journal

Integrating

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
View of Engitati Hill, the Round Table Hill, in the Ngorongoro Crater.

A week ago, I returned from a trip to the town of my early childhood–Shirati, Tanzania–and several days in game parks. One of my words for the trip, and for the current phase of my life, is INTEGRATION.

How do I integrate the layers of my life: the past, present, future selves?
How do I integrate the sense of myself in a safe and loving childhood in a beautiful and tender community, with the awareness of how mission and religion has been an agent of colonialism in the world?
How do I integrate my deep connection to the Jesus story with my adoration of his mother, with my universalism and witchiness?
How do I integrate the activism and the contemplation, the magic and the prayer, the wildness of spirit with the deepening wisdom of middle age?

Within a day of our return, I received word that a beloved friend, a former student, had died. Now, how to integrate the bliss of my Tanzania Trip with the deep welling grief of losing someone I loved and admired? How to integrate my own grief with that of the many circles of community who loved him?

I’ve been going back through some of our text and message threads to find the poems and songs and kind thoughts Ash sent me over the years, revisiting some of the writings we shared with each other, the ideas we hatched, integrating those with the memories people have been posting to his Facebook page.

Before I went to Tanzania, I created a journal for the trip, an altered book made from an old copy of Birds of East Africa. True to Bethie form, I ended up taking notes not only in the journal, but in two of the Poetry journals I had taken along, and in the Notes app on my phone. This week, I hope to spend my Spring Break making sense of the various notes, sorting through photos, and integrating the sense experience with memories and scraps of poetry that have been filtering through. Somehow even the fact that I must weave together the various threads of my note-taking feels like part of the bigger process of sorting and integrating joy and grief and memory.

Ash was one of the editors of the literary magazine I directed at the high school where I used to teach. The magazine’s symbol was the flamingo, and I had promised Ash I would send him pictures of flamingos when I returned. I never had the chance. Here, Ash, are some flamingo pictures for you.

Check in on your beloveds. Remind them they are loved. And when hope seems far away, hold on for one more day. The morning, as they say, is wiser than the evening.

Gratitude List:
1. The beautiful journey. Return, belonging, joy, wildness, friendship, beauty
2. The privilege of knowing Ashton Clatterbuck, whose life touched so many, whose activism will continue to inspire and light the way, whose sense of justice will push me to stand up and speak out, whose courage knew no bounds
3. The birds of Goldfinch Farm and Skunk Hollow
4. The house lions: Erebus, Thor, and Sachs
5. The process of integrating heart and mind, memory and sense, grief and bliss, dream and reality
May we walk in Beauty!

“Our capacity to create must overwhelm their capacity to destroy.” —Occupy Movement Quote

“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”
—C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

“At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey. ” —Lemony Snicket

“Scared is what you’re feeling. Brave is what you’re doing.” —Emma Donoghue

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.” —August Wilson

“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” —Rumi

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” —William Faulkner

“For one human being to love another is the most difficult task, the ultimate, the last test and proof. It’s the work for which all other work is mere preparation.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

Teilhard de Chardin said: “Some day after we have mastered the winds, the waves and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, humans will have discovered fire.”

Emma Goldman: “The most vital right is the right to love and be loved.”

“Everything I understand, I understand only because I love.” —Leo Tolstoy

“If you do not love too much, you do not love enough.” —Blaise Pascal

“Who I was meant to be was a breaker of some stories and a maker of others.” —Rebecca Solnit

“You are not required to set yourself on fire in order to keep other people warm.” —Anonymous

“The job — as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy — of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.” —Dani Shapiro

“Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.” —Parker Palmer

“For education among all kinds of [people] always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.” ―W.E.B DuBois

“The phoenix must burn to emerge.” —Janet Fitch

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” —Ken Robinson

“When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.” —Ellen DeGeneres

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” —Thomas A. Edison

“Geometry draws the soul towards truth.” —Plato

“In which of the fairy tales does this wandering stream appear? Perhaps a golden trout swims through here every morning at dawn, or the three riders who pass Baba Yaga’s courtyard stop here to water their horses. A frog beneath that brightest mossy rock awaits your kiss. Just beyond your vision, through those trees, is a little cottage made of gingerbread and candy. An old man appears each day at dusk to sit on the tallest rock and ask you for a favor when you approach the stream for a drink.” –Beth Weaver-Kreider

Of Love
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
(after Mary Oliver)

It’s a process repeated everywhere you look:
the way the beech tree catches and holds the wind in her hair,
the way the meadow grasses gather around the tentative feet of the fox,
the way the hands of the clay hold and guide the flow of waters.

What is attention, but a kind of loving?
Living in awareness is a constant tumble into loves.
The way your eyes twinkle when you tell a story.
The way your listening hands reach outward.
The way a new thought is born in your eyes.
The hearty abandon of your laughter,
the caress of your voice,
the shine that surrounds you.

Wishes and Intentions

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I know. No posts for weeks, and then two posts in two days.
Yesterday, I wrote in my gratitude list about how difficult January is. I should clarify that it’s not entirely spent in a burrito on the couch scrolling through my phone. There is definitely more of that than I wish for myself, but there are also small bursts of energy in the Tunnel of Tired, usually in the context of those strategies I listed. January is definitely not all bad. It’s just a slog.

But now to the point of the post. Here are two items from my journal in the past year:

This is a tarot reading I did for myself on 12/22/22. When you draw the 9 of Cups in a reading, you make a wish. I highlighted mine.
This was a month later, 1/23/23, as I was thinking through what would be my heart’s desire petition for the coming 54-day novena. This was one of four.

Usually my wishes and heart’s desires, when I write or speak them with intention, are fairly internal or safe things that I can be pretty sure that I can help create. Wishing to return to Tanzania in such an intentional way (it’s been my constant internal wish/heart’s desire since my last trip 36 years ago) has always felt risky because I didn’t want to deal with the disappointment of not having my wish granted. It was okay as long as it was basically unstated, or stated wistfully, and I knew that it was just a “wish.” Then the disappointment of it not happening would be less intense. But here I was, saying it out loud. Putting it out there. And the novena concluded, and the year began to wane, and I let myself forget my magically spoken wish. Making a trip to Tanzania hasn’t been something I could logistically or financially plan, hard as I looked at it, so I figured that it just still wasn’t time, or that it was unlikely ever to happen.

But last November, my brother and sister-in-law asked me if I might want to accompany them on a trip to Tanzania. They’d made the plans already. I’m getting some help in the financial area. Our tickets are bought. Shots in order. Willing and capable substitute procured for the classroom. In just three weeks, we’re making a dream trip back to the place where we spent our early childhood. My heart’s desire.

I’d forgotten that I had made these clear intentions in written form, and was looking through my journal a couple days ago when I stumbled across them. Feels like a miracle. At the very least, it’s a sparkling synchronicity.

I worded the heart’s desire as a “sacred journey.” This is a good reminder that I don’t go entirely as a tourist or as a home-goer (both of which have problematic edges, and which have been part of my uncertainty about returning), but as a vessel, to receive what is meant for me to receive, to give what is meant for me to give. To find the strands that are woven into this web. To keep my heart open, to allow the jittery excitement to give way to a quiet sense of purpose and intention, receptivity. To delight in everyone and everything.

Gratitude List:
1. Three-day weekend. Breathe in. Breathe out.
2. Anticipating seeing actual flamingos in a few weeks
3. Generosity, how it grows and expands as it is given
4. How the big birds–the hawks and vultures and eagles and crows–catch the wind and whirl above the ridge
5. Puzzles
May we walk in Beauty!

“I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.” —Audre Lorde

“Your crown has been bought and paid for. Put it on your head and wear it” —Maya Angelou

“If you’re not angry, you’re either a stone, or you’re too sick to be angry. You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger, yes. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.” —Maya Angelou

“History has never been kind to those who have sided with voter suppression over voters’ rights. And it will be even less kind for those who side with election subversion.” —Joe Biden

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” —Robert Frost

“I am always doing what I cannot do yet
in order to learn how to do it.” —Vincent van Gogh

“Have you been to jail for justice? Then you’re a friend of mine.” —Anne Feeney

“Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.” —Naomi Shulman

“‎The desire to reach the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise and most possible.” —Maya Angelou

