physical, need.” —Thomas Berry
“All through your life, the most precious experiences seemed to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience. This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret.” —John O’Donohue
“The next time you go out in the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people—in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones—just wish for them all to be happy and well. Without knowing anything about them, they can become very real, by regarding each of them personally and rejoicing in the comforts and pleasures that come their way. Each of us has this soft spot: a capacity for love and tenderness. But if we don’t encourage it, we can get pretty stubborn about remaining sour.” —Pema Chodrun, From her book Becoming Bodhisattvas
“Quiet the mind enough so it is the heart that gives the prayer.” —Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
“People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.” —Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Creative acts of social justice constitute life’s highest performance art.” —Rebecca Alban Hoffberger
“If you will, you can become all flame.” —Abba Joseph
“Become all shadow. Become all light.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
“You cannot use someone else’s fire; you can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe you have it.” —Audre Lorde
“The first duty of love is to listen.” —Paul Tillich
“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith. The opposite of faith is certainty.” —Paul Tillich
“When you go to your place of prayer, don’t try to think too much or manufacture feelings or sensations. Don’t worry about what words you should say or what posture you should take. It’s not about you or what you do. Simply allow Love to look at you—and trust what God sees! God just keeps looking at you and loving you center to center. ” —Richard Rohr
“People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.” —Charles Fort
“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t.” —Shakespeare, The Tempest
Even as I celebrate a deeply enriching and inspiring day of conversation and play and good food with my family, I want to also acknowledge that today is a Day of Mourning for Native Nations. The link in the previous sentence will take you to a MCUSA page with brief descriptions of some of the November massacres by US forces against Native communities that took place in the late 1800s, along with some resources for ways to educate ourselves and our communities, and to respond in helpful ways.
I tried coaxing a collaborative poem out of some of my family members gathered around a puzzle this afternoon, but we had trouble keeping focused enough to finish a thought, so my nibling Keri suggested we do an acrostic. The Old Woman of Winter had made an appearance in the first attempt, so I wrote CRONE OF WINTER down the side of the page and asked them to give me words or phrases beginning with the letters. We ended up sticking to words, and this is what happened, and I like it.
Gratitude List: 1. The thoughtful and wise and tender and hilarious conversations around the table and the puzzle and the living room today. It appears that perhaps the members of the family with the strongest executive functioning skills are under the age of 22. 2. Pie. So much pie. 3. The Turkey Trot! I walked a lot more of this one, but came within a minute of my PR last spring at the Race Against Racism. 4. Bald Eagle flying over Codorus Creek 5. The healing properties of laughter May we walk in Beauty!
“There are no shortcuts to wholeness. The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’” —Parker Palmer
Solace is your job now.” —Jan Richardson
“I have noticed when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling ~ their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. To sit alone without electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights, then I start thinking about projects, demands, deadlines, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to be done, not a background to thought.” —Jeanette Winterson
Joy Harjo: “When I woke up from a forty-year sleep, it was by a song. I could hear the drums in the village. I felt the sweat of ancestors in each palm. The singers were singing the world into place, even as it continued to fall apart. They were making songs to turn hatred into love.”
“The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.” ―Meridel Le Sueur
“I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.” ―Madeleine L’Engle
“Alas, the webs are torn down, the spinners stomped out. But the forest smiles. Deep in her nooks and crevices she feels the spinners and the harmony of their web. We will dream our way to them …
…Carefully, we feel our way through the folds of darkness. Since our right and left eyes are virtually useless, other senses become our eyes. The roll of a pebble, the breath of dew-cooled pines, a startled flutter in a nearby bush magnify the vast silence of the forest. Wind and stream are the murmering current of time, taking us back to where poetry is sung and danced and lived. … In the distance a fire flickers – not running wild, but contained, like a candle. The spinners.” —Marylou Awiakta, Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom
“Do it right, because you only got one time to walk this earth. Make it good, make it a good thing.” —Grandmother Agnes “Taowhywee” (Morning Star) Baker Pilgrim (1924-2019)
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” —Robert Frost
“I believe war is a weapon of persons with personal power, that is to say, the power to reason, the power to persuade, from a position of morality and integrity ; and that to go to war with an enemy who is weaker than you is to admit you possess no resources within yourself to bring to bear on your fated.” —Alice Walker
“The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our selves.” —Cassius, from ‘Julius Caesar’ by William Shakespeare
“Let your love be like the misty rain, coming softly, but flooding the River.” —Proverb
“Perhaps too much sanity may be madness.” —from ‘Don Quixote’ by Cervantes
I decided to do a strip poem today. Sometimes these feel incredibly inspired, but mostly they end up feeling sort of whimsical or silly, like today’s.
