Poetry

Syncretism

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
The “Flammarian Engraving.” Artist unknown

Well, here’s a fun etymology! Syn- means together, as in synchronize, synonym, synapse, sync. But that second part is harder. It could, according to etymologyonline.com, come from the old Greek word kerannynai, or the word krasis, which both carry the meaning of a mixture or blending. To blend together. Probably the appropriate linguistic trail.

But eymologyonline.com also explains that the cretism could also refer to Crete, and an old adage about “lying like a Cretan.” To bring the liars together? Hmmm.

The word took on specific meaning during the German Reformation, when people with varying ideas of religion were fracturing into sects, and theologians were working to “bring together” or syncretize their theological systems. As often happens when people try to stitch varying ideas together, the sects became even more fractured, and syncretism became a bad word, taking on the meaning of trying to put together things which absolutely should not be put together.

Which is how I learned it, in a Religion class in my Mennonite High School. Syncretists, we learned, see religious experience as a smorgasbord, taking a little of this and a little of that, whatever shiny ideas their ignorant or heretical minds find appetizing. We were told that they don’t commit to a single path, so they are less enlightened, less spiritually mature, than the creedal religions, like Islam, Judaism, and especially Christianity.

While I certainly, and to my shame, felt the superiority and pity required by the fervent evangelical system of my Religion class regarding the syncretists, something in me started singing then–perhaps it was the budding poet: “Not everyone feels compelled to fit the boxes! Some people choose their path.” Perhaps that was when I first began to give myself just a little permission to look at my spiritual story from a lens other than the steel-sided theological boxes I was handed by church and school.

I love the old Catholic women who pray to Mary and also read tarot cards, the devout Mennonite grandmothers of my own lineage who may have been practitioners of the German sympathetic magical tradition of powwow, the indigenous people who honor the ancestral truths passed on to them while weaving them into faith traditions they’ve known from other lines of ancestry, the witches who follow the path of the Earth Goddess and maintain their heritage faiths in whatever way seems best to them.

Today, I often call myself a Universalist, which applies, and yet that label takes me out of the specific realms where I find my spiritual buffet. I am an Anabaptist Mennonite, steeped in the peace tradition and the yieldedness and the opposition to Empire that my Mennonite ancestors experienced. Faith without works is dead, they said, and the priesthood belongs to all believers. I no longer accept the moniker Christian because of the way that term has been drained of its life-force and turned vampirical by the blood-sucking life-denying forces of the modern US evangelical movement. But I am dedicated to the teachings of Jesus. And, like the old Catholic women, I pray to his mother in all her forms.

And I am a witch, a word I wore quietly in private until it was given me as a public accusation and I chose to wear it proudly and publicly. A witch is one who trusts her own connection to the life-giving force of the Earth, of the Goddess who is the spiritual expression of Earth. One who believes in being her own priestess (like the Mennonites and their egalitarian priesthood). One who believes in finding Truth in her embodied experience. One who believes that magic is, as Dion Fortune wrote, “changing consciousness at will,” beginning with my own consciousness. I honor the rich traditions of indigenous spirituality here in the US and in Africa and elsewhere in the world, not choosing to assimilate their beliefs into my own, but allowing them to inform and enrich my personal practices and beliefs, which are grounded in my own heritage.

Mostly I am a poet, finding significance in metaphor and symbol, in the way words and ideas and images and people weave together to create a tapestry of meaning.

I recently watched The Truman Show again with one of my high school classes, and afterward we compared the image of Truman Burbank standing at the top of the staircase at the edge of the sky at the border of his world with the image of the “Flammarian Engraving” of the man peeking under the veil of the visible world into the deeper reality of the workings of the universe. I want to be always finding my way to the next doorway, the next veil, ready to face my fears and stand in awe at the new discoveries to be made. Ready to syncretize new ideas and revelations with my current limited understanding.

Annunciation

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today was my day to write for the Way of the Rose Annunciation Novena:
THE ANNUNCIATION NOVENA
Day 5, Sorrowful Mysteries

There’s something so inexorable about living.
One thing happens, and then the next,
chain reaction following chain reaction,
and one domino topples, so the whole damn line
just cascades, one thing after another,
until it’s all a pile of rubble on the floor.

You hear the rumble of thunder,
lightning strikes the tower,
and before you can think what to do,
it’s all just tumbling down around you,
crumbling to dust and ashes.
Sometimes it just feels as if all life does
is happen TO you, you know?

And yet, sometimes right there in the pile of debris,
among the wreck and the ruins,
in the quiet moment when the dust
is settling through shafts of light
falling all around you,
or sometimes it happens in the dew-bright garden
when every possibility seems to be in bud,
or in the roar of traffic when you are on your way
from hither to yon, just trying to keep up:
sometimes you can hear the Angel’s voice, asking

“Will you carry the light?
Will you carry and share
the mystery of seed and egg and birthing star?
Will you be the hands and feet of something
beyond your current kenning?
Will you use your heart, your strength, your cunning,
help to make the new thing within you,
in the service of Love?”

I keep forgetting that I get to choose,
that even between the crazy race and the cascade,
even in the dawn garden, even in the rubble,
I can choose when and how I participate,
how I collaborate with life to co-create
a destiny beyond my imagining.
No longer is it simply that I am made for this moment,
but I make myself for this moment,
and for the next, and for the next.

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” —Mary Oliver

“Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.” —Barry Lopez

“With every action, comment, conversation, we have the choice to invite Heaven or Hell to Earth.” —Rob Bell

“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” ―Albert Einstein

“Love will find you, wherever you are. It will seek you out in the most hidden places of your heart. It will search the crowded cities and walk the empty hours after midnight. It will overcome any obstacle placed before it, even those you create for yourself, to find you and to bring you its gift. No matter how far from love you feel you have drifted, it will never give up on you. Love is the Spirit, watchful and persistent, enduring and forgiving, the steady presence of a reassurance that will keep you safe whatever chance may bring you. If you are a believer, then believe this: love will always find you.” —Steven Charleston

“I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I’ve been knocking from the inside.” ―Rumi

“How monotonous our speaking becomes when we speak only to ourselves! And how insulting to the other beings – to foraging black bears and twisted old cypresses – that no longer sense us talking to them, but only about them, as though they were not present in our world.

Small wonder that rivers and forests no longer compel our focus or our fierce devotion. For we talk about such entities only behind their backs, as though they were not participant in our lives.
Yet if we no longer call out to the moon slipping between the clouds, or whisper to the spider setting the silken struts of her web, well, then the numerous powers of this world will no longer address us – and if they still try, we will not likely hear them.”
―David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

In the Sufi way of seeing it, longing is a divine inclination, drawing us towards the Beloved. Just as lover and beloved long to be in each other’s arms, so too is it between us and the life which is meant for us. Like a plant growing towards the sun, longing is nature inclining us towards the light we need in order to be fruitful. But also, as Rumi writes, “that which you seek is seeking you.” So longing is not only the quality of seeking reunion, but the sound of something in search of us: the calling homeward.” —Toko-pa Turner

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky.” —Kahlil Gibran

“I believe dignity emerges in the way you finally carry your own story. Through your painstaking reframes to write yourself as the heroine of your own life, your losses cease to consume you. They are not forgotten or made invisible, but rather aggrandised in your telling, eventually passed down through the line of mothers and daughters as the mythical ‘obstacles to flight’ that they were. But dignity also lives in one’s willingness to step wholly into a new life of love, even as its first strands are being woven together to create a shape that will warm you.” ―Toko-pa Turner

Sunday Morning Prayer

hope
like a seed
buried deep within the earth; hidden
covered by layers, disappointment, struggle, pain;
buried yet stretching,
growing and becoming.
hope
like a seed
becoming new life.

—Katherine Hawker

First Lesson of Poeming

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today is the last day of November’s Poem-a-Day. As always at this point, I am ready to be free of the daily discipline of poeming for a little while. And today was long, filled with beauty and good family time celebrating the life of my Aunt Gloria, and many hours on the road. So I’m happy to finish the poem process today.

Tomorrow, however, I will begin a new series, suggested by the Advent materials we received at church last week. Every day for the next 25, we have been given a word (one each day) to meditate on and to illustrate with a photograph. So I might post some or all of those here.

Here is today’s poem:
First Lesson of Poeming
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Grasp the idea, I mean the corncob,
firmly, but not so firmly
that you harm the tender kernels inside,
and pull it firmly, but ever so gently,
downward and away from the stalk.

Holding it in your palm
like the golden treasure it is,
begin to pull away the layers of husk.
Some people tear the husk down
in two or three neat strokes,
but you should take your time,
noticing the way
the tough and weathered outer husk
gives way to tender green beneath,
the way the silk shifts with each layer you remove,
the grass-sweet corn smell released,
and finally, the rows of sweet kernels,
golden and waiting.

