poem-a-day

Silence

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I only learned today about how the Taliban this August banned the sound of women’s voices in public places. As I searched for poetry by Afghan women, I came across this powerful couplet by a poet who went by the name Muska, a young Afghan woman of Helmand Province. In translation into English, the poem loses the syllabic and sound structures of its form, the landay, which is a 22-syllable folk poem of Pashtun women of Afghanistan. My own attempt at the syllable count is certainly no landay, but seeks to echo it in lament of Muska, who died two weeks after setting herself on fire after her brothers beat her when they discovered her poetry, and the women of Afghanistan, who have had their voices stolen from them.

(I learned about Muska and the landay here: The National Poetry Foundation, Poetry journal.)

Silence
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

I call. You’re stone.
One day you’ll look and find I’m gone.
—by the Afghan poet Muska (Zarmina) of Helmand Province, who set herself on fire in 2012 after being beaten by her brothers when they discovered her poetry

Her laughter drifts no more like jasmine
over the garden wall and into the marketplace.

Who will sing the songs of the women
whose voices lie hidden at the bottom of the well?

The moon is rising over the wall
silently as the woman sitting in the courtyard.

“Through a process of perpetual discernment and “prayer unceasing” we may dive into the well of each faith and emerge with the treasure that connects us all.” —Mirabai Starr

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” —Carl Sagan

“If the Rhine, the Yellow, the Mississippi rivers are changed to poison, so too are the rivers in the trees, in the birds, and in the humans changed to poison, almost simultaneously. There is only one river on the planet Earth and it has multiple tributaries, many of which flow through the veins of sentient creatures.” —Thomas Berry

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” —Kurt Vonnegut

‪”So much of bird flight is really expert falling, slipping into that delicate space within the argument between gravity and air resistance. That natural alchemy transforms a plummet into a glide. Someday, I hope to learn to fail like birds fall.‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist

“Reading and writing cannot be separated. Reading is breathing in; writing is breathing out.”

“For a Star to be born,
there is one thing that must happen;
a nebula must collapse.
So collapse.
Crumble.
This is not your Destruction.
This is your birth.” —Zoe Skylar

Tools for the Resistance

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

This was Fun! And a lot of hard work! A few days ago, I asked friends on Facebook to offer their tools for the resistance as we work to meet the challenges of the coming days. I was unprepared for the magnitude of the response. I received 119 comments on the thread. Some comments included several ideas which I unwove into different lines. Others echoed each other, and I wove those together as I could. I decided to let the actual phrasings stand as written in as many cases as possible, though I often only pulled out shorter phrases from longer sentences to make the points succinct. I printed out four pages of about 110 lines of poem, sliced the lines apart, and arranged them in a flow that felt good to me. Here is the finished poem, with great gratitude to my beloved community:

Tools for the Resistance:
A Crowd-Sourced Poem
by Beth Weaver-Kreider and friends

Strengthen yourselves for what is to come.
Set your boundaries, clearly and effectively.
Strengthen your resolve.
Practice resilience.
Stay visible.
Wear black.
Harness that bone-deep disappointment to determination.
Mourn. Invite people to mourn with you.
Scream. Invite people to scream with you.
Use the tool of your voice. Use reason.
Pay attention. Prepare yourself for when you will be needed.
Resist tyranny.
Don’t hide. Don’t obey in advance.
Teach the history of non-resistance and civil disobedience.
Do civil disobedience. Push back.
Refuse to follow unethical instructions.
Carry forward our history of resistance.
Mobilize the angelic warriors.
Get your cell phone camera ready.
Get your boots on the ground.
Put on your pink hat. March!
Find joy in action!

Gather facts and information, knowledge and experience.
Read. Research and read.
Think critically.
Practice intelligence.
Practice bravery.
Educate.
Make sure people know how the system works.
Teach the privileged to be allies.
Unlearn the whitewashing of history.
Disempower ignorance.
Tell the truth. Share it boldly and without rancor.
Confront your elitism and privilege.
Stop recycling old arguments.
Examine your assumptions.
Be humble.
Be an active ally: Say, “What can I do?”
Come alongside. Check in. Hold space.
Greet the ones others look away from.
Actively love the disenfranchised.
Actively listen to them, and follow the marginalized ones.
Follow the directions of the young ones.
Walk with your elders.
Connect. Coresist.

Boycott. Buy local. Buy independent.
Vote with your money. Know where your dollars are going.
Volunteer.
Gather folks who care.
Create adaptable support systems.
Teach basic skills.
Teach people to make things for themselves.
Grow the movement. Draw people in.
Share ideas and plan actions.
Look to your sisters.
Learn the value of true friendship.
Hold on to each other.
Give care to those in your sphere.
Practice breathing together
Share your gentleness.

Aid in the collective healing work.
Midwife one another.
Extend gifts of listening. Listen selflessly.
Listen to and hear each other’s stories.
Tell stories of hope and resistance
Have hard conversations.
Make eye contact.

Make music. Send sound soaring to the heavens.
Make music without words.
Memorize music and poetry.
Sing songs about equity, freedom, and democracy.
Sing songs of peace with children.
Teach music to children.
Use humor: Humor has always been a tool of resistance.
Have fun! Be creative!
Make art, make art, make art.
Dance!

Walk with friends.
Walk in the woods. Sit by streams. Gaze at the stars.
Find stillness in nature. Soak in the beauty.
Save seeds. Share seeds and plants. Plant seeds. Find new seeds.
Plant community gardens.
Use herbs and words together to incant and pray and sing.
Find wisdom from the flowers.
Take inspiration from strong sturdy trees.
Grow your community of trees.
Remember the roots that connect us all.
Keep your eye on beauty instead of disorder.
Keep your eye on peace, standing shoulder to shoulder.
Practice courageous kindness.
Hold onto hope.

Practice resistance as a spiritual act.
Practice gratitude.
Practice radical self-care.
Practice slowness, enchantment, being, and noticing.
Upgrade consciousness.
Meditate. Be fully present in the moment that is.
Practice reflection.
Recharge.
Use magic. Cast spells.
Hold sacred circles.
Create the Yes.
Pray: “Love, make me an instrument of your peace.”
Continue to show up for mercy and peace and justice
Continue to show up for kindness and compassion
Continue to show up for wisdom and safety
Remember: You are not alone.
Let your little light shine. Shine it into the shadows.
Be a beacon of light and hope.

Gratitude List:
1. Co-poeming
2. Taking a group of students to a nursing home today to interview their elders. Beautiful interactions. I am incredibly proud of these young people.
3. Self-care. I had been neglecting my careful lunch creation in the past week (a bit depressed, I think), and so spent some good time this evening cooking a pot of grains, sauteing kale and carrots, and roasting soybeans for the rest of the week.
4. How the little pothos cuttings grow roots, and then push out new leaves.
5. Good stories.
May we walk in Beauty!

In a Garden

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This is the second of three pieces of writing on the rosary, which I am doing this week for The Way of the Rose Dark Mysteries Novena. Today is the Joyful Mysteries.

Mysteries of the Darkness Novena
Day 40. Joyful Mysteries:

Everything seems to begin in a garden.

In the traditional narrative of the Mysteries, both Sorrow and Glory begin in gardens. I imagine the Garden of Sorrows to be an arboretum of sorts, with lined pathways and small groves of trees covering the hillside. And in my imagination the Garden of Resurrection—perhaps its my childhood experience of Easter and its daffodils and amaryllis and sprays of flowering tree branches—is filled with flowers. And I have chosen to place the first step in the Joyful Mysteries, the moment of contact between maiden and angel, in a garden, a Garden of Yes, a place where I, the one about to embark on the journey, get to choose whether I will accept the tasks ahead of me. Because to do inner work, to make my spiritual practices live beyond the mere rote doing and saying of them, is to consent to the constant journey of transformation.

