love

Sunrise

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Gratitude List:
1.  Color.  I am still in the haven of Michelle Johnson’s beautiful list of colors from the other day.  I think I am pretty good at noticing the colors around me, and then someone comes along and gives me such delicious words for color, and suddenly the shade and hue and vibrancy all around me is so much richer.  *Today, I am specifically grateful for the rosy beige color of onion skins and then way their hue and roundness matches the eggs I bring down from the hens.
2.  Even after he had announced (twice) that he would not be going to school today, when I said it was time to leave, Joss jumped up and scampered down the hill to the car.
3.  The way Pepita Hen’s feathers have come back in after being pecked by her coopmates and being chomped by a skunk.  She looks like a new bird, sleek and shiny.  There’s a new sparkle in her eye.  If that poor tattered little henny can grow back her feathers with such grace, maybe I can, maybe you can, too.
4.  You.  The way you open your arms and your heart to love even when you know that you will likely have to say goodbye.  You know that love is what matters, in the long run.  Your love will heal so much of what hurts in the world.
5.  Sunrise.

May we walk in Beauty.

Let’s Get Down To Business

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

First, some mulling drawn from today’s Facebook conversations.  Then a poem.  Then a Gratitude List.

Sometimes I don’t know if I can bear the weight of the problems of the world. I get so furious, not just at the military-industrial complex, but at the way corporations have become the ruling classes, the way Monsanto has taken over the USDA, the way our consumer culture is balanced on the backs of slaves and oppressed people elsewhere in the world. I don’t know if we can turn things back. But I know that there are lots of like-minded people out there who want to turn things back. I’m not sure how we do that, but I want to start by putting as much love out there as possible in the meantime.

I don’t mean for that to sound childish or like I am ignoring the problem. I bring it back to the metaphor of the bowl for the heart. I used to think that I could only have one thing in there at a time, either the joyful things full of wonder, or the angry and despairing things. But recently I have pledged to just sit with the bowl open and let it all fall in together. And the whole crazy mix belongs there. The love I have for butterflies and songbirds is precisely why I hate Monsanto so. The delight I take in my children is precisely why the military-industrial complex terrifies me.

How can I maintain the balance in my head when I get so furious and despairing and tired and sad about so much that is happening in the world? Sometimes it feels so schizophrenic to speak of beauty and wonder and delight when something in my heart is cringing in fear of what the future holds for my children. I know that remembering what I love, remembering what holds my heart, reminding myself why I fight, all this helps me to keep doing my work.

If we who care deeply enough to walk the cliffs of despair, if we let ourselves get frozen or lost or broken on those cliffs, then whatever it is that we’re fighting against has begun to win. Maybe that’s it. Instead of just using my rage and despair to fight this thing, I want to find ways to use my love and wonder to overcome it.

Perhaps my work of late has been too passive, too much in the realm of prayer and contemplation. What is the next step, I wonder?

These Are the Words
These are the things that I tell myself, over and over again.
These are the words I use to remember.

Don’t forget to do your soul-work.
Don’t stop because it seems like no one is watching,
because it seems like no one else is doing their work.
They are working.
Ask around. Tell your own story.
Suddenly they pop up like mushrooms,
all over the yard,
like fairy rings that fairly sparkle in the moonlight.

I always say, Be the web. Throw the lines from one to one to one.
Today I say, Be mycelium.
All those underground signals racing through the soil,
through the roots, through the fine hairs so tiny,
so tiny they are more energy than matter.

But that’s what matters.
That’s the heart of the matter.

We’re all doing our work, sending messages to each other,
invisible like energy,
like the sermons of the fungi
traveling those invisible underground highways.

Something is going to pop up.
I say, Something is going to pop up!

One morning you will wake up
and they’ll be there,
not just hiding underneath the leaves
with the shy toads and salamanders,
but spiced throughout the lawn
throughout the lawns
all over the world,
saying

We are here!
We are doing our work!

In the meantime, keep hoping,
keep praying,
keep making magic spells,
like the one my son made today
from dandelions and Virginia Creeper
to bring peace among the chickens,
and from them to their eggs and to us
and then to the whole world.

In the meantime,
keeping speaking the names of the captives.
Your words will set them free.

Keep singing and dancing,
praying and hoping.

Be the Underground Laureate of The Poetry of Waiting.
Be the One who Sings to the Dark Moon.
Be the Dancer in the Sullen Crowd.
Be the Painter of Speckled Eggs.

Oh, I have to say it, though the activists have said it a thousand times,
like Gandhi said it:

Be the change you wish to see.

Until the twining vines of the sacred squash
grow from your heaving heart,
until the song of the whale echoes through your deserts,
until the world is born afresh.
Until the world is born afresh.

This is the song. This is the poem.
This is the story that will heal the world.

Now.
Let’s get down to business.

