reach out

Deliberate Exile

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
The large fat pod is Kentucky Coffee Tree. The round seeds came from that. The long twisty one came from a Catalpa, and the short one is a Black Locust pod.

I’m not good at unscheduled time. I fritter. I diddle. I poke. I dawdle. While these are great life skills when it comes to centering down and relaxing, they can lead to ennui and a sense of time wasted. I will make sure that I preserve some serious dawdle time in the coming weeks, but I do need a little structure for myself.

1. The school requirements will help. During school hours, I need to be checking my emails and learning management system every hour or so (probably more frequently), so this will keep me focused. During that time, I am going to try to get as much of my backlog of grading completed as I can during these early days.
2. I want to work on some creative project every day. I have a prayer shawl I am knitting. I will make some crocheted hearts. I have some sewing to do. I want to bake bread. I will start to paint again.
3. I will write regularly.
4. I am going to walk more every day, though I might take a bit of a break today to give my aching back a rest. More yoga, too.
5. I commit to not scarfing junk food. My response to anxiety (to basically anything, actually) is to eat more. I want to nourish my body, with healthy food.
6. I want to keep limits to social media time. I actually think I (and maybe you) need social media connections more than ever right now and I want to be deliberate about these connections, just not lazily scrolling.
7. I am going to make a point of reaching out more, making email connections I’ve let lapse, make little videos for my mother-in-law, who is in a personal care building that has people confined to their rooms.
8. Jon is still going to work for the foreseeable future, though that could change. I think he’s going to try to stop and get supplies to contribute to a brown bag lunch program that a Lancaster City church is setting up for children who are home from school. I’m trying to think about ways that we can help even while we’re in Exile for the Good of the Realm.

During the plague quarantines, Shakespeare wrote King Lear, and when Cambridge University closed because of the plague, Newton had his encounter with the apple tree. He called the quarantine hiatus his “year of wonders.” Shall we create and discover wonders of our own? What are your plans?

Gratitude List:
1. Nettle is coming up! I tasted some of the new baby leaves yesterday while Josiah and I were throwing a ball in the yard.
2. The bees are not in exile. They keep doing their work.
3. Red-tailed hawks flying above the holler.
4. In the past two days, I have found several beanpods from the Kentucky Coffee Tree up the hill. I love these beans. They’re satisfying to hold. I think I am going to plant a couple of them.
5. I recognize my fear and anxiety, and yours, too. I recognize that many people are in dire straits at the moment, and this is painful. We are also making the most of this time-out-of-time here in the holler. May you, too, find some rest and some time for reflection.

May we walk in Beauty!

Advent 10: Where Is Your Fire?

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Here’s an image this morning of a tiny origami dragon, a reminder that we carry our fire within us as well as without. On that first day walking into this labyrinth, we checked our batteries, checked our fuel for the journey inward, for the lamps and lights that we carry. I have been feeling your fire, your warmth. I’ve been seeing the glimmer and twinkle of your light as we walk together down these dark passages.

Outwardly, my fire can seem pretty weak in December. I sleep a lot. I forget things. I find myself getting dreamy and vague. But inside, I am curling around my inner fire, like a bear or a rabbit or a chipmunk in winter, who curls itself around its heart core to keep the warmth inside. If you feel like your fire is disappearing, it might just be that you need to curl up around it, focus inward on the way it shines and warms, and rest.

Speaking of dreaming, I hd a most amazing dream last night, about driving through a little village with massive trees on either side of the road. The leaves were yellowed, and the branches were gnarled and curling. from the ends of the branches hung thousands of red and yellow fruits. Eventually we were walking beneath the trees, which hung down over the village like archways. People would just reach up and grb a fruit when they needed it.

What you need is there for you, if you just reach out your hand.

Envisioning:

(At the beginning of Advent, my pastor asked us to hold the swords-into-ploughshares vision in our heads, to look for stories of people choosing that vision. For the next little while, I am going to look for such stories as my daily morning meditation.)

I think today of the youth activists combatting the climate crisis, how they speak up, how they stay on task, how they avoid attacking those who attack them, but relentlessly (there’s that word again) speak the truth of their message over and over again. They don’t let themselves get caught in the culture war that their elders keep trying to pull them into. They simply tell the story, again and again and again. They hold the truth of their vision without taking up the sword.