gratitude

For Glee

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

The list poem for a March Monday.  It will suffice for my gratitude list for today:

For glee
for giggle
for grin
for glow
for making snowmen in the snow

For dare
for desire
for delight
for dream
for things not always as they seem

For hilarity
for hope
for honor
for heart
for touch, and healing, and grace, and art

For breath
for blanket
for blessings
for birds
for building stories with our words

 

This is Ellis in 2009.  Today’s snowman is much smaller than this one, and today’s brother looks exactly like the boy in this picture.
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Noticing

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I just noticed that there is a face in the shadow of the tree on the barn at the top of my blog page.  Just a little to the left of center.  Hmm.  Don’t forget–tomorrow’s poem is a list poem–perhaps a gratitude?

Gratitude List:
1.  Opportunities to practice the work I have committed to, even when it’s hard.
2.  Good music.
3.  Abundance.   Lavish love, overflowing hope.  Yes, even when I sit near or in the shadows.
4.  Children’s literature
5.  Process.  Step by Step.  Just because I/we want to be There at sometime in the future doesn’t mean we have to jump there today.
May we walk in beauty.

Putting the Practice to the Test

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 6 Comments

I am thinking about the practice of gratitude, and why I do it.  Perhaps at first glance, it could appear to be naive and Pollyannish– if I just smell the roses, maybe I won’t notice the pig shit.

Perhaps the truth is not so far away from that, just deeper.  I am realizing that building my capacity for wonder and delight, that opening the space for gratitude in my soul–all this increases the breathing spaces for compassion to be present.   And compassion is about loving the tender blue of the speedwell looking up from a tangle of grasses, but it’s also about recognizing the role of the pig shit in the cycle of life.  Compassion takes a long hard look at the sunset, and then gazes upon the skull of the groundhog in the mud.

I think (hope?) that practicing compassion develops soul muscles that enable us to look unflinchingly at and listen to the ugliness.  It doesn’t make it easier to hear, to see, perhaps, but what I want it to do is to make it more possible for my soul, my heart, to remain present within those stories.  To witness and listen.

Yesterday, I affirmed again–to myself and publicly–that I want this journey to be about holding it all, about experiencing compassion that can witness whatever gets tossed into the bowl.  By evening, I was handed a story that I don’t want to look at.  I don’t want to smell it.  I want to drop it and wash my hands and walk away from it.  I really don’t know the people at the heart of the story, but we share some loved ones in common, and that is where I need to find a way to be watchful and tender and unflinching in the coming weeks, as the story emerges and is reconstructed and re-created, as people I love and respect move through denial and anger and anguish.

So the practice continues.  I am wincing and flinching, but keeping it open, ready to listen, to step further on this path, to practice non-judgementalism.

May we walk in beauty.  Even in this.  May we walk in beauty.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Make a List

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I almost forgot that I was going to post a prompt on March Fridays for a Monday poem.  How about a List poem this time?  The gratitude lists that I have made part of my daily practice are often as much a poetic exercise as a spiritual/emotional one.  Join me?  Mine will likely be a gratitude list, but any list counts.  Due Monday.  Read Naomi Shihab Nye’s Prayer in My Boot for some good inspiration.

Gratitude List for Friday:
1.  Working together with other farmers.  Good hard physical labor.  It doesn’t matter that some of the others could grab two fifty-pound bags of potatoes off the truck while I struggled to wrangle one at a time.  It felt good.
2.  That I am no longer carrying one of those fifty-pound bags around as personal weight, like I was 12 years ago.  My knees are grateful.
3.  Moose Tracks
4.  Library Book Sale!  I can indulge my addiction to my satisfaction and the money goes to a good cause.  (Now to find room on the shelves. . .)
5.  Growth
May we walk in beauty.
2013 March 032

Silly Song and Gratitude

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“. . .and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven and nature sing,
hi-ho, the dairy-o,
and heaven and nature sing.”  –Joss W-K

Gratitude List:
1.  Uncle Mallard floating on the pond this morning in the pouring rain.
2.  Choosing the exhilarating path rather than the bland one.
3.  Surfacing after reading an engrossing novel.
4.  A gift of bright red tulips!
5.  Earth, Air, Fire, Water
Namaste

Garlic Faerie and Gratitude

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October Garlic and Blue Jay Faerie

Gratitude List:
1.  Silly Putty
2.  My three gentlemen
3.  Fastnachts
4.  Appropriate technologies and re-purposing
5.  Giraffes
May we walk in beauty.