Gratitude List:
1.  A pair of indigo buntings feeding in the dandelions before the rain.  (Perhaps some day I will write a gratitude list without the wing-folk.  Or perhaps not.)
2.  Ferns.  The ones I transplanted today from the barn wall to the house and walkway were taller than my children.  I think I may just keep adding and adding until the lawn is gone and the children can walk beneath their waving fronds like hobbits.
3.  The feeling of something being released in my spirit as the air pressure changes before rain.
4.  The way people care for your spirit when you ask for help.  That’s what I mean by asking around.  All that good work is being done, all that hopeful energy, all that intentionality, all that tremendous love waiting to spring into action, springing into action even before it is called upon.  Oh, I believe in angels, and some of them take human form.
5.  Conversations about the grandmothers that bring them into the present moment.

May we walk in beauty.  May we walk in love.

The Soul Purpose Is to Love

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

This morning, I spent some time writing about how my rages and my fears and my sadness are the things that help me to discover my Work in the world, my Soul Purpose.  I’ve been thinking about how to better integrate those uncomfortable emotions rather than to sweep them under the rug, where the tend to either burn things or start to mildew and rot.

I was raging and tearful after reading about the recent slaughter of the last 15 surviving white rhinos of Mozambique.  I was going into the red tunnel of fury.  And then it hit me that this was a message.  This is one of the clues to my Work.  And I don’t just mean my vocation, I mean the work I do in the world.  It may be activism, it may be writing letters or poems, it may be prayers and magic spells.  But the things which I love so deeply that  to lose them drives me into that red tunnel, those are the things which are my Soul Purpose.

“What are my tasks?” I wrote.  “What is my Work?  I think the place to start is in contemplation and meditation, connecting myself to the Deep Well of Love that makes me want to protect, to heal.  Prayer, magic spells, weaving and shifting energies.  Behind the scenes work.  I don’t think I can stop there.  I think prayer and contemplation need voices, need fingers.”

Later in the morning, a friend shared this Wendell Berry quote that says it more eloquently than I think I can: “What can turn us from this deserted future, back into the sphere of our being, the great dance that joins us to our home, to each other and to other creatures, to the dead and unborn? I think it is love. I am perforce aware how baldly and embarrassingly that word now lies on the page—for we have learned at once to overuse it, abuse it, and hold it in suspicion. But I do not mean any kind of abstract love (adolescent, romantic, or “religious”), which is probably a contradiction in terms, but particular love for particular things, places, creatures, and people, requiring stands, acts, showing its successes and failures in practical or tangible effects. And it implies a responsibility just as particular, not grim or merely dutiful, but rising out of generosity. I think that this sort of love defines the effective range of human intelligence, the range within its works can be dependably beneficent. Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous. Desire for the future produces words that cannot be stood by. But love makes language exact, because one loves only what one knows.” ~Wendell Berry

Frog

Gratitude List:
1.  Much as I loved having babies, and proud as I am of that part of my journey, I am grateful that I am here contemplating and writing tonight instead of walking the labyrinth of labor that I was experiencing this night seven years ago (I was nearing my 24th hour of labor at this point).
2.  I am grateful for that baby, for the boy he has become, for the ways in which he becomes himself more and more every day.
3.  Frogs and creeks and glorious cousins.
4.  8 1/2 hours of healing sleep last night.  I can hardly believe that my children and my cat and my own head let me manage that one.
5.  The Columbia Re-Uzit Shop.  I bought a new dress and summer shoes and some colorful plates.

May we walk in Beauty.  All the days of our lives.

From Angh to Ma

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 5 Comments

2012 November 144

This morning when we were playing with our gnomes, Joss decided that the gnome house was on fire, and he raced to get a group of gnomes to put it out.  “Red!  We need all the red gnomes!”  Exactly–to put out a fire, it takes lots of red gnomes.  Ellis chimed in, “And Minus!  We need the Minus Gnome!  Because a house with fire Minus the fire is just a house!”

Sometimes I sure would like to use some of Minus Gnome’s magic on me.  An anxious Beth Minus anxiety is just Beth.   Angst-ridden, anger-struck Beth Minus angst and anger?  Beth.  So that’s a nice little thing to do with meditation.  Of course as soon as I began to work with the idea, it hit me again that the angers and angsts are so often born of compassion and caring, and for those I have been seeking the services of Multiplication Gnome.  I need to untangle the compassion from its attendant anger at injustice, its partner anxiety at losses to those I love.

Wow.  Look at those words that I wanted to get rid of: Angst, Anxiety, Anger. . .I looked them up, along with their sister Anguish.  There at their root is angh-, which comes from the Indo-European language tree, and generally refers to distress of some sort.  That lovely vowel–ah–cut short in the back of the throat, closed up along with all hope of breath: Angh!

Fear, shame, anger, distress: what sound emerges when you truly feel them?  Angh!  Choke.

But still, that lovely vowel–ah–the first we say in so many languages: Mama, Abba, Baba, Dada, Nana, Papa.  The opposite of the choke, our family names, our names for the Ineffable Mystery: they release the breath in a tender sigh.  Ah.  There we go.

