musing

Balancing

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

      
Doesn’t this just feed your soul? My mother’s windowsill. I passed it through a painting filter, which I like, but really, the beauty of the original colors is rather perfect.

This is not a joyful thing. Perhaps it is a gratitude of sorts. It’s more a simple relief. The man who caused the bus accident has turned himself in. It was an uncomfortable loose end that has been bothering me, not because I want revenge, but because it needed resolution.

In my advisory group today, one young man asked that we pray for the driver (before we knew he had turned himself in). This was the second or third time that this particular young man has asked for us to pray for someone who has done something wrong, or made a bad choice. I am moved by the layered depth of his compassion, and it leads me forward into hopeful spaces. May we all learn to love with such a sense of everyone’s humanity.

Today in an English 101 class, we were talking about the role of the Muses in the Greek pantheon, and one girl who had zoned out looked up and asked, “What about the moose?”

I think there needs to be a poem about the Moose of Poetic Inspiration.

Gratitude List:
1. Our Lady of the Flowers zipped past the window again today. I swear she paused in her humming for the briefest of moments and looked into the house at my boy in his red shirt.
2. Graces: I get teary when I talk about it, but it just needs to be said–All our children survived that accident. They likely have wounds that we cannot see, and some of them may experience flashbacks and anxiety. Others are still healing from physical injuries. But: They are alive. Every time I see pictures of that little bus on its side, I am astounded at the miracle of their survival.
3. The Administrative folks at my school. I think I have mentioned before how grateful I am for them, but today I had another chance to see the principals in action, responding to an issue with grace and firmness, holding the balances of accountability and tenderness. When there is harm, they name it, and then seek to care for those involved. They are true leaders.
4. Cobalt Blue
5. Following the pathway lit by the tender hearts of these young folks.

May we walk in Beauty!

The Sacred Work of Raising Children

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

I have always resisted too intense a categorization of genders.  Now, with two boys to raise, I often find myself caught in that tight spot between the noticing of their particular energies and the awareness of cultural beliefs about gender in children.  In some ways I see them behaving in the particular ways that people say boys will behave, and often they defy such artificial categorization.  They are who they are, separate from notions of gender.

Perhaps all children go through the hitting phase, no matter their particular shading of gender identity.  I can only speak to my own family’s experience: My children hit each other.  Often, and without holding back.  We do not hit our children, so they did not learn it from us.  The seven-year-old is developing better impulse control, fortunately, but this puts him more at the mercy of the four-year-old.  Of course, Seven is a master of provoking Four to violence.  There now, have I gone and blamed the victim?

I do not handle their violence well.  I think we need some help.  It hasn’t worked to keep repeating the scripted phrases, “When you hit, I feel worried because I am afraid you might hurt your brother.  I need you to stop hitting now.”  It hasn’t worked to threaten to take toys or video time.

Yesterday, I tried the technique I have heard about of holding the hitter in a chair until s/he calms down.  I could feel his frustration building, could feel the need to lash out rising within him.  Needless to say, it did not seem to be a successful intervention.  I want to do more simple acknowledging of strong feelings, more talking it through.  Too often, I go in yelling too:  “This is not acceptable in this house!  We do not hit each other!  How often do I need to tell you that?”  Umm.  Not helpful.

Yesterday I finally watched the video that everyone has been posting on Facebook in which Patrick Stewart speaks of the work he is doing to end domestic violence in memory of his mother, and now in memory of his father as well as he learns of the role PTSD played in his family’s story:  “Violence is never, ever, ever, a choice that a man should make!”  I often tell the boys that we do not hit each other, but I have started using a variation of Stewart’s phrase for the boys:  “Violence is never a choice we should make.”

We do talk about it, and I suppose it is sinking in to the corners of their consciousness.  Yesterday as we were driving, I began to rhapsodize about the Valley we were driving through, and Four perked up from the back seat, “I thought you were starting to say Violence.”  Okay.  So he’s learning the words, at least.

Yesterday someone also sent me this simply-written article from The Huffington Post.  While I am pretty sure I am not like the parents in the story who let their son run rough-shod over another child’s imaginative realm, it was another good reminder of why this work of socializing our children is so crucial to their development.  When people dismiss aggressive behavior in boys as simply the uncontrollable behavior of their gender, how deeply does that become part of their psyche as they grow up and relate to women?

I went into the day weary of the constant tasks related to helping these children learn to interact with each other without violence, and came out of it weavng together the video and the article which remind me that this is sacred work, this work of helping these two boys learn to control their impulses, to name and acknowledge and express their feelings in open ways, to respect each others’ space.  I’m still at a bit of a loss about how to handle the hitting, but more hopeful that each conversation, each interaction, is a moment for learning how to be mature human beings.  For all of us.

