love

The Womyn United Will Never Be Defeated

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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It was an incredible, en-heartening, and vibrant day. Also exhausting.

That first photo is the group of women from my carpool. All of us in hats are teachers at my school, and the young woman in her headband is one of the students.

Random Thoughts:
1. The celebrity folks were wonderful, and many of them were really experienced in keeping the energy going, but I wish there had been more time for some of the quieter voices. I got a teensy bit huffy that the rally had some men (albeit very articulate and inspiring men like Michael Moore and Van Jones) front-loaded into the early part of the rally, and then by the time the Indigenous woman got up to speak about water, everyone was already tired of listening.

2. I wish there had been more indigenous voices, more word from Standing Rock.

3. I have nothing against strong language at strong moments, but Madonna actually had some really good things to say about tyranny and freedom, but she dropped the F-bomb, and suddenly no one in the press could remember anything else she said.  Sigh.

4. It was a real pleasure to hear Climbing Poetree live. And Angela Davis. And Gloria Steinem. And Maxine Waters. And Ashley Judd. And Alicia Keys. And Madonna. Janelle Monae was also really great. “Say her name!”

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5. People were all friends yesterday. The invisible veils between strangers are broken down when you’re marching together. People start up conversations with each other as though they’ve known each other all their lives.

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6. The crowd was big. Really big. I had very few moments of claustrophobic anxiety, and no sense of panic. This was the tightest crowd I have ever been in. We shuffled ourselves into the streets for the rally, and then when it was time to move, we simply couldn’t go anywhere, we were so tightly packed. Amazing!
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7. The hats. Early in the day, before we got to the metro, a woman in another group that met at our rendezvous point asked one of us about the hats. My friend explained that they’re a response to the tape of Mr. Trump bragging about sexual assault, and that many people call them pussy hats. The woman began to weep. My friend made sure that the woman’s friends were taking care of her, and we went on to the march, but my hat suddenly took on a much more pointed meaning. It was no longer simply a symbol of defiance of a misogynist sexual predator in high office, but a statement of support for women who have survived sexual assault. It’s a message to predators that women’s silence will no longer protect them.

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8. I am tired (happy tired). Wiped out. Standing in one place for four hours may be as hard on the muscles as walking for four hours. It was helpful to keep stretching. Even that was difficult with all those people packed around us. (All those people!)

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9. Last Friday, a group of mostly young women led our chapel remembrance of Martin Luther King at school. Yesterday, I marched for the young women I teach, keeping in mind that group of young women of color in particular, women who are feeling the power of their voices rising within them, women with a passion for racial justice, women who will lead this movement into the future.

The future is in good hands. I’m with her and her and her and her. . .

Love and its Opposite

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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Today’s Prompt is to write a Love/Anti-Love Poem. I realize that I am pooping out on these. Much work to do, and little time for poeming. I’ll leave it at this for tonight.

Love and its Opposite
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

The opposite of fire is not more fire,
we know that–just like Frost’s desire–
his opposite was ice, which like him I suppose
would dim the fire until it froze.

Gratitude List:
1. I have great gratitude for Sam Ovalle of Sam’s Auto in Akron. Finally, we have the Prius back with us in working order. We’ve been driving my dad’s car for six weeks, the last one with the Service Engine Soon light on. Tonight I had to learn the Prius all over again. I tried to honk the horn when an approaching car passed in a no-passing zone, and accidentally turned on the radio (“You really showed him!” said Jon).
2. Mist on the River
3. Mist in the fields
4. Mist caught in the trees
5. Mists in the little River Towns

May we walk in Beauty!

Blessing for Election Day and Beyond

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

JClabyrinth
I find myself doodling and drawing labyrinths again–it always seems to happen when I am thrown off-balance. Here is one of my favorite labyrinths, up at the Jesuit Center in Wernersville.

Today’s Poetry Prompt is to write an Activity Poem.

Blessing for Election Day and Beyond
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

May we be spinners of webs,
catching each other,
wrapping each other
in silken threads
to keep us all from falling.

May we be builders of bridges,
creating firm pathways
so all may walk safely
over the chasm
or meet in the middle.

May we be wanderers,
willing to walk in the wild places,
seeking each other
when distance has
broken our circles.

May we be dreamers
and planners, wishers
and makers, devising a future
where everyone
may find a home in love.