Chicken Feathers and Gratitude

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2012 November 203
Pepita’s Feathers

Gratitude List:
1.  Ancestors and descendants
2.  Turning sideways into the light
3.  Yellow Aconites coming up in the garden (Thank you, Marie!)
4.  Sparkly Blue Tanzanian Zoisite
5.  Stories woven with stories
May we walk in Beauty!

Gratitude Brought to You by the Letter S

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

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Sun, 2010

Today I am Grateful for:
1.  Silence
2.  Speech
3.  Story (I caught a bit of this Vincent Harding interview today, and felt like his take about the value of Story in our lives was a message meant just for me.)
4.  Snakes
5.  Sleep.

So be it.

Winter Sky and Gratitude

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Winter sky at Goldfinch Farm, 2010

Gratitude List:
1.  Val and Dave and three amazing nephews.
2.  There is always something new to learn
3.  Honesty, integrity, loyalty
4.  Compass, direction, orientation
5.  Kale for lunch, kale for supper, kale tomorrow

May we walk in beauty.

Some Gratitude Lists

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I’ve been posting these on my FB page, but want to save them here so I can come back to them in the future.  Here is today’s:

February 8:
Gratitude List:
1.  Scrambled fresh eggs with smoked sea salt and Chiptotle pepper sauce.
2.  Elderberries!
3.  Getting home safely, though the drive home from work was pretty slick.
4.  Even when the choices seem challenging, it’s so nice to realize that I do have the choice.
5.  The way stories unfold–from strangers, from friends–and weave together.
Namaste!

(6.  Imagination: When I got home from work today, Joss came running up to me: “Mom, today I made up a new imaginary friend!  He is a baby kangaroo and his name is Koaly.”)

February 7:
Gratitude list:
1. Getting a little clarity
2. Your stance. My stance. And the murky places in between where love can grow. (Thanks, Ruth, for the extension of the idea.)
3. Loving is not about assigning blame. (Thanks, Jane.) I feel like I knew that already, but having it for a mantra this week has been wonderful.
4. The little red-haired gnome who appeared in my dreams last night to help me gather eggs. I like magical dreams.
5. This story a friend told me today (from the movie The African Queen): About two women trying to find their way down the river to the ocean in their boat. As they get more and more mired in the bogs and swamps, and day turns to night, they keep getting out and moving the boat along, pushing it out of the muck. By dawn, they’ve lost all sense of direction, and the water is not even flowing river-like anymore. It’s just bog. But as the sun rises, they hear the loud horn of a ship, and realize that they are, miraculously, just a short distance from their destination. So, that’s it–I won’t despair if I cannot see the direction. I’ll keep my ears peeled for the sound of the ships, keep sniffing the air for the smell of salt.

Tonight, I wish you hope. I wish you courage to move forward even when the way is dark. May we walk in Beauty.

February 5:
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
― G.K. Chesterton (Thanks for reminding me of him, Troy!)

Gratitude List:
1. My version. Your version. And the crunchy places in between where learning occurs.
2. Baby steps. We don’t have to get there all at once.
3. Holding each other to our highest good.
4. Four-egg days are here again.
5. Joy!
Namaste.

February 4:
Gratitude List:
1. Web spinning
2. Granny squares
3. Stimulating conversation
4. Nostalgia
5. The Bowl of people who have supported me throughout my life. So many people. Such care and tenderness and earnest hope. Who would I be without you all?
Namaste.

2013 February 001