A garden is a space somewhere between wilderness and domesticity, with even the most carefully pruned and shaped garden remaining ungovernable at some level. I like the wilder looking ones, where there is evidence of human interaction with the wild, but the plants also seem to be offering their opinion on how the space should be.

My heart, too, is a garden, a space between the wildlands and the tame, where emotions and dreams grow not entirely wild. I tend them, shape them, and honor their presence, but I do not bully them or subjugate them, at least when I am at my most open-hearted. And they have a say in what my garden becomes.

And these myths and stories of Mystery which we use to anchor the decades of our daily practice are also gardens. As we individually take up the care of them, each one’s garden will look different. Each telling is transformed a little, as when the light hits in just a certain way in a mostly shaded corner of a garden.

In the Joyful Mysteries, whether you call it the Annunciation or Yes or The Budding, we begin again, fresh in the knowledge that while we cannot choose the circumstances of our lives, we do get to consent to the tasks we take upon us for the journey.

I enter the garden. There is a shining light, or a purple shadow against the grass, or a little bird, or a sound of bells, and a Question: Will you take this journey? Will you let it transform you, knowing there will be wonders ahead and discoveries to make, sorrows aplenty, and enlightenment on the other side?

Codes for the Resistance

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

This is a little oracle draw I did yesterday from Nick Bantock’s Archeo deck: The Healer, The Jester, The Trickster. Here we enter the fray as Healers. What do we have to offer as healing? What sustenance and repair can we spread to our communities in this time of anxious uncertainty? And then those two cousins, Jester and Trickster, both! The Jester uses humor and drama to show us our social shadows. The Trickster turns the jesting upon our personal egos. Not only must I take a careful look at the problems of society, but I must look at my own ego-bound nature. And laugh and dance and caper. These capering fools might offend, but in the service of learning and the greater good. What does the Trickster have to teach me, even as I am searching for ways to join the Jester in unpacking our wider social troubles?

I have crowd-sourced Tools for the Resistance on a Facebook thread, and will turn that into a poem. This is not yet that poem. This is just cracking the codes in some words.

Secret Codes for the Resistance
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Take the spa out of despair. At least
don’t pair it with your idea of self-protection.
And unweave the silence from resilience—
share your arc of hope in the bounce-back.

But keep, perhaps, the rage in courage
in this age of rampant anxieties.
Keep both the fierce and fearsome lion
and the summoning bell
inside your bold rebellion,
and oh Dear Sisters and Resisters:
Let love lie lightly (although in reverse)
in this hopeful revolution, like a secret rose,
waiting to bloom.

Gratitude List:
1. Watching deer on the hillside in the bosque across the road with the kid this morning.
2. Family and spending time with relatives we haven’t seen in a long time
3. The many colors of red on the hillside
4. Chocolate as medicine (I think I have said that one already a time or two in recent days)
5. Rhythms and cycles, wheels and spirals, knowing that the turning will always come
May we walk in Beauty!

“We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other’s only hope.” ―James Baldwin

“Poets are kind of like—it’s a bad metaphor, but—canaries in a coal mine. They have a sense for things that are in the air. Partly because that’s what they do—they think about things that are going on—but partly because they take their own personal experience and see how that fits in with what they see in the world. A lot of people might think that poetry is very abstract, or that it has to do with having your head in the clouds, but poets, actually, walk on the earth. They’re grounded, feet-first, pointing forward. They’re moving around and paying attention at every moment.” —Don Share

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” —Toni Morrison

“…Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.”
—from “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)” by Wendell Berry

Morning Prayer
by Phillip Newell
In the silence of the morning
your Spirit hovers over the brink of the day
and a new light pieces the darkness of the night.
In the silence of the morning
life begins to stir around me
and I listen for the day’s utterances.
In earth, sea and sky
and in the landscape of my own soul
I listen for utterances of your love, O God.
I listen for utterances of your love.

The Regime Requests

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

This is not intended to shame anyone for feeling despair or numbness or fear. It’s me telling myself to prepare to resist fascism more openly and energetically.

The Regime Would Like to Request
Your Compliance in the Following Matters:
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Curl up in a ball of despair and stay there.
Allow that slow-seeping sense of helplessness
to invade every pore of your being.
Practice extreme numbness.
Scroll mindlessly through your phones at all times.
Do not look out your windows.
Better yet, keep your blinds drawn.
Stay away from nature:
It won’t be around much longer anyway.
Stop making things. Buy stuff. Be good little consumers.
Distrust all your neighbors. Exercise suspicion.
Tell us everything you can about your neighbors.
Stop reading books! Especially history books!
Better yet, join our book-burnings,
every other Thursday on the public square.
Read instead these memes created
by the Russian bots, and listen to the news
vetted by our own minister of liberty management.
Do not complain. Do not organize. Do not resist.

Gratitude List:
1. A golden chilly bike ride this morning on the Rail Trail
2. All four of us under one roof for two nights
3. The people who are stepping up and leading the way
4. Feeling the Big Feelings even when they aren’t fun
5. Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuue sky!
May we walk in Beauty!

“We must do what they fear— tell the truth, spread the truth. This is the most powerful weapon.” —Alexei Navalny

“For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” —Carl Sagan

“But this moment, you’re alive. So you can just dial up the magic of that at any time.” —Joanna Macy

“I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” —Vincent van Gogh

“The most vital right is the right to love and be loved.” —Emma Goldman

“Love imperfectly. Be a love idiot. Let yourself forget any love ideal.” —Sark

“Everything I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything exists, only because I love.” —Leo Tolstoy

“Love is a great beautifier.” —Louisa May Alcott

“Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more.” —Erica Jong

“Fall in love over and over again every day. Love your family, your neighbors, your enemies, and yourself. And don’t stop with humans. Love animals, plants, stones, even galaxies.” —Frederic and Mary Ann Brussa

“I will start from here. That is an interesting spiritual statement when you stop to think about it. It means that whatever happened before, and whatever may happen in time to come, the past and the future are not the sacred space I actually inhabit. That space is right here, right now, in whatever condition I find myself. This is what I have to work with. This is where change and hope begin for me. Recognizing my location on the map of the holy is one more way that I claim my place of blessing and announce to the universe: I will start from here.” —Steven Charleston

” ‘They kept going, because they were holding onto something.’
‘What are we holding onto, Sam?’
‘There’s still good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.’ “
—Frodo and Sam

“Somewhere deep in the forest of grief
there is a waterfall where all your tears may flow
over mossy rocks, under watchful pines.”
—Beth Weaver-Kreider

“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.” —E. B. White

“There are certain things, often very little things, like the little peanut, the little piece of clay, the little flower that cause you to look WITHIN – and then it is that you see the soul of things.”
—George Washington Carver

Needing a Thesaurus to Express My Emotions

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This Poem May Be a Cheat Because I Leaned on the Thesaurus
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Oooh, I got a lotta big, big stuff to feel now, Babes.
I needed a thesaurus to find me all the names
for the shades of rage I’m roiling through. Here goes:

acerbity, acrimony, agitation, animosity
apoplexy, bitterness, blowup, asperity,
bluster, choler, convulsion, eruption
dander, exasperation, excitement, explosion
ferment, fireworks, furor, ferocity
fury and gall and heat and frenzy
hemorrhage, huff, hysterics, indignation
ire and madness, mania, irritation
obsession, outburst, passion, paroxysm
rampage, raving, resentment and spasm
spleen and squall, temper and storm
umbrage, uproar, upset, tantrum
wrath and vehemence
havoc and incandescence

Whew! That feels better.

Gratitude List:
1. How that golden boat of a moon rested so gently on the sea of the southwestern ridge of the hollow
2. People gathering to share their stories and grief and outrage
3. How momentum is gathering at the grassroots to protect and empower people who are vulnerable to the impending fascist threat
4. How being with others helps me to gather my own energy for the work ahead
5. Powerful, strong, compassionate, and wise women
May we walk in Beauty!

