sleep

Camels on the Brain

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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My brain is all a-fuzz this morning.  It wants to keep attaching itself to that image from my dream last night, the one that kept me sleeping through the four o’clock hour (finally), of a camel lying in the bed of a truck, wearing sunglasses.  But I don’t have that manic inner edge on this sleepy morning that would enable me to make such a surreal poem.  Why don’t you try that one?  (Edit: Okay, so I did manage a little of that poem down below.)

Tomorrow is National Poem in Your Pocket Day, though your local town may have chosen a different day, so look it up.  Wrightsville is doing it on April 29.  But if you’re at my school, you need to have your poem ready to read to me tomorrow.  I will bring the chocolate.

I have five minutes for this poem:

The ghost of a dream
will inhabit the foggy
pathways of my brain
for ages.
I will spend today
driving to Kabul
behind a camel
or lurking in the hallways
of a grand hotel,
searching for lost memories.

Gratitude List:
1. Sleeping through four o’clock.  This is a big deal, and I am grateful, no matter how strange the dreams that accompanied that sleep.
2. Anticipating oriole.  Waiting for the orange flash and the whistle in the treetops.  Listen, listen and watch.
3. Inspiration.  Okay, it’s inspiration about how to introduce adjective clauses to the freshmen, but when that’s the soup you swim in, it’s pretty exciting to get a flash of inspiration.
4. Student poetry.  Yesterday the Creative Writers read their poetry out loud in class.  Actually, only a handful were brave enough to do it, but the ones that came out were wonderful, and at one point after one student had read her poem, I saw another student start to scribble furiously on his notebook.  Moments later, he raised his hand to read–he had just written a poem inspired by her poem.  And hers had been inspired by Robert Frost, so we left our own trails in those yellow woods.
5. Compassion.  How heart reaches to heart.  How a moment can suddenly turn to caring, to holding another.  I want to be more and more mindful of how a word or a gesture or a glance can turn a moment among people to an inner watchfulness, a heightened awareness of each others’ tender souls.

May we walk in Beauty!

Sleepy Saturday

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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Good morning, Sunshine!

Gratitude List:
1. Purple and Gold.  ‘Tis the season of gold and purple: aconite and myrtle, daffodil and crocus, forsythia and windflower.
2. Sleeping in.
3. Bluebirds.  Just beneath the high and insistent shrill of the Dawn Chorus, the bluebirds and mumbling and muttering.  They always seem to be saying, “It’s okay, Little One.  Everything is going to be okay.”
4. That baby green bursting out everywhere.
5. Curiosity.  Particularly the curiosity of children.

May we walk in Beauty!  So much Love!

Green Willow and Golden Fish

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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Infant leaves and developing catkin on the little willow tree.

Gratitude List:
1. Willow trees. The bark of the tiny new willow by the mint patch went a vibrant yellow green a couple weeks ago, and now, all of a sudden, the leaf buds have burst open, and tiny leaves and catkins have appeared.  I love willow trees, and this gangly youngster has begun to stand straighter and more confidently since last year’s wobbly beginning.
2. A great golden fish.  We went walking and exploring by the pond yesterday after school, and had our first spring sighting of Golda, Lady of the Fish.  I am always so relieved in spring to see her, so grateful that she has survived another winter.  Of course, I know she is adapted to live and thrive through the cold, and she will likely outlive me (some koi live over 200 years), but I always worry just the littlest bit.
3. Senior Presentations.  My seniors in my advisory group are nervous about their presentations tonight and Monday.  I gave them a positive and hopeful pep talk yesterday–I hope they couldn’t see how nervous I am, too.  I want these moments to become powerful and rich memories for them.  I want to bless them as they step forward into the next phase of their lives.  I am so proud of them.  I know that they struggle to understand why we make them do this process of presenting their lives and learning to the community, but I love it, offering them this moment to reflect on what has brought them to this moment in their lives.  Fly well, Bright Ones!
4. Not being sick.  I felt so terrible last night, I went to bed at 9:30, hoping to stave off whatever cold or ick-thingie was trying to make a home in me.  It seems (knock on wood) to have worked.
5. Elderberry syrup.  I am following up that good sleep with some of Tabea’s good elderberry syrup.

May we walk in Beauty!

I Found My Way

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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Yes, a selfie, a bleary and shaggy morning in my little monk’s cell at the National Conference Center.

I’m at the National Conference Center in Leesburg, VA for the biennial Mennonite Educator’s Conference this weekend.  I am giddier about this than I should be, taking it as a little vacation for the routine.  I do miss my family, but I also treasure times when I only have to think about getting myownself from place to place.  And that actually takes a certain amount of surreal effort in this building.  It was designed to be confusing and unsettling in order to force people to talk to each other.  It accomplishes all that.  I kind of like it.  Being in a building with a distinct agenda gives it a certain personality, like it’s an entity in the work of the weekend.