Gratitude List:
1. A pileated woodpecker sailing through the treetops and sunshine on the way down Ducktown this morning. It has been a long time since I have seen one.
2. Getting the grades in. What’s the old saying? “The wonderful thing about hanging by your fingernails is it feels so good when you’re done.” Yeah, that.
3. The promise of a warm and comfortable bed very soon. I admit it, small as that hour is, the time change is challenging for me. I always feel like I need extra sleep to handle it. I am off to bed VERY soon.
4. Jon Carlson’s thoughtful reminder in chapel this morning: The really important thing is Love. I will carry that with me like a shiny pebble into the day tomorrow, and the days that follow.
5. You, my friends. You keep bringing me back to center when I start to fray around the edges. What bright and brilliant community.

Hold on tightly. Breathe deeply. Smile at each other often. Get some sleep.

The Makers and the Artists

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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We met this earnest fellow in Columbia yesterday.

Gratitude List:
1. The artists and makers. People who create things because they have an internal need to do so. They often get labeled folk artists, and I like that as long as it isn’t a dismissal of their talent and their drive.  In Columbia, there’s the mailbox man, and south of town, by the River, a man built a boat in his yard–a huge boat with masts and rigging.
2. Sermons that call me to be my better self. Yesterday’s was a reminder to love those who hate. How easily I dismiss the hateful. What will be the next steps that you and I can take to lovingly engage those who put forth hateful rhetoric in these days?
3. A new week, a fresh page.
4. The way leaves dance down the wind.
5. The Water Protectors. People are putting themselves on the line to protect their lands and waters and burial grounds. I am easily discouraged when I watch the harsh and violent response to their protests, but I am heartened by their continued work.

May we walk in Beauty!

Desire

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

luna

As you read, you can use your own name for the Great Mystery, the Force of Life, Beauty, Love:

Psalm of Desire
(14 August 2016, revised)

O God of Beauty,
God of Marvel,
God of Wonder,
the whole universe that you have made
is built upon desire:

the force that holds electrons in atomic orbit,
that keeps the planets in their dance around the sun,
and wheels the spiraled walk of galaxies
is that same force which holds us to the earth,
which pulls the tides up the beach and back,
and calls us from complacency
to yearn for something more.

Not only do we hunger for you,
but you are the very force of our longing,
the Magnet which draws us ever outward
from the limiting walls of our own egos
to seek your face in all that surrounds us,
to seek your heart in the hearts of our neighbors,
to follow the pathway that leads us homeward.
You are the Magnet which draws us, finally,
into the home of our deepest selves,
where we are most truly
what you have made us to be.

Our yearning for you is an echo
of your own yearning for your children.

May we carry the knowledge within us,
deep in our cellular constellations,
pulled with the tides of our blood,
that our own deepest longings
are the echoes of your voice
calling us to you.

Draw us ever closer to your Center,
as the sun holds the planets in constant orbit,
as a mother draws her child to her heart,
that our longing may lead us always to you,
our Truest Home.

Gratitude List:
1. Preparing the heart space. So much work remains to be done, but the work on the heart moves on apace. (I copied this from last year’s August 15 list.)
2. Memories of luna moth. I haven’t seen any this year (yet), but I love looking at photos from other years.
3. How Love will always trump dogma. Generous spirits.
4. The wise and loving community.
5. Feathers. Wings. Wind. Flight.

May we walk in Beauty!

Almost Paradise

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

almost paradise

What a gift it is to have lifetime friends, people you can sit with and say, “Remember when you said. . .?  Remember what she did. . .?  Remember how he used to always. . .?”

People you can look in the eye and see not only a reflection of who you are in this moment, but also a reflection of who you have been–a year ago, five, ten, twenty.

People who know too much about you, who remember you before you settled adulthood’s masks into place, and they still love you, love you more for who you’ve been and who you’ve become.

People you can look at and see the butterfly of the now, but in whom can you identify the caterpillar of the past–and you love the butterfly, and the caterpillar, too.

People who know just which questions to ask.

People who help you live in this moment–with their laughter, their thoughtful eyes, their conversation.  People who draw you into the realm of memory.  People who help you envision the future.  People who help you to live in all those layers at once.

Gratitude List:
1. Living in those layers of time (past, present, future) with people I love and trust
2. People who know my warts and rough edges and love me anyway
3. The way the next generation at reunions also gathers with ease and comfort, enjoying each other
4. Peaches and ice cream
5. Crisp, cool mornings

May we walk in Beauty!