Gratitude List: 1. Water (this is a backward gratitude at the moment because the pump is on the fritz, but there’s nothing like being temporarily unable to use the faucet that makes you appreciate water) 2. Woodpeckers! Downy, hairy, red-bellied, pileated. . . 3. Peppermint 4. Simple suppers: apples and cheese and ciabatta and roasted broccoli 5. Sailing ships–My middle division class is reading Peter and the Starcatchers, and so we’re researching what sailing shops looked like so we can understand the nautical vocabulary, and I am getting a little obsessed with old sailing ships May we walk in Beauty!
“What if our religion was each other? If our practice was our life? What if the temple was the Earth? If forests were our church? If holy water – the rivers, lakes, and oceans? What if meditation was our relationships? If the Teacher was life? If wisdom was knowledge? If love was the center of our being.” ―Ganga White
“Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.
From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” —Rousseau
“It is wonderful when you don’t have the fear, and a lot of the time I don’t. . . . I focus on what needs to be done instead.” —Wangari Maathai
“I will take my chances with you, with all of you, from any country or any condition, who believe a brighter day for humanity is possible, who open your hearts and minds to a broader vision of diversity, who serve the cause of kindness and speak the language of healing. I will make my lodge with you. I will be honored to call you my relatives. I will face tomorrow by your side, whatever that day may bring, and together we will make our witness, until the wind chases the sun from the sky and the stars begin to sing.” —Steven Charleston
“Two birds fly past. They are needed somewhere.” — Robert Bly
“Let my anger be the celebration we were never / supposed to have.” —Jacqui Germain
I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness. It’s right in front of me, if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude. —Brené Brown
“The eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.” —Terry Tempest Williams
“You’ve seen my descent. Now watch my rising.” —Rumi
“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.”—Thomas Merton
“For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” —Mary Oliver
“Attention is what matters. What we are living through is a time of grotesque inattention. The very act of taking heed, of paying attention, is a political act.” —Kathleen Jamie
I’ve been sick all week. I took off a day of school–probably should have taken three. And I haven’t been exercising to get ready for this 5K Turkey Trot on Thursday morning. So the choice right now was to spend time really working out a good poem for today or hitting the treadmill, and I am going to have to choose the treadmill. So I took the first metaphor that tracked me down, ran with it, and threw it onto the page. Part of the contract I have with myself for these months of writing a poem a day is that any day’s poem can be garbage. I’m not sure where this poem fits, but it’s definitely a toss-off.
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Remember the slippery fish of a child, unwilling participant in adult world, who could melt out of your arms, slip onto the floor and be off and running for the hills before you could catch your breath?
Some days my brain is that child, anchored as it is to my body, it somehow slithers through my grasp even as I am sitting it down to do its important work, and it’s off and dancing in the mist before I even know it’s gone.
“Walk with the Spirit. Wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you are with. Walk in the light of what we have learned from our ancestors. Each person is worthy of respect. A better world is possible for us all. Our love will finally overcome our fear. Let that wisdom guide your steps. Let that message be made visible in who you are. The path to peace is laid before your feet. Walk with the Spirit.” —Steven Charleston
“We are in a time of deep transformation. Deep change. We did not ask for this to be the case. We did not even fully anticipate it. But it is our reality. It is our challenge. The Spirit has confidence in us to move history in the direction of hope. We are called to create a future. And we are equal to the task — with the help of heaven and the kinship of all living things.” —Steven Charleston
“You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That is how prayer works.” —Pope Francis
“Allow dark times to season you.” —Hafiz
“I don’t have to respond whenever provoked. No one does. Steward your energy well. We have justice work to do. And strategy to outline. And self-care to prioritize. And love to live. It’s okay to let provocateurs leave empty-handed.” —Bernice King
“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor—such is my idea of happiness.” —Leo Tolstoy
“I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness. It’s right in front of me, if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.” —Brené Brown
“Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!” —Mary Oliver
“I don’t have to figure it all out. I don’t have to be perfect for every moment. I just need to be Present. I just need to show up.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider (My past self is preaching to my present self.)
“The ego forgets that it’s supposed to be the little traveler with its bindle bag over its shoulder, following behind [not ahead] the radiant Soul who walks as more wise, more tender, more loving, more peaceful trailblazer throughout our lives. . Ego aspires sometimes to wear the garments of the Soul, which are way too big, making the ego trip over the miles of radiant robes it tries to wrap itself in, instead of following the light those robes give off. And tending to the Soul’s needs, the Soul’s directions. Yet with Soul in the lead, and ego following the lead of the Soul, then we can fulfill the vision of the Holy People…” —Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world are seeking one another.” —Teilhard de Chardin
“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” ―Oscar Levant
“Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.” —Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), [The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906]
“There are real world implications to ‘just having opinions’ and those implications almost always involve doing deep harm to marginalized communities.” —Kaitlin Shetler
Mockingbird Chronicles 