When I get really stuck in the Angh, I can dislodge that choke with a little Hahaha, a great belly laugh to force the air back through, a little spiritual CPR, so to speak.  Or skip down the street with a Tra-la-la, a little song to start up the rhythm of breathing again.  Or a little eureka, a bright discovery with a great Aha!

So the next time I wake up at three in the morning, suddenly filled with the dread of what is happening to this world that I have brought these light-filled children into, or choked with shame for some harshness I have spoken to their tender hearts, I think I will apply the Ah!, the Mama, the Ha! and see if that breath can be a lullaby to take my spirit back to sleep.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Moving out of Angh to Ma, Aha! and Hahaha!
2.  A shining piece of quartzite, white as ice, in the field by the henhouse.
3.  The things the gnomes teach us.
4.  A swept and dusted house (partly, anyway)
5.  Love, love, love: oh, you, and you and you!
May we walk in Beauty!

The Milk of Heaven

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Poem-A-Day Prompt 30: Write about Milk.  This is the last prompt of the month.  I might take off a day or two before I get back into a poem-a-day groove, this time with my own prompts, perhaps.

Somewhere in the world, the milk is falling,
raining in great drops from benevolent heaven.

Cup your hands into a bowl.
Feel it splatter into your palms
and trickle through your fingers.

Wash your face in it.
Splash it over your eyes and you will see again.
Anoint your forehead and see further.

Pour it into the gaping wounds
where the frenzied creatures
of habit and risk, of anxiety and anger and hate
have gnawed at your insides.

Drink it in great gulps
and feel it soothe your weary voice.
Take it in, breathe it,
bathe in it.

Then lie back like a new babe,
and let it dribble from the corners of your mouth.
There will always be enough.

Contradictions

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Poem-A-Day Day 25 Prompt:  Write an Opposite Poem, a poem which is opposite to one which you have already written.  Really tough challenge today.

I’ll sit with Uncle Walt in the hall of contradictions,
contain my multitudes or let them fly outwards.
Did I say that the heart was a circle,
a singularity, a unit, contained?

No, the heart is a line,
straight and unswerving,
connecting any two points.

The geometer says,
Begin with a single point.
Notice, over there, a second point
and mark it carefully with your pencil.
Holding your pencil on that point,
line up your ruler between them,
and draw your line tenderly.

And if you are like Billy Collins, or me,
and falling in love is something you do
constantly and willfully,
those lines will ray outward from your center
like a glorious web, encompassing the universe,
like a circle.

 

Breathing Love Into the Wound

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I will write today’s poem later.  Just now, I need to write this.

Recently, I have been working on keeping an open heart, trying to breathe through the ideas and events and stories that hurt and frighten and anger me.  Today, I am struggling with it as I contemplate the story of Israel and Gaza, and as I think about the killing that is being done in our name in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And then of course, I think about Congo, and. . .

I want to turn away, turn inward, create a shell, cover it with cynicism and rage and let the hopelessness ooze out all around.  There is a ringing in my ears.  I think I need to learn to live more in the layers, to breathe into the space of my everyday, and into that other enraged and frightened place in my heart.  To remember that I do not need to react.  I only need to hold it.  But is breathing love into the wound of the world enough?

Song for a Change of Heart

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

Prompt for day 18: Write a glosa.  What a great challenge!  Use a four-line epigram from a favorite poet.  Write a four-stanza poem, ten lines each.  The four lines of the epigram provide the last line of each stanza.  Lines 6, 9, and 10 in each stanza rhyme.  I panicked.  I froze.  And then the adrenaline kicked in.  What fun!

“If these words can do anything
I say bless this house
with stars.

Transfix us with love.”  ~~Joy Harjo, “The Creation Story”

Let love be born in us and borne in us.
Let the stars fall on us and into us.
Let us be the memory of their light
the story of the stars remembering themselves
so that we will remember our own beginning,
that we may always hear them sing,
that we may shine their signs among us,
a web of story drawn between us.
Let it be in the hope they bring,
if these words can do anything.

If they can shelter,
if we can find our winding way
through the crooked paths to the truth
to find some meaning in the signs
that bind us to each other,
to read it in some oracle, to scry, to dowse
to hear it in the songs of stars,
in the echo in our hearts
to pronounce the benediction, in whispers, in shouts:
I say bless this house,

This house, this farm, this town.
Bless this whole chaotic messy world,
all these proud, these tragic,
these hopeful, shameful,
wounded, healing hearts,
this landscape scarred by wars,
ravaged by avarice.
Rain healing down–
fill hearts, and lakes and jars
with stars

Falling and shining,
giving birth to the world
again and again,
to wash the world clean,
to crack open the heart,
release the dove
to carry the seeds of a new beginning,
transform our hearts
from outside, below, within and above:
Transfix us with love.