Gratitude List:
1. I finally managed to get the names of all 196 countries of the world in the Countries Quiz I have been playing online
2. I found my room all by myself
3. I slept until the alarm this morning
4. Spending two days among people where the main goal is to talk about how we can be most effective at caring for the young people in our classrooms
5. Moments of quiet

May we walk in Beauty!

Don’t Be Afraid

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 3 Comments

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
― Frederick Buechner

Running

Gratitude List:
1. A clean house.  Top to bottom.
2. Tabula rasa.  Starting fresh.
3. Sleeping until 6:30.  I had forgotten that my body could do that.
4. The owl out there, booming in the oak grove. (And in the time it has taken me to ponder and write this morning, dawn has arrived, the owl has settled into silence, and the wren has begun the first notes of the dawn chorus.)
5. The way light is emerging through the mist this morning.

May we walk in Beauty!

Elusive Creature

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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When you wander in the wilderness of night,
seeking that elusive creature, sleep,
may you find the quiet lair
of that sweet beast–
the mouth of the cave
hidden among the rocks and brambles
on the hillside by the murmuring stream,
where you can lie down on ferns and mosses
in the shadowy warmth,
and sigh
and dream.

Gratitude List:
1. Oil pastels
2. Butterfly clips
3. Folders for organizing
4. Many-colored pens
5. Fresh paper and sharp pencils

May we walk in Beauty.

Threads

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

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A spider’s web across the path spans the space from here to there:
the bridge across the River, the yarn I knot with my needles,
the trail of crumbs leading out of the woods, the pathway between us.

(Trying my hand at a Korean Sijo this morning.  http://www.ahapoetry.com/sijo.htm)

Gratitude List:
1. Thursday’s chapel speaker: mindful meditation.  Powerful.
2. Soba noodles and fall veggies stirred up in the cast iron wok.  That man is a mighty fine cook.
3. Bridges.  Webs.   Labyrinth pathways.  Strands of yarn being knitted or knotted or crocheted or woven. Narrative threads.
4. Quiet spaces.
5.  Sleep and coffee.

May we walk in Beauty!

Waiting for the Dreams

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Each year, during the long nights between Winter Solstice and Epiphany, I carefully watch the dreams and pictures that appear to me, gleaning ideas and images that might be helpful to me in the coming year.  This year I am impatient.  I have been cataloging my list for the past two weeks and I want to solidify it and crystallize it.  But it’s also delightful to anticipate what these last few nights might show, so I will wait, and perhaps nudge some of my list into a poem:

While I wait for the dreams to be complete
while I sit at the feet of winter
listening

waiting for the little bell to ring
for the sound of rushing wings
for the things born in darkness
to take form
to rise up–

while a vulture flies across my window
red root and plantain nourish and heal me
a lynx crouches by a granite outcrop in the meadow
the storyteller raises her voice in a chant of longing
and a silent girl turns the corner ahead of me

I sit down to work
and sleep overtakes me:
One more vision for the road
One more message for the journey

Because

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

“I lack the peace of simple things,” says Wendell Berry
and I concur, almost, because
of the frenzy of the daily commute, because
of the the houseful of stuff we don’t need,
that we trip over in the darkness, because
of the way I am so lost in doing all that must be done.

But Wendell, you know better than most how it’s all around us,
how you can settle your soul into the simple peace, because
of those flaming leaves falling all over my head, because
of the giggle of a five-year-old, because
of sleep, deep restful sleep, because
of the way the corn tastes yellow, but the beans taste green, because
of the way words weave and twist themselves
into something that means something akin to hope.

Gratitude List:
1.  Because of pumpkin pie and delicious Sunday Dinner with good folks
2.  Because of good class preparation time this evening
3.  Because of the color orange, orange in all its colors
4.  Because of Rainer Maria Rilke and living the questions, living into the answers, and because of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the world being crammed with heaven
5.  Because of that song: “In the bulb there is a flower”

Because we walk in Beauty.

Release the Past

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Yesterday’s poem.  I wrote it in response to a photo I saw on my Facebook feed of a person standing in the doorway between two trees at the edge of a wood.

Every step you take is a doorway to somewhere new,
a choice between what was and what will be.
Do not fear the darkness behind you
nor the mists that rise in your path.

Pause on the threshold a moment.
Take a deep and aching breath,and straighten your shoulders.

Release the past with gratitude
for all that it has taught you,
and step forward in strength and beauty.

 

Gratitude List:
1.  Waking up late and lounging in bed.  After that last six-week string of insomniac nights, to finally be able to sleep long again, and then to wake up in the morning and just curl up under the feather quilt listening to the quiet sounds of man and boy talking downstairs–that was a joy.  I feel like Bilbo at Rivendell, rejuvenating to the sound of elves.
2.  Always in autumn,that slant of light.  The way it slips over the ridge to the southeast and hits the trees at the edge of the bosque in the western deep of the hollow.  The way it glows on the last of the golden walnut leaves.
3.  Breakfast.
4.  Rachel Carson.
5.  Water.

May the waters all run free and clean and clear.