Tag: violence

She Would Have Been a Good Woman

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes, Musings, Poems

In her story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor brings a family face-to-face with a serial killer called the Misfit, who, along with his minions, kills the family, one by one. It’s a stark and horrifying story, not only of the cold-blooded murders, but of the character of the matriarch of the family, a grandmother who believes in her goodness, her self-satisfied sense of privilege. She is blind to her bias, and willfully committed to her ideas of caste and race and privilege. At the very end, just before the Misfit kills her, she shows the merest hint of self-understanding, the briefest light of awakening to the truth. Standing over her dead body the Misfit proclaims: “She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

Please understand that I am not advocating violence here in these violent times, but I kept hearing the Misfit in my head these past few days, beginning with watching Lindsey Graham speak with such passionate fervor in the dark hours between Wednesday and Thursday. Others, too, spoke with eloquence and zeal about how the terror of the preceding hours made them take a long look at how denying the fairly-cast electoral votes delegitimized the process and led to the type of unrest that caused the terror attack on their own building.

And yet, here we are, three days later, and they pull back, they equivocate. They condemn the acts of violence and the destruction, but they continue to press the false narratives that got us to this point in the first place. It now appears that the Vice President’s life was probably truly in danger, as many of us suspected, that among the hooligans and yahoos was a very organized group of would-be assassins intent on turning a protest into an insurrection (which they achieved) and an insurrection into an assassination and a bloody coup. And yet the Vice President remains silent. He dithers and equivocates as he has always done.

On Wednesday afternoon, Congress met the Misfit, and for a few brief hours, in the shock of terror, some of them woke up to the horror that lay beyond the web of lies they’ve been weaving. A glimmer of light shone through on Epiphany. But they seem to be settling back into silent complacency that only furthers the lies of the powerful who seek to loot and plunder our democracy as surely as the insurrectionists looted its halls and offices on Wednesday.

The landscape is littered with lies,
seeded with falsehoods like landmines,
like bombs hidden in the halls of justice.
The fabric of reality is stained,
torn and twisted, threads cut and tangled.

It’s nothing new, this rhetoric of insurrection.
For years now, they’ve been spreading it on,
lie by lie, suggestion by suggestion,
layer by seditious layer, whipping the masses
into a frenzy of rage and disenfranchisement.

Now is the time for clear-headed cleaning,
gathering threads of Truth where we find them,
patching and weaving, healing the fabric,
stitching and mending, finding our way
to the source of the lies and destruction.

Long before terror and chaos pillaged the building,
the lies were laid to pillage the truth, to bend
the will of the gullible and power-hungry masses
to do the silent bidding of the suited pirates
who have laid the groundwork of sedition.

Calling for calm and understanding only veils the carnage,
drawing another layer of lies to cover the wreck.
Now is the time for the stark strands of truth
to stand out and carry the narrative
back from the brink of destruction.

Gratitude:
Today I am grateful for truth, for narratives that center stories of people who have been cut from the narratives told by the powerful to skew the truth to their own agenda. I am grateful for the weavers and menders and spinners who pick up the torn and tangled threads and get to work to repair the tapestry of our story, holding the lie-mongers to account, and weaving in the threads of truth.

“A man is either free, or he is not. There cannot be an apprenticeship for freedom.” —Amiri Baraka

“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” ―bell hooks, killing rage: Ending Racism

“Consider whether great changes have not happened deep inside your being in times when you were sad. The only sadnesses that are unhealthy and dangerous are those we carry around in public in order to drown them out. Like illnesses that are treated superficially, they only recede for a while and then break out more severely. Untreated they gather strength inside us and become the rejected, lost, and unlived life that we may die of. If only we could see a little farther than our knowledge reaches and a little beyond the borders of our intuition, we might perhaps bear our sorrows more trustingly than we do our joys. For they are the moments when something new enters us, something unknown. Our feelings grow mute in shy embarrassment, they take a step back, a stillness arises, and the new thing, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it all and says nothing.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

“After silence,
that which comes nearest to
expressing the inexpressible,
is music.” —Aldous Huxley

“Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts.
Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts.
Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me…
Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
—Shel Silverstein

Wisdom and Insurrection

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes, Musings

After yesterday, it seems odd to come into this zone and write contemplatively about my dreams and images for the coming year. Sorting through the words and images, I return again and again to gnosis and hiddenness as my theme for the year, and the gnomon and its shadow as my image. I don’t think I can work more with that image at the moment. Part of the point of gnosis and the gnomon is to get at the truth, and so what I need to do today is to speak the truth as I see it.

Yesterