Leymah Gbowee

Now We Begin Again

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment


The secret of the Universe.

A somewhat random assortment of quotations for a Monday morning:
“I do not understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” ― Anne Lamott
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“[E]ducation is not just about utilizing a particular curriculum, or ensuring that critical reflection in a community follows a particular formula. It is full of intangible and random events. It is not just taught in the classroom, but lived in the midst of the community in ways that are not even fully quantifiable.”  ―M.S. Bickford on the educational theories of John Westerhoff
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“The trouble with trouble is, it starts out as fun.” ―Anonymous
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“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time…give it, give it all, give it now.”
— Annie Dillard
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“You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire.”
— Leymah Gbowee
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“There are opportunities even in the most difficult moments.” — Wangari Maathai
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“Throughout my life, I have never stopped to strategize about my next steps. I often just keep walking along, through whichever door opens. I have been on a journey and this journey has never stopped. When the journey is acknowledged and sustained by those I work with, they are a source of inspiration, energy and encouragement. They are the reasons I kept walking, and will keep walking, as long as my knees hold out.”
— Wangari Maathai

Gratitude List:
1. First CSA Day of the Season! Today is First Harvest. We spent hours yesterday getting the market room ready. I took a mop to the walls. I need to make an offering to Athena again–the poor spiders had their lives severely disrupted. I actually need to run out somewhere this morning and get a new drive belt for the vacuum cleaner, which I severely overworked. But we’re essentially ready! The curtain is rising on the 2017 production of Goldfinch Farm CSA.
2. Good exercise. Every day, for the past three days, I have awakened with a much greater level of stiffness and ache, but it’s all from the increased exercise of summer. I should plan now for how to maintain that in the coming school year.
3. I am holding someone else’s good news like a secret and precious gem. Not my story to tell, not yet.
4. Feeling like I am getting organized. I am a conundrum. I love to be organized. I love spaces and datebooks and thoughts that are carefully and neatly arranged, but my world tends to fall rapidly toward chaos and mess. Right now, I am finding energy for the creation and maintenance of organized datebook and thoughts. Perhaps the physical spaces will follow, too. getting that market room ready yesterday was a help.
5. Weaving stories together.

May we walk in Beauty and Love.

“. . .but be listened to this time.”

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

cassandraCassandra was the princess of Troy, a priestess of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war. The god Apollo loved Cassandra, and offered her the gift of prophecy. She maintained her single-minded devotion to her patroness, and so Apollo added a curse to his gift: Though she would always prophesy with complete accuracy, no one would believe her.

In the days before the Greeks breached the walls of Troy in their great horse, Cassandra prophesied the destruction of the city. Had her parents–the king and queen–and her brothers listened to her, the people might have been more wary and seen through the Greeks’ trickery. As it was, she was doomed to watch her beloved city fall, knowing that the people she loved could have been saved had they only believed her.

Perhaps you are feeling like Cassandra these days. Keep speaking your truth. Keep telling the world what you see happening around you. As Grace Paley says in her powerful poem, “Responsibility“:

“It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman to keep an eye on
this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be
listened to this time.”

Gratitude List:
1. Gangly blue heron walking across the ice of the pond this afternoon.
2. Reading about gnomes with a small person this afternoon. That Rien Poortvliet book desperately needs updating to reflect the fact that gnomes are much more open-minded these days regarding gender roles. If I made a mistake and read to him the sexist bits as they appeared in the book, he corrected me: “No, it’s not man, Mom. It’s man and woman.” Yup.
3. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Leymah Gbowee, who said, “It’s time for women to stop being politely angry.”
4. People who keep the fires lit.
5. That 45-minute nap I took this morning when I realized I had a 2-hour delay. I was in that space of mid-consciousness, where I was almost lucid dreaming, and almost consciously planning a project. And a warm cat purred on top of me.

May we walk in Beauty!