Gratitude List:
1. Cousins and aunts and uncles
2. Aunt Gloria’s wise words: “Go with the flow.”
3. Cousin Karen’s wise words: “Stay curious.”
4. Traveling with my parents to the Shenandoah Valley, on a golden day.
5. Cherry Delight
May we walk in Beauty!

“I don’t always feel like I belong, or like I understand the unwritten rules of certain groups, even though I think I am a pretty good observer of human nature. So when I am in a group whose rules accept everyone’s awkwardness and oddness unconditionally, which loves each one not in spite of our oddities, but because of them, then I feel safe. Then I feel belonging. I am especially grateful to those of you who know how to extend unconditional welcome in ways that make everyone believe they belong.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider

“To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine voice. Our primary need for the various life forms of the planet is a psychic, rather than a physical, need.” —Thomas Berry

“All through your life, the most precious experiences seemed to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience. This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret.” —John O’Donohue

“The next time you go out in the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people—in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones—just wish for them all to be happy and well. Without knowing anything about them, they can become very real, by regarding each of them personally and rejoicing in the comforts and pleasures that come their way. Each of us has this soft spot: a capacity for love and tenderness. But if we don’t encourage it, we can get pretty stubborn about remaining sour.” —Pema Chodrun, From her book Becoming Bodhisattvas

“Quiet the mind enough
so it is the heart
that gives the prayer.”
—Ingrid Goff-Maidoff

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” —Martin Luther King Jr.

“People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.” —Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“Creative acts of social justice constitute life’s highest performance art.” —Rebecca Alban Hoffberger

“If you will, you can become all flame.” —Abba Joseph

“Become all shadow.
Become all light.”
—Beth Weaver-Kreider

“You cannot use someone else’s fire; you can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe you have it.” —Audre Lorde

“The first duty of love is to listen.”
—Paul Tillich

“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith. The opposite of faith is certainty.”
—Paul Tillich

“When you go to your place of prayer, don’t try to think too much or manufacture feelings or sensations. Don’t worry about what words you should say or what posture you should take. It’s not about you or what you do. Simply allow Love to look at you—and trust what God sees! God just keeps looking at you and loving you center to center. ” —Richard Rohr

“People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.” —Charles Fort

“O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t.” —Shakespeare, The Tempest

Grounding

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s poem is a grounding liturgy. Reading David Steindl-Rast’s little poem “May You Grow Still” the other day, I felt myself returning to my morning’s grounding, growing still, finding center.  I’ve begun using those beginning words in my own daily grounding.

Grounding
by Beth Weaver-Kreider
(after David Steindl-Rast)

Draw in a long slow breath.
Pause.
Slowly release your breath.

May you grow still enough
to feel the Earth beneath you
call forth your roots to burrow deep.

Draw in another breath and pause.
Release your breath and listen:

May you grow still enough
to feel your roots push through soil
through mycelium
past bones and underwater rivers.

Draw in another breath and pause.
Release your breath and listen:

May you grow stiller yet and feel
the pulsing starfire
at the center of the Earth.

Draw in another breath and pause.
Release your breath and listen:

May your stillness bring home to her heart
where you feel your roots absorb
her fierce and tender fire.

Breathe in and listen.

May you feel that fire rising into your roots,
drawing courage into the seat of your being,
drawing love into the center of your being,
drawing truth into the crown of your being.

Breathing in and out.

Feel the energy of Earth’s fire fill you to your branches
and burst from the crown of your head,
sparkling above you and around you
like a thousand thousand stars.
Feel the life force pulsing through you.

Breathe, and breathe, and breathe.

“Healing comes in waves and maybe today the wave hits the rocks. And that’s ok, that’s ok, darling. You are still healing, you are still healing.” —Ijeoma Umebinyuo
*****
“I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, A Left-Handed Commencement Address (Mills College, 1983)
*****
“No matter where we are, the ground between us will always be sacred ground.“ —Fr. Henri Nouwen
*****
“The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.” —Gretel Ehrlich
*****
“‪The fact that these words and the jumble of lines that create their letters has no real, inherent meaning outside of a human context, yet they hum with life, is a wonderful reminder that what we imagine can easily become real and powerful simply because we decide it should be so.‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist
*****
“Writing at the library. Surrounded by thousands of books, windows into other minds. Some of these writers are living. Some are not. Neatly ordered rectangles of concentrated human life and intellect. A book is certainly a kind of ghost and libraries are pleasantly haunted places.” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist
*****
“The beauty of the world…has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” —Virginia Woolf
*****
I know nothing, except what everyone knows —
If there when Grace dances, I should dance.
—W.H. Auden
*****
“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic—the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.”
—Charles de Lint
*****
“The innocence of our childhood lives on, in each one of us, no matter how old or battered we may be. Still that original goodness, that simple goodness, remains within us. Our best nature never grows old. What the Spirit first intended us to be is still there, peeping out from wrinkled eyes, caught in a quick glance in the mirror: the laughing, shining, curious child who lives again. And again and again. For we are made of the intention of heaven, a part of the perfect life at the center of all creation. Watch for your inner self, the ageless soul, and see it smiling back at you, like a little child caught beside the cookie jar.” —Steven Charleston

Love, Laughter, and Mourning

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Even as I celebrate a deeply enriching and inspiring day of conversation and play and good food with my family, I want to also acknowledge that today is a Day of Mourning for Native Nations. The link in the previous sentence will take you to a MCUSA page with brief descriptions of some of the November massacres by US forces against Native communities that took place in the late 1800s, along with some resources for ways to educate ourselves and our communities, and to respond in helpful ways.

I tried coaxing a collaborative poem out of some of my family members gathered around a puzzle this afternoon, but we had trouble keeping focused enough to finish a thought, so my nibling Keri suggested we do an acrostic. The Old Woman of Winter had made an appearance in the first attempt, so I wrote CRONE OF WINTER down the side of the page and asked them to give me words or phrases beginning with the letters. We ended up sticking to words, and this is what happened, and I like it.

Gratitude List:
1. The thoughtful and wise and tender and hilarious conversations around the table and the puzzle and the living room today. It appears that perhaps the members of the family with the strongest executive functioning skills are under the age of 22.
2. Pie. So much pie.
3. The Turkey Trot! I walked a lot more of this one, but came within a minute of my PR last spring at the Race Against Racism.
4. Bald Eagle flying over Codorus Creek
5. The healing properties of laughter
May we walk in Beauty!

“There are no shortcuts to wholeness. The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’” —Parker Palmer

Solace is your job now.”
—Jan Richardson

“I have noticed when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling ~ their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. To sit alone without electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights, then I start thinking about projects, demands, deadlines, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to be done, not a background to thought.” —Jeanette Winterson

Joy Harjo:
“When I woke up from a forty-year sleep, it was by a song. I could hear the drums in the village. I felt the sweat of ancestors in each palm. The singers were singing the world into place, even as it continued to fall apart. They were making songs to turn hatred into love.”

“The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.”
―Meridel Le Sueur

“I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.”
―Madeleine L’Engle

“Alas, the webs are torn down, the spinners stomped out. But the forest smiles. Deep in her nooks and crevices she feels the spinners and the harmony of their web. We will dream our way to them …

…Carefully, we feel our way through the folds of darkness. Since our right and left eyes are virtually useless, other senses become our eyes. The roll of a pebble, the breath of dew-cooled pines, a startled flutter in a nearby bush magnify the vast silence of the forest. Wind and stream are the murmering current of time, taking us back to where poetry is sung and danced and lived. … In the distance a fire flickers – not running wild, but contained, like a candle. The spinners.” —Marylou Awiakta, Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom

“Do it right, because you only got one time to walk this earth. Make it good, make it a good thing.” —Grandmother Agnes “Taowhywee” (Morning Star) Baker Pilgrim (1924-2019)

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” —Robert Frost

“I believe war is a weapon of persons with personal power, that is to say, the power to reason, the power to persuade, from a position of morality and integrity ; and that to go to war with an enemy who is weaker than you is to admit you possess no resources within yourself to bring to bear on your fated.” —Alice Walker

“The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our selves.” —Cassius, from ‘Julius Caesar’ by William Shakespeare

“Let your love be like the misty rain, coming softly, but flooding the River.” —Proverb

“Perhaps too much sanity may be madness.” —from ‘Don Quixote’ by Cervantes

Heart’s Desire

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

I’ve had a very productive day doing things other than poetry writing! So my poem today is my heart’s desire prayer for the new novena that begins tomorrow with Way of the Rose.