Abecedarian

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

house

An Abecedarian Poem
for some young people I know

Always give Love the last word: You
belong here, you have a place here.
Carry that awareness inside,
deep within you, where you cannot
evade its holy truth. You were
formed for this world, for this moment.

Go, yes, into all the world, and
hold out your hands. Share that good news
in every place that you enter.
Jump with both feet into your life,
keeping hold of this, your mantra:
Love will always have the last word.

Maybe you struggle to hold on.
No one seems to understand you,
or it all seems futile.  Be the
person that you have been needing.
Question authority, yes, but
resist the pull of destruction.

Sometimes it will seem that you are
the only one who lives by Love.
Understand this: You’re not alone.
Voice your anxieties and pain.
Walk openly. You cannot be
x’ed out or erased.  You belong.

You have a role to play, full of
zeal. Let love have the final word.

Gratitude List:
1. Morning yoga, which is to say
2. stretching myself into new ways of thinking and being, which is to say
3. growing and transforming, which is to say
4. giving up old forms that no longer serve, which is to say
5. morning has arrived with such shine, such vigor.

May we walk in Love.

Follow Love

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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I like to set my camera to “Fireworks” and then “draw” with fire.

There will be days, Bright Spirits,
when you will not know which way to go,
when the voices will tell you to follow a path
where light shines righteously through branches
and others are striding with purpose.

“This is the right way, the truest path,”
they will call to you, and they will wave their hands
and motion you to join them on their journey.
But you will sense something lurking there
in the hard, sharp edges of the light
and you will know that it is not your road.

But how will you know your own way?
Follow Love.  It will never lead you false.
It may whisper to you from the shadows
of a little-trodden tracks through brambles,
or call you across the wide and shining spaces
over rocky mountain passes,
leaving cairns and altars
to help you find your way.

Follow the roads where Love calls you.
Love will guide you where you must go.

Gratitude List:
1. The team of teachers and support staff and administrators who care for our children.  They pay attention, they notice, they plan and adapt and respond to the children’s needs.  It makes me want to commit even more fully to notice each of my own students with clarity and intention.
2. First family fire in the fire pit.  Making s’mores.
3. My first view this morning when I opened my eyes was a windowful of pink, where the dogwood tree is vigorously blooming.
4. In-service day.  Yesterday’s in-service offered some good time to collaborate, and learn from, and bond with colleagues.  I really do like the people I work with.
5. The flock of deer that ran across the road and leapt the stream into the bosque.  (My family tells me that I must call them a herd, but I feel like a herd is thunky and stolid, but a flock is fluttery and wispy, like the deer that crossed my road.  So my family will have to put up with my word.)

May we walk in Beauty!  May the rains water the earth and refresh us all.

On Beauty and Love

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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I have been thinking about how to help my students develop confidence in their own strength, to help nurture a sense of self-worth that will help to protect them.  I have noticed how the beauty trap persists for young women, the powerful desire to be seen by the eyes of others (especially boys) as beautiful, and how this feed into their own sense of their own worthiness or unworthiness to be loved.  This poem needs lots of organizing and more thought to it, but it will hold the place for now.

Don’t be beautiful.
Be edgy.  Be friendly. Be bold.
Be strong. Be quirky. Be wild.
Don’t be mild.
Be fierce.  Be thoughtful. Be brave.
Be gracious. Be loving. Be You.
Don’t be cute.
Be happy. Be tender. Be funny.
Be raw. Be powerful. Be real.

Gratitude:
I think I will begin doing one item or one paragraph for a little while.  I am feeling an inner shift these days, a readiness for something new.
I am grateful for love: Love wins.  Follow where the love goes.  That’s where the answers are.

May we walk in Beauty!

What is Attention, but Love?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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I wrote this after reading Mary Oliver’s poem, “Of Love.”

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.

Gratitude List:
1. The way a tenor line can turn a song from sweet to sublime.
2. The lessons we are here to learn, even when they are tough.  I am finding that I need to step back from trying to protect my children from the pains and problems of life, so they are more free to learn from the things that approach them.  This is hard, hard work, and it is a lesson of my own.
3. The buffy fluff of that mockingbird hunched out there in the brambles.
4. The sense of smell.  Most subtle of senses, I think.  I sometimes realize that I have been reacting to a scent even before I am consciously aware of it.  Like a dream, where you don’t always grasp what is happening until just after it has happened.
5. Persephone rises.  She always does.  Her purple footprints are singing aves in the flowerbeds.

May we walk in Beauty!