Sometimes it takes a lot of reworking and re-arranging, and cutting up phrases to fit to other phrases. This one was almost too easy. I like how it fell together, so I am not going to tug and pull at it for a few more days. I think it’s done. Great Gratitude to all the Facebook Friends who submitted phrases!
Funny, Isn’t It? a Facebook Crowd-sourced Poem by Beth Weaver-Kreider
We had been in camp for three months. In the very middle of the front row, his bony hands clasped in front of him: “That’s why everyone hates each other nowadays— I guess poor guys dont get kissed on the lips.” My stomach drops at the muffled sound of glass breaking. Since when do men care about such things? This is a dangerous time for you.
We have to confront each of our shadow aspects. I was in the habit of considering that etheric little bone defying the course of the waters, but the crucial bit of magic was to keep your focus on every angle of a question. I had decided to build and not destroy, start with the strongest sensation. I didn’t expect it to look so wild.
Learn from those far away and long ago. In many spiritual traditions, sin does not exist. A nation where you can’t ask questions is one that is going downhill. Atonement is unnecessary, since dreams bring guidance from the well of Being. Firebrands ask questions, and I would say she is everything. Her job took on a new shimmering significance. Funny, isn’t it? How it all comes around.
Sources: Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Dream Count. Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of A Part-time Indian. Barbery. Muriel. The Elegance of the Hedgehog Callahan, Patti. Once Upon a Wardrobe. Genet, Katherine . The Gathering. Haig, Matt. The Life Impossible. Haig, Matt. The Midnight Library. Harpman, Jaqueline . I Who Have Never Known Men. Helminski, Camille Hamilton Adams. The Way of Mary. King, Karen L. The Gospel of Mary of Magdala. Kinney, Wallis. A Dark and Secret Magic. Klein, Gerda Weissman. All but My Life. Lee, Min Jin. Pachinko. Menakem, Resmaa. My Grandmother’s Hands. Myss, Caroline. Sacred Contracts. Patchett, Ann. Tom Lake. Quinn, Kate. The Briar Club Reichel, Hanna. For Such a Time As This: An Emergency Devotional Rowling, JK. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Shaw, Martin. Scatterlings. Winspear, Jacqueline. The Comfort of Ghosts.
Gratitude List: 1. Playing with words 2. Being on Break! 3. How hard the guitarists and singer worked this morning to prepare for their performance at Grandfriends’ Day 4. Getting things done (this is a recurring gratitude for me–I think it’s about my tendency to procrastinate, so it feels especially soul-cleansing to have a list of things I have accomplished.) 5. Anticipating time with Beloveds May we walk in Beauty!
I know this now: It was a dangerous choice to go there in the first place. I was in danger of losing so much, constricting myself into the tiny little boxes required of those who existed in that place.
I went in with my eyes open, knowing of the claustrophobic boxes, how the language pulled toward dogma and creed. I went in with my own language, my own protective wards, kept secret in my pockets. I went, tethered to those who stood outside, who could watch for me, who could pull me back if I got stuck in the tiny places, injured by the sharp corners, the barbed words, and the lack of fresh air to breathe.
I can view my time in that place as a setback, a wrong choice, a misstep. Or I can look at how it changed me and transformed me, how it prepared me for this moment, gave me courage, made me fierce. Although it left me with wounds, it did not take my essential Self from me: I am always new, always a dragon shedding her skin to become fresh and reborn again, but always the same essential me, growing and changing and developing.
I don’t want to give those eight years power by saying I should not have taken that journey, that the breach of Self was too destructive. Because although my ego took its hits, I didn’t lose my Self. And there were gifts in this journey too. The young people who were there with me taught me so much, so much that I bring with me now that I’m out in the outer world again. Those eight years were a necessary phase of my development. They changed me forever in good and powerful ways. They too were initiation, difficult initiation. Not a break in my line of learning, not a backward step–or if a backwards step, only part of the dance.
Anytime we willingly submit to the claustrophobia of a religious institution, we put ourselves in danger of either taking on the rules for ourselves, or of losing some essential confidence and courage and forcefulness as we make ourselves smaller in order to fit inside the boxes. Me, I’m so grateful now for the ones who tethered me while I was in the land of boxes, those who held the lamps for me to see my way out when I reached the point of banishment.
I called myself an exile when I left that place. As though it had ever been my true home. I can laugh now looking back, and see how even though the lines that draw my past (for a couple generations) ran straight through that place, it was never my home. I have always been my home.
And I look back today with gratitude for the expansiveness of the escape, for the fact that I can breathe, and run and explore, and call myself by my real name, and not have to look over my shoulder.
So many sacred journeys happen in three days. My sojourn was eight years. And now three years more have passed and finally I feel the new wings stretching out behind me. I am ready to fly again. Blessed be!
You know how a little task, left to smolder, grows and builds until it’s a raging, impossible fire? I let that happen this past semester with some of the grading that needed to get done. It just got out of hand. I can make all the excuses: the distraction of election and insurrection, winter depression, the frustration of trying to work with assignment submissions online and students who simply cannot seem to figure out how to submit so they email you or leave the documents in their shared folder. Still, it was me not getting it done.
My friend Gloria says she’s read that incorrigible procrastination (my adjective) is related to low self esteem. I think I must have work to do there, and of course that feeds into the sense of depression and the further procrastination.
Last night, at about three, I finally put the first semester to rest. It’s a relief, but the chronic nature of my procrastination has now created a lingering sense of inadequacy that dogs me, makes it hard to celebrate joyfully.
But here is a breathing space: Today is Brigid’s Day. Brigid was a goddess of the British Isles, who became conflated with Saint Brigid. Notice her in whatever guise she calls to you–she is the Teacher I need for this moment. She calls for commitment to your purpose, calls for responsibility and accountability. Not a heavy and forced and angry accountability, but a joyful and purposeful walk into your destiny.
Like our friend the groundhog takes stock of shadows and light, of what will be needful for the next six weeks as we walk out of winter and into spring, today (this season) is for taking stock, for considering what inner and mental health resources we may have on hand, what we will need to search out in the coming weeks, in order to make it through.
So, on the night when so many of my friends were tending their hearthfires in honor of Brigid, and meditating on her healing and inspiration, on how she stirs the Earth and Her creatures to waken, I was finishing a task, slipping in just under the wire to be accountable to my work, celebrating this seasonal shift toward awakening with my own wakeful process, my commitment to my task, late and haphazard as it felt.
The wakefulness of this moment, when the Earth begins to stir beneath her blanket of snow, requires acknowledgement and tallying of the past, and striving and moving into the future. Commitment to make a change. I have been telling myself at the beginning of every semester that I will be on top of things THIS time. And still, I fall and I fail. Perhaps I need to get some help in this coming season. Our school, in conjunction with a local mental health organization, offers at least one free session with a trained counselor in a year. Perhaps my commitment on this Brigid’s day should be different than my usual bombastic “I can do this myself!” Perhaps it should be to seek help, find resources that will support me to meet my goals.
Gratitudes: 1. Resolve 2. Awakening 3. Wisdom of the Grandmothers 4. Snow Day 5. This cat Sachs, who is trying to rest in the circle of my arms as I type. He keeps putting his paw on my hand. He is purring. He likes snow days as much as I do.
May we walk in wisdom and Beauty!
Song for Brigid’s Day by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Do you feel how the world comes alive? How even underneath its coat of snow, inside the bright crystals of the ice, something in the Earth is stirring?
Within your own eyes I see it rising– in this breath, and now this one– the Dreamer is awakening.
The dawn has come, spreading its golden road before you, asking, “Will you step upon the pathway?”
As you move out onto the road, Brigid’s sun upon your face will trace your outline full behind you, defining you in the Shadow which will be your soul’s companion into spring.
“The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up—ever—trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?” —Terry Tempest Williams
We are capable of suffering with our world, and that is the true meaning of compassion. It enables us to recognize our profound interconnectedness with all beings. Don’t ever apologize for crying for the trees burning in the Amazon or over the waters polluted from mines in the Rockies. Don’t apologize for the sorrow, grief, and rage you feel. It is a measure of your humanity and your maturity. It is a measure of your open heart, and as your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal. That is what is happening as we see people honestly confronting the sorrows of our time. And it is an adaptive response.” —Joanna Macy
“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” —Virginia Woolf
“Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you home.” —St. Teresa of Avila
“You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear. I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.” ―Lauren Oliver, Delirium
“You can never leave footprints that last when you are walking on tiptoes.” ―Leymah Gbowee
Gratitude List: 1. Rising. All the little spring plants are rising up. Aconite and hellebore. Onion grass. I’ve been meaning to get a hellebore for years, and last year my friend gave me one. The greenery has been up since Brigid’s Day. May soon we’ll see a shy Lenten Rose. 2. Chocolate. Yeah, I bought “too much” for Young Son’s classroom. The “extras” were yummy. 3. Elderberry and zinc. Crossing my fingers that I can keep this cold at bay. I’m usually fine in the mornings, but I crash in the afternoons. I am going to take my elderberry and zinc along to school. Maybe I should nap during lunch–sleep seems to be one of the best revivers. 4. Homemade pizza. 5. Safety nets. We have yearly mental health screenings for students at certain grade levels at our school. A team of gentle souls from a local counseling center interviews students, giving them a chance to talk about their problems. I dream about the day we could get an ongoing grant or something to be able to screen all kids every year. One thing this does is that it normalizes this kind of conversation about mental health. It’s a check-up, just like a physical.
Mockingbird Chronicles 