“Tyrants fear the poet.” —Amanda Gorman

“Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.” ―Brian Jacques

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
Toni Morrison

“Men find it easier to believe they have been swindled by a witch than outwitted by a woman.” —Amina Al-Sirafi (in the novel The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty)

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.” ―Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

“Love is the bridge between you and everything.” ―Rumi

“Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.”
―Bob Dylan

“To open our eyes, to see with our inner fire and light, is what saves us. Even if it makes us vulnerable. Opening the eyes is the job of storytellers, witnesses, and the keepers of accounts. The stories we know and tell are reservoirs of light and fire that brighten and illuminate the darkness of human night, the unseen. They throw down a certain slant of light across the floor each morning, and they throw down also its shadow.” —Linda Hogan

What do you do
when the gods of the dreamings
offer you maps for the journey?

How will you answer
when the night-folk cry out:
“Give us the hope of our meanings!”
―Beth Weaver-Kreider

Get Ready

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

The ghost of an old enemy appeared in the night, during a bout of anxious insomnia, in the form of an attack written on a friend’s vulnerable social media post. His response was rife with privilege, entitlement, and barely-masked bigotry couched first in the form of seemingly innocent questions, and then in disdainful and contemptuous put-downs.

Get Ready
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

When the bigot blows in with his bombast,
his bluster and menace and gall,
will you stand between him
and the trans girl walking to school,
the small boy called Dreamer,
the young woman whose face shows
the strength of her Navajo ancestors,
the man whose accent dances from his tongue
with a salsa or merengue beat?

Will you let yourself be counted among them,
among those at the dagger-end of his vitriol:
the laws he will make to cage them and demean them,
the bloody trail of his deportations,
the snarling and biting of his vicious hounds?

Will you stand with those on the edge of the page,
offer your strength, build the resistance,
focus your rage and your grief for their safety?

Can you be stronger than the waves of exhaustion
which threaten to engulf you and pull you under?
Fiercer than the raw bite of winter,
but with love in your heart, and a tender eye?
Can you be true to the stories you’ve lived by,
now when the tales are being told in real time?

Gratitude List:
1. Watching my Middle Schoolers interact with elders from a local nursing home yesterday
2. How the circles are gathering
3. A salty bite of peanuts for an energy boost mid-morning
4. Coaches–these folks really invest their time and heart in helping my son’s team be healthy in body, mind, and spirit
5. Blue blue blue blue sky
May we walk in Beauty!

“The stories I’m trying to write, and which I want to promote, are stories that contribute to the stability of my own culture, stories that elevate, that keep things from flying apart.” —Barry Lopez

“What the world wants, and people need, are people who believe in Something—Something that will lead them to the good, the beautiful, the true, and the universal.” —Richard Rohr

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” —James Baldwin

“I am not talking about giving our hearts over to despair. I wonder if we can train our hearts, intentionally, like athletes who train for a marathon, to bear the load without crumpling under the weight. I think that’s what the children need from us, for us to bear them, bear the stories, hold them as though they were our own, to be prepared to act at any moment for any one of them within our reach. I think the times call for hearts strong enough to be tender, to bleed without weakening, to rage and protect and pray and hope without numbing out.

“I don’t think it has to be a choice. We don’t have to choose between the closed heart and the broken heart. We can be awake and yet not despair. It’s worth a try.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider

“If we are going to see real development in the world, then our best investment is in women.” —Desmond Tutu

“Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.” —Alice Walker

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” —Marcus Aurelius

Found on a T-shirt: “I am totally happy and not dangerous mostly.”

“Part of the tragedy of our present culture is that all our attention is on the outer, the physical world. And yes, outer nature needs our attention; we need to act before it is too late, before we ravage and pollute the whole ecosystem. We need to save the seeds of life’s diversity. But there is an inner mystery to a human being, and this too needs to be rescued from our present wasteland; we need to keep alive the stories that nourish our souls. If we lose these seeds we will have lost a connection to life’s deeper meaning—then we will be left with an inner desolation as real as the outer.” —Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Adrienne Rich: “When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility of more truth around her.”