“Begin with something in your range. Then write it as a secret. I’d be paralyzed if I thought I had to write a great novel, and no matter how good I think a book is on one day, I know now that a time will come when I will look upon it as a failure. The gratification has to come from the effort itself. I try not to look back. I approach the work as though, in truth, I’m nothing and the words are everything. Then I write to save my life. If you are a writer, that will be true. Writing has saved my life.” —Louise Erdrich

“Love the earth and sun and animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others…
Re-examine all you have been told
at school or church or in any book;
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul;
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”
—Walt Whitman

“In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves. We deny the importance of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our lives. Or we use one piece of the past or present to screen out another. Thus we lose faith even within our own lives.
“The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire.” —Adrienne Rich

“Art is here to prove, and to help one bear, the fact that all safety is an illusion. In this sense, all artists are divorced from and even necessarily opposed to any system whatever.”—James Baldwin, in “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity.”

Letter to My Cat

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Dear Sweet Thor,
I know I said that I love the sound of your happy chirpy morning purr, and I do. Thing is, “morning” is the operative word in that sentence. It resonates a little differently at 3:30.

I love the way you pat my face so sweetly with your paw, but again, what is sweet at 5:30 only startles and annoys me at 4:00. The same is true of whiskers in my face, of walking up and down my body with your needle-fingers, of licking my hands. Please know that, no matter how much you lick my hands, I will not be petting you before the alarm goes off.

So far in my life, I have a 100% record of waking up in the morning–not always on time, I grant you, but usually–so you do not need to check on me every fifteen minutes from 3:30 onward to make sure whether I am still alive. Further, rolling over, stretching out my legs, yawning–these are not signals of my imminent awakening. They usually help me get back to sleep, unless, of course, someone is trying to wake me up.

One more thing, small dude: While I work hard at being culturally competent, I am never going to sniff your butt. You can stop offering. Especially in the night when I am trying to sleep.

See you in the morning, Sweetie.

Gratitude List:
1. Boy has been writing poems. “Who assigned you that prompt?” I ask.
“Oh, I just decided to write a poem for fun.”
Heart is melting.
2. Stretching and breathing. In-spir-ation.
3. Last night, I looked back through my New Orleans 2003 journal. I need to get back into doing watercolor sketches.
4. Carving spaces for myownself
5. All the little signs of spring.

May we walk in Beauty!

Always We Begin Again

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 7 Comments

Over the years, I have developed a rather harsh and untenable internal critic, which has paralyzed my writing process. I’ve worked myself into a claustrophobic little writer’s strait-jacket, and writing has become anxious rather than fulfilling.

Recently, I have become aware that, on Facebook, I am writing something–obsessively–every day, and occasional little bits and bobs that satisfy me. I had a sudden revelation: I could use the energy of my Facebook addiction like the moon shot. The gravitational pull of the social medium can draw me into the discipline of writing every day.

I have been a sporadic journal-writer for years. I’ll start writing regularly and abandon the project after days or weeks or months. I wrote Morning Pages, a la The Artist’s Way, for a year or so, but couldn’t wade back through all the material to make it meaningful to me. I write poems and abandon the scraps of paper and the half-edited doodles.

We’ll just have to see how I do with this blog. I’m not making huge promises to myself, but I will begin with a set of ground rules. I am going to try to post something every day or two, whether it’s a long prose ramble, a scratched-together poem, or a gratitude list. I’ll give myself grace for occasional hiccups in that rhythm. I’m using Writer’s Digest’s 2012 November Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge to push myself to get the rhythm going. I have to put something down every day, even if I feel squirmy and uncomfortable with what I write. So be it.

My parents talk about incorporating rhythms into their life like the Benedictine monks–daily, hourly moments of spiritual focus and contemplative attention. One of the books they have studied is a little booklet that fits in the palm of the hand called Always We Begin Again. This is my mantra for the coming Writing Time in my life–no shame for past laziness, paralysis, purple writing. Just pick up again, write the next word, the next sentence, the next poem.

And that internal critic?  The one who eats me up from the inside?  I’m replacing her with the Mockingbird.  Rather a harsh name for a critic, I know.  But Mockingbird sits in the treeline and listens to me mutter while I harvest cauliflower or feed and water the chickens.  He tells me just to say whatever comes to mind.  If it doesn’t come out right the first time, repeat it endlessly until it does, say it in Swahili, Hindi, Chinese, Pig-Latin.  I’m going to start listening to him.