Tag: nourishment

Nourishing Those Who Come After

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes, Musings

Someone got to the Heron in the night before I could check it out yesterday—one of the People Who Deal with Death. I wasn’t quite able to bring myself to go get a close look. Perhaps after a while, I’ll go check if there are feathers left which I can photograph. Meanwhile, I will imagine the rich milk of a fox mother nourishing a nestle of kits, who dream at night that they are gliding on great blue wings above the fields and streams of the hollow.

Everything returns. Everything feeds the next thing. Everything is nourished by that which came before. May we be food for the next cycle. May our words, our actions, our fierce determination, our resilience, our abiding joy, our activism and our contemplation be nourishment for those who come after us.

It is International Women’s Day. Let’s remember, as we celebrate the women whose lives and stories have fed us, that we must feed the coming generations of women their rights.

Gratitude List:
1. The courageous activist women who have struggled with their whole beings for equal rights. May we continue their struggle.
2. The quiet women who continued to work and nurture and do what needed to be done behind the scenes. May we be steady and reliable, too.
3. The contemplatives and poets, women who inspired us to be better, more evolved humans. May our words sing, and our meditations deepen.
4. The resilient women, who took their own stories of struggle and pain, and turned them into fierce walking boots, firm ground for striding, protective clothing for the long journey. May we, too, be resilient.
5. The women who are coming behind us. May they reach with hope and determination and calm and fierce resilience toward their own empowered futures, their own empowered nows. May we be a strong foundation upon which they may stand and reach upward.

May we walk in Beauty!

Into the Dark, December 5

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes, Musings

very year at this time, I feel the anxiety and restlessness begin to rise within me, and the cold settles into my bones. Every year, I need to consciously ease my spirit into the season. This year, from the beginning of December until Epiphany, I will set it down here on the blog. May we journey into the darkness with intention and tenderness.

Those sunrise clouds do it every morning. I move through the morning darkness like a wader in a murky pond every morning, until I am fully awake, until I can let some of my muscles relax into the day. The clouds help. Magenta and tangerine streaks across cobalt and indigo and grey. Touches of aquamarine in the sky below.

Not every day, of course. Some of the sunrises are simple shifts from grey to grey. But some mornings, the sky breathes for me, breathes in colors that seep into my bones, the way warmth begins to creep inward from a nice cup of tea.

My word for today will be Color. Even in the grey days, there’s color to be found, and even now there are deep rich greens, pops of berry red, cardinal red, golden sunbeam.

Today, may colors seep into your soul, awaken and enliven you, help you breathe. Blessed be.

“The opposite of consumption is not frugality, it is generosity.”
—Raj Patel

“By reciting a myth, the storyteller remembers a creation, and, by remembering, is a part of that creating. It is best understood in that dreadful solecism “walkabout”. In walking, the Australians speak the land. Their feet make it new, now, and in its beginning. And the land speaks to them, now, anew, and in their beginning, by step and breath that meet in its dance, so that land and people sing as one.” —Alan Garner, The Voice That Thunders

“This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we’re born into stories. I say we’re also born from stories.” —Ben Okri

“So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God,
one of which was you.” ―Mary Oliver

“Let the violence and pain in our world root you even more deeply in your commitment to be kinder and love harder, no matter the person or circumstance. Your great ability to love has everything to do with creating a more peaceful reality on our planet. Your love matters. It makes a critical difference. It helps us all.” —Scott Stabile

“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.” —Nelson Mandela

“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”
—Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

“Never does Nature say one thing and Wisdom another.” —Juvenal

“There is a place where words are born of silence,
A place where the whispers of the heart arise.” —Rumi

Gratitude List:
1. Warm blankets
2. Elementary School Music Concerts
3. Nourishment
4. Words
5. You

May we walk in Beauty!

Wisdom from the Stone Mother, completed

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes, Poems, Poetry Prompts

This one is for Nicki Larue.  I found most of the first stanza in her words on Friday.  Oh my, I have just pooped out on this.  It’s a daunting task.  I think that I will write more of these, many more, but giving myself more than a day or two to finish. 

It’s all one big pool.
One fountain, one single source.
Only take what’s yours for today.
Connect yourself to Earth and Sky and spread your wings.
Listen through the words, for the word that gets overlooked;
that one word could hold the whole story.

You are the Teller of your own story.
Don’t be afraid to dive into the pool,
but remember not to leap before you’ve looked
and swim against the current, to your source
where you will rise from the waters, find your wings
and fly into the dawning of the day.

And it’s your new day,
each moment a new story,
the minutes winging
swiftly past, pooling
into hours, whirling into the source,
a mirror into which you look,

like an open book, you look
each blossoming day
into that source
for clues to your story,
you look into that pool
and see your reflection, with wings,

dusted with color, like butterfly wings
and you turn to look
behind you, to where a pool
of shadow heralds the ending of day,
closing another chapter in your history,
another truth drawn from your source.

Darkness descends, the source
of light extinguished, you fold your wings,
pause in the telling of the story,
listen for that one word which you have overlooked.
Watch how the night overcomes the day,
how darkness spreads outward like a pool.

Prompt

Heidi Kindon suggested a poem on Nourishment.  I love it.  It’s time to step out of the form a little while and hit up a theme.  Who will join me?

Gratitude List

1.  Seven happy hens
2.  A brown egg, a beige egg, and a double-yolked blue egg
3.  Homemade doughnuts for supper!
4.  Watching Here Comes Santa Claus with the family–my favorite Christmas movie.  Yes, and nearly a month late. . .
5.  Malachite

May we walk in beauty.