“I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and sword in my hands.” —Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

Bringing Each Other Back

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

I’m exhausted with this grief and fury and disillusionment and shattered hope. I want to curl up into a ball and sleep for a week. Yet there are also small joys and wonders in the midst of the agony. Here is a cloud that looks like a bird that brought me joy today.

And a rose that a colleague gave me this morning.

Bringing Each Other Back
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Give me a word that means something akin
to the feeling of finding yourself safe in a cave
at the moment the heavens explode
with lightning and thunder and rain.

Tell me a story so shining with wonder
that foot-weary travelers and lost souls
gather in the shadows around us
to be warmed at the fire of your telling.

Spin me a strand long enough for my weaving,
rich with color and hints of bright sunlight
so that I may make a cloak to protect us
and keep us from harm in the shadows.

When you look into the eyes of strangers
let softness come into your gaze
sweep tenderness through
the glaze of anxiety, fury, and grieving.

Gratitude List:
1. A gift of a rose when my spirits are tattered
2. A cloud in the shape of a bird
3. Chocolate as medicine
4. How people circle around and care for each other in times of crisis
5. How music soothes the soul
May we walk in Beauty!

“The practice of love is the most powerful antidote to the politics of domination.” —bell hooks

“People who love the divine go around with holes in their hearts, and inside the hole is the universe.” —Peter Kingsley from the Dark Places of Wisdom

“When men imagine a female uprising, they imagine a world in which women rule men as men have ruled women.” ―Sally Kempton

“Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.” —Mae Jemison (Astronaut/Medical Doctor)

Adrienne Rich: “When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility of more truth around her.”

“Walked for half an hour in the garden. A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn. The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains – a melancholy nature. The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief. A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through the shrubberies, and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys. Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.” —Henri Frederic Amiel

There is a legend that has its roots buried deep inside the prehistoric culture of these lands. It is a myth that was seeded before the stories were anchored onto the page, before rigid systems of belief tied gods and spirits into names and form, even before the people were persuaded from paths of individual responsibility into hierarchies of power. This story has been fluid and flowing, changing shape and growing over many thousands of years. It is a story of ancestors and a deep relationship with the ancient land. It is a story of memories that permeate stone and wood to rest within the body of the earth. This legend is too old to be defined by history and therefore we are not limited in our own remembering of it; creative recollection lies at the heart of our very best tales.

Memory may arrive at odd moments and in unexpected forms. Recognition may unravel along strange paths. Wherever the wild reaches through the land, we may touch the edges of this story. We start to tease out a thread, then pick and pull until first a fragment of colour, then a whole strand of story, is revealed. Now we peel away the layers, glimpse the traces of a design, watch a pattern grow until an entire story emerges, then a cycle of stories, and now we are unwinding the fabric of our ancestors’ lives.” —Carolyn Hillyer

Election day Invocation

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Liberty and Justice:
Invocation on Election Day
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Liberty, I too will lift my lamp,
the hope of my vote,
to make good on the words
they spoke and wrote,
before they even meant them
to belong to all of us.

And Justice, carrying the weight
of all our stories on your golden scales,
you too were meant for all of us.
For, all men, they said, which word
they claim includes the women, too,
both rich and poor, and those
with roots here in this native soil,
and Africa and Europe, Asia
and the islands. although
perhaps they never really meant it.

We do now.

We base our hopes upon those words,
like sacred text. We hold the truths,
self-evident, of course, that humans
here have hope of that equality.
I cast my vote for that lamp,
that book, that scales
which weighs us all equal
in the eyes of Lady Liberty
and Justice For All.

Starhawk has begun calling her LAJFA, Liberty And Justice For All, a goddess of this place–a deliberate syncretism of Lady Liberty and Lady Justice, a manifestation of the intent spoken and written by the founders, whether they truly believed it or not. Her robes are rainbows, and her emblems are the lamp and the sword and the book and the scales. Her face is perhaps indigenous, perhaps an amalgam of all the races that now call home this place which she protects. All. Not just wealthy white male Christian landowners. And this vote, this thing we do today? It’s our sacred pledge to LAJFA, to Democracy, to make it so.

Gratitude List:
1. These brilliant and playful and thoughtful young people
2. A glorious fall day
3. Voting. Getting to choose. Having a say.
4. Breathing and centering and grounding–how the Earth holds my roots
5. Chocolate-covered coffee beans
May we walk in Beauty!

“Safety is not the absence of threat.
It is the presence of connection.” —Gabor Maté

“Mercy is the willingness to enter into the chaos of another.” —James Keenan

Expose yourself to your deepest fear. After that, you are free.” —Jim Morrison

“You need not wade through the mists and bogs to reach the moon.
You need not climb a ladder of cobweb.
You need not ride the stallions that wicker in the sea’s pounding surf.

Draw back the curtain and open the window.
Breathe the bracing air and listen:
The whinny of an owl, the click of the bat,
The grunt of a buck and the distant roar of the train.

The full moon will spill a milky road before you.
That is all the pathway you will need.”
—Beth Weaver-Kreider

“The word is the making of the world.” —Wallace Stevens

“Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

“The leaves of the tree become as pages of the Sacred Book to one who is awake.”
—Hazrat Inayat Khan

“Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” —Albert Einstein

“I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Suppressing a culture is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.” —Coretta Scott King

“When you feel the suffering of every living thing in your own heart, that is consciousness.” —Bhagavad Gita

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world….”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, ‘Yes, the stars always make me laugh!’ And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you…”
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.”
―Naomi Shihab Nye

Moment of Hope

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s Poem is nonfiction:

Moment of Hope
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

It was a ripple
a glimmer
a golden ray
shimmering
just a moment
shining on the twilit waves
percolating
like a cooling stream
of water trickling
down my soul
just a whisper
in the wilderness
a fragment
of a fragment
of a fragment
of an almost-remembered
dream, and nearly
as ethereal,
yet almost tangible too
a brewing of hope
on the horizon

Gratitude List:
1. A moment of Hope
2. Remembering beauty and goodness
3. Chocolate-covered Holiday Star cookies
4. Music to calm the anxious spirit
5. Good stories
May we walk in Beauty!

Saturday’s Falling and Getting Up Again:
“Both when we fall and when we get up again, we are kept in the same precious love.” ―Julian of Norwich

“What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved–what then?” ―Carl Jung

“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.”
―Eleanor Roosevelt

“If I had influence with the good fairy, I would ask that her gift to each child be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”
―Rachel Carson

“Your problem is you’re too busy holding onto your unworthiness.” ―Ram Dass

“In giving of yourself, you will discover a whole new life full of meaning and love.” ―Cesar Chavez

“While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
―Eugene V. Debs

“I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too. Ma Joad: I don’t understand it, Tom. Tom Joad: Me, neither, Ma, but – just somethin’ I been thinkin’ about.”
―Tom Joad, from the movie Grapes of Wrath

“And don’t we all, with fierce hunger, crave a cave of solitude, a space of deep listening—full of quiet darkness and stars, until we hear a syllable of God echoing in the core of our hearts?”
—Macrina Wiederkehr

“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.” —Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

“The way that I understand it, dreaming is nature naturing through us. Just as a tree bears fruit or a plant expresses itself in flowers, dreams are fruiting from us. The production of symbols and story is a biological necessity. Without dreams, we could not survive. And though it is possible to get by without remembering our dreams, a life guided and shaped by dreaming is a life that follows the innate knowing of the earth itself. As we learn to follow the instincts of our inner wilderness, respecting its agreements and disagreements, we are also developing our capacity for subtlety. This sensitivity is what makes us more porous and multilingual, bringing us into conversation with the many languages of the world around us.” — Toko-pa Turner