Gratitude List:

  1. Bringing the kid home from college for the weekend!
  2. How things sometimes fall together instead of apart. I lost the cap to my air stem when I went to top off my leaky tire, so I drove to our garage to but a new one, and they offered to just go ahead and fix the leak, too! Now I don’t have to fuss with an appointment.
  3. Fall leaves
  4. Peppermint brownies. Haven’t eaten then yet. The mix is there waiting in the cupboard for us to make this evening!
  5. A good car book to listen to on a long trip. Weyward by Emilia Hart is the current one.

May we walk in beauty!

“Never laugh at live dragons.” —J.R.R. Tolkien
*****
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” —Aristotle
*****
“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.” —Mark Twain
*****
“The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of shape and the burden of exposure. Each thing creeps back into its own nature within the shelter of the dark. Darkness is the ancient womb. Nighttime is womb- time. Our souls come out to play. The darkness absolves everything; the struggle for identity and impression falls away. We rest in the night.” ―John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
*****
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” —Aristotle
*****
“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.” —Anais Nin
*****
“Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best thing to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we’re doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change.” —Michelle Obama
*****
“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” —Amelia Earhart
*****
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” —Lucille Ball
*****
“Learn how to take criticism seriously but not personally.” —Hillary Clinton
*****
“Like a great starving beast, my body is quivering, fixed on the scent of light.” —Hafiz
*****
“Identity is a story carried in the body.” —Sophia Samatar
*****
“Once every people in the world believed that trees were divine … and that deer, and ravens and foxes, and wolves and bears, and clouds and pools, almost all things under the sun and moon, and the sun and moon, were not less divine …”
—W.B. Yeats
****
“The heart is your student, for love is the only way we learn.”
—Rumi
*****
Poet Joy Harjo, from 2012:
“Visited with my cousin George Coser, Jr yesterday at the kitchen table. He’s a gift. Always something profound among the stories. The sacred lies at the root of the mundane. And every word is a power element. Each word or sound, whether thought, written or spoken grows our path, the path of our generation, the children, grandchildren, the Earth. . . . We become the ancestors. A sense of play gives a lightness of being. So get out there and play—and be kind while you’re at it. To yourself, too.”
*****
Help me to journey beyond the familiar
and into the unknown.
Give me the faith to leave old ways
and break fresh ground with You.

Christ of the mysteries, I trust You
to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know
that my times, even now, are in Your hand.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You.
—The Prayer of St. Brendan (attributed to Brendan)
*****
The Wild Geese
by Wendell Berry

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer’s end. In time’s maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed’s marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

Now Is the Time

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’ve been feeling like it’s been a good month, poetry-wise, this time around. I am often more consistently disappointed and uninspired by the output of a poem-a-day. I do this not because I think I will end up with thirty excellent poems, but in the hopes that I’ll get one or two that satisfy me. Ray Bradbury suggests that you write a short story every week for a year, because it’s impossible to write 52 bad short stories in a row, and I think it’s impossible to write thirty bad poems in a row. This month has given me more than one that I like so far. Today’s is lacking in energy, but I might revisit the theme again and rewrite it.

Now Is the Time
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Now is the time for web-building,
nest-making, mycelial connection.

Now is the time for shoring up
our courage, for remembering
who we are, and why we’re here.

Now is the time for listening,
for receiving our names,
for calling in the ancestors
for dreaming ourselves into the dream.

Now the time we were made for,
the time to enter all the tales
we learned in every book we’ve read,
where brave children enter the wood,
and uncertain heroes take up the quest.

Good advice from my friend Barb: “Find and wear your orange hat honey. There are 750,000 deer hunters in the yard today.”

“You have done infinitely more good than you can imagine. You may not be a worker of miracles, but you are a worker of compassion. Your kindness is reflexive. You instinctively want to help others in need. Like a first responder: you have the stamina it takes to help someone and it shows up throughout the story of your life. You have done more good than you know.” —Steven Charleston

This year I do not want
The dark to leave me.
I need its wrap
Of silent stillness,
Its cloak
Of long lasting embrace.
Too much light
Has pulled me away
from the chamber
of gestation.
Let the dawns
Come late,
Let the sunsets
Arrive early,
Let the evenings
Extend themselves
While I lean into
The abyss of my being.
Let me lie in the cave
Of my soul,
For too much light
Blinds me,
Steals the source
Of revelation.
Let me seek solace
In the empty places
Of winter’s passage,
Those vast dark nights
That never fail to shelter me.
-Joyce Rupp

“We have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. We have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. it is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, I think, to be an organ and a blade. But, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. We make horrible mistakes. It’s how we learn. We breathe love. It’s how we learn. And it is inevitable.”
—Nayyira Waheed

“Only those who attempt the absurd
will achieve the impossible.”
—M. C. Escher

Blessing for the Visitor
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

May you who wander, who sojourn, who travel,
may you who make your way to our door
find rest for your tired feet and weary heart,
food to fill your bellies and to nourish your minds,
and company to bring you cheer and inspiration.
May you find comfort for your sorrows,
belonging to ease your loneliness,
and laughter to bring you alive.

And when your feet find themselves again upon the road,
may they remember the way back to our door.

“A seed sown in the soil makes us one with the Earth. It makes us realize that we are the Earth. That this body of ours is the panchabhuta—the five elements that make the universe and make our bodies. The simple act of sowing a seed, saving a seed, planting a seed, harvesting a crop for a seed is bringing back this memory-this timeless memory of our oneness with the Earth and the creative universe. There’s nothing that gives me deeper joy than the work of protecting the diversity and the freedom of the seed.” —Vandana Shiva

“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” —George McGovern

Found Poem: Nothing but the Snow

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I decided to do a strip poem today. Sometimes these feel incredibly inspired, but mostly they end up feeling sort of whimsical or silly, like today’s.

Gratitude List:
1. Water (this is a backward gratitude at the moment because the pump is on the fritz, but there’s nothing like being temporarily unable to use the faucet that makes you appreciate water)
2. Woodpeckers! Downy, hairy, red-bellied, pileated. . .
3. Peppermint
4. Simple suppers: apples and cheese and ciabatta and roasted broccoli
5. Sailing ships–My middle division class is reading Peter and the Starcatchers, and so we’re researching what sailing shops looked like so we can understand the nautical vocabulary, and I am getting a little obsessed with old sailing ships
May we walk in Beauty!

“What if our religion was each other? If our practice was our life? What if the temple was the Earth? If forests were our church? If holy water – the rivers, lakes, and oceans? What if meditation was our relationships? If the Teacher was life? If wisdom was knowledge? If love was the center of our being.” ―Ganga White

“Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” —Rousseau

“It is wonderful when you don’t have the fear, and a lot of the time I don’t. . . . I focus on what needs to be done instead.” —Wangari Maathai

“I will take my chances with you, with all of you, from any country or any condition, who believe a brighter day for humanity is possible, who open your hearts and minds to a broader vision of diversity, who serve the cause of kindness and speak the language of healing. I will make my lodge with you. I will be honored to call you my relatives. I will face tomorrow by your side, whatever that day may bring, and together we will make our witness, until the wind chases the sun from the sky and the stars begin to sing.” —Steven Charleston

“Two birds fly past. They are needed somewhere.”
— Robert Bly

“Let my anger be the celebration we were never / supposed to have.” —Jacqui Germain

I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness. It’s right in front of me, if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.
—Brené Brown

“The eyes of the Future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.” —Terry Tempest Williams

“You’ve seen my descent.
Now watch my rising.”
—Rumi

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.”—Thomas Merton

“For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” —Mary Oliver

“Attention is what matters. What we are living through is a time of grotesque inattention. The very act of taking heed, of paying attention, is a political act.” —Kathleen Jamie

Slippery

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’ve been sick all week. I took off a day of school–probably should have taken three. And I haven’t been exercising to get ready for this 5K Turkey Trot on Thursday morning. So the choice right now was to spend time really working out a good poem for today or hitting the treadmill, and I am going to have to choose the treadmill. So I took the first metaphor that tracked me down, ran with it, and threw it onto the page. Part of the contract I have with myself for these months of writing a poem a day is that any day’s poem can be garbage. I’m not sure where this poem fits, but it’s definitely a toss-off.

by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Remember the slippery fish of a child,
unwilling participant in adult world,
who could melt out of your arms,
slip onto the floor and be off
and running for the hills
before you could catch your breath?

Some days my brain is that child,
anchored as it is to my body,
it somehow slithers through my grasp
even as I am sitting it down
to do its important work,
and it’s off and dancing in the mist
before I even know it’s gone.

“Walk with the Spirit. Wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you are with. Walk in the light of what we have learned from our ancestors. Each person is worthy of respect. A better world is possible for us all. Our love will finally overcome our fear. Let that wisdom guide your steps. Let that message be made visible in who you are. The path to peace is laid before your feet. Walk with the Spirit.” —Steven Charleston

“We are in a time of deep transformation. Deep change. We did not ask for this to be the case. We did not even fully anticipate it. But it is our reality. It is our challenge. The Spirit has confidence in us to move history in the direction of hope. We are called to create a future. And we are equal to the task — with the help of heaven and the kinship of all living things.” —Steven Charleston

“You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them.
That is how prayer works.” —Pope Francis

“Allow dark times to season you.” —Hafiz

“I don’t have to respond whenever provoked.
No one does.
Steward your energy well.
We have justice work to do.
And strategy to outline.
And self-care to prioritize.
And love to live.
It’s okay to let provocateurs leave empty-handed.”
—Bernice King

“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor—such is my idea of happiness.” —Leo Tolstoy

“I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness. It’s right in front of me, if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.” —Brené Brown

“Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!” —Mary Oliver

“I don’t have to figure it all out. I don’t have to be perfect for every moment. I just need to be Present. I just need to show up.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider (My past self is preaching to my present self.)

“The ego forgets that it’s supposed to be the little traveler with its bindle bag over its shoulder, following behind [not ahead] the radiant Soul who walks as more wise, more tender, more loving, more peaceful trailblazer throughout our lives.
.
Ego aspires sometimes to wear the garments of the Soul, which are way too big, making the ego trip over the miles of radiant robes it tries to wrap itself in, instead of following the light those robes give off. And tending to the Soul’s needs, the Soul’s directions.
Yet with Soul in the lead, and ego following the lead of the Soul, then we can fulfill the vision of the Holy People…” —Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world are seeking one another.” —Teilhard de Chardin

“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” ―Oscar Levant

“Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.” —Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), [The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906]

“There are real world implications to ‘just having opinions’ and those implications almost always involve doing deep harm to marginalized communities.” —Kaitlin Shetler

Re-Member

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Re-Member
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

I remember me
when in the company
of women who sigh
when they hug,
who throw their heads back
and laugh, who pause
in the middle of a story
to look you in the eye
and shake their heads
at the ridiculousness
of it all, at the crazy way
it all falls apart,
and all comes together.

Gratitude List:
1. Making art with others
2. Telling stories with the help of tarot cards
3. Yogurt-covered pretzels
4. Woodpeckers: this morning, downy, hairy, and red-bellied were all at the feeder at the same time
5. Watching the herd of deer in their dark winter coats crossing through the bosque this morning–I’m pretty sure two young ones are the twins I saw throughout the summer
May we walk in Beauty!

“The winds will blow their own freshness into you,
and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you
like the leaves of Autumn.”
—John Muir

“Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls. ” —Ursula Le Guin

“The mother tongue is language not as mere communication but as relation, relationship. It connects. It goes two ways, many ways, an exchange, a network. Its power is not in dividing but in binding, not in distancing but in uniting.

It is written, but not by scribes and secretaries for posterity: it flies from the mouth on the breath that is our life and is gone, like the outbreath, utterly gone and yet returning, repeated, the breath the same again always, everywhere, and we all know it by heart.” —Ursula K. Le Guin

“Who would I be if I didn’t live in a world that hated women?” —Jessica Valenti

“The heart is right to cry
even when the smallest drop of light, of love, is taken away
Perhaps you may kick, moan, scream—in a dignified silence,
but you are right to do so in any fashion…until God returns to you.”
―Hafiz (Ladinsky)

“All water is holy water.”
―Rajiv Joseph

“The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all.”
―Arundhati Roy

“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness.
Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.”
―Scott Adams

“You know what breaks me, when someone is visibly excited about a feeling or an idea or a hope or a risk taken, and they tell you about it but preface it with: “Sorry, this is dumb but—.” Don’t do that. I don’t know who came here before me, or who conditioned you to think you had to apologize or feel obtuse. But not here. Dream so big it’s silly. Laugh so hard it’s obnoxious. Love so much it’s impossible. And don’t you ever feel unintelligent. And don’t you ever apologize. And don’t you ever shrink so you can squeeze yourself into small places and small minds. Grow. It’s a big world. You fit. I promise.”
―Owen Lindley

“The bond of our common humanity is stronger than our fears and prejudices.” ―Jimmy Carter

“The reality is we have more in common with the people we’re bombing than the people we’re bombing them for.” ―Russell Brand

“Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe. ”
―Arundhati Roy, Public Power in the Age of Empire