 

Gratitude List:
(It’s been a few days, so I am going to break the rules and let myself have ten.)
1.  A sparkling, humming, magical swarm of bees.  I am sorry that the beekeeper was unable to catch them–they settled too high in the tree before flying off, but I will hope that they will establish a powerful and healthy wild colony.
2.  The panicky-sounding “Yeep!” of the bullfrogs when we startle them as we walk by the pond.
3.  Listening to Alice in Wonderland with Ellis, and watching him catch the jokes and puzzles and puns.  It is such fun to laugh with my children.
4.  The enormous Yard Sale at Lebanon Valley Brethren Home.  It was a delight to explore the treasures with the kids.
5.  The temporary grace offered by a little pharmaceutical assistance when the herbs just seemed to be insufficient to help my body cope with the current onslaught of pollens.  I will still hold out as long as I can because I don’t like to live in the mental fog, but it’s nice to know it’s there when my eyes blow up and I can’t stop sneezing.
6.  Someone saw a big black snake at the farm.  It has been a couple years since one has been spotted.  Snakes are a good sign of a healthy ecosystem.  Now to keep my evening eyes peeled for bats. . .
7.  Lupines growing from the stones at the edge of the highway!
8.  Roadside sign that said, “Let us walk Honestly.”  That’s nice.  So often I dismiss those signs because they tend to be consigning people to hell, so this was a lovely change.  And then I saw one that said, “Be ye merciful.”  I like that one, too.
9.  Family expedition to Weaver’s Dry Goods in Fivepointsville.  Mini Doughnuts.  The wonder of exploring the toy section with the children.  And Jon, too–he was like a kid himself.  (But don’t get me started on the prominent display of Roundup in the front of the store.)  In the parking lot on the way out, we saw something you don’t see every day, a plain Mennonite woman driving a tractor, pulling a trailer with a load of supplies and three or four girls in it.  I hope they weren’t going far–it looked sort of dangerous.  But amazing.
10.  Entering Weaverland Valley from Terre Hill (say Turr-eh Hill).  Something sings in my bones at the view of the light playing over the valley, the farms, the green meadows and tidy fields.

May we walk in Beauty.

Story Ramble

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

This week I have been thinking about the layers of stories that I experience.  There’s this story of mine that I am creating with every thought or idea that I latch onto or release, every image I carry with me, each action, each refusal to act.  I create the tone and subtext for my story, and even develop the plot with a certain amount of control.  A fair bit of the plot is beyond my control, and then my role in the story becomes how I respond and shape myself in relationship to the plot.

My story is interwoven with the stories of my husband, my children, my parents and the rest of my family, my friends and community, the folks who work on and who visit the farm, my internet network.  And they shape my story as I shape theirs.  We hone and whittle, we tweak and trigger and tickle each others’ stories.  When your story gets rocky and challenging, it shakes my story, too.  I sort of think that’s the work we’re here to do, to help each other hone and perfect our stories.

There’s the living of story and the telling of story.  Someone told me part of his story this week, and said, “It helps to tell it.  There’s no point in keeping it inside.”  Something in the experience of being present for the telling, being tuned in to the mixture of pain and relief and terror and hope, something in that changed me in a way that I can’t quite understand.  I am glad that telling the story helped him.  How is it that it healed and completed something within me as well?

I think, too, about the religious and spiritual stories that inform our lives, the way they overlap and challenge us, the ways that firm adherence to a story can close and calcify hearts.  The ways that tender adherence to a story can open a heart to acceptance and compassion.

And fiction and myth.  Why is it that we need to talk with other people about Downton Abbey and Mad Men and Six Feet Under?  About The Fifth Sacred Thing and The Hunger Games and Harry Potter?  Why do we get obsessed with Star Trek and Doctor Who?  There’s something in the public, corporate sharing of story that develops and hones community experiences, that helps us explore more deeply what is means to be human, what it means to be community.

We’ve been pretty careful to shelter our children from the frenetic pacing of much of contemporary movies and television shows.  And I will continue to do so, but I am realizing that I also want to be careful not to stunt their opportunities for community-making through story-sharing with their peers.  Of course, I want them to create story with their friends as much as possible, which is what imaginative play is, but I also want them to have storylines to discuss and ponder with their friends.  Shared story is so important to community-making.

I feel a little like Andy Rooney on a ramble, without his skill at wrapping up the free association.  So I’ll leave you with a few pieces of my story from today, in the form of my current gratitude list.

2013 May 027

Gratitude List:
1.  That the elder patriarchs in my life are not The Patriarchy.  Such wonderful hearts, such rich meaning-making and humility and acceptance and tolerance.
2.  That the matriarchs continue to hone their voices, to lead the way into the story.  The ways they lead the charge to defend justice, to admit anger, to fiercely and joyfully protect and nurture.  Their solid practicality.
3.  Spirit, the fifth sacred thing, the wind that makes all winds that blow, the flame, the Center, the Mystery.
4.  The LCCN came for my book.  Conservative estimate is that it will be ready to purchase within a week.  I stated that with much more calm than I feel.  I am extremely excited.
5.  Being in a community where people pass babies around.  Watching the way people’s eyes change, the way their energies shift into such a tender place when they hold a baby.
6.  Bonus:  The way Jon can make me laugh by throwing out some little Jon-ism.  Still.  After more than half our lives.  I still love the way he makes me laugh.

May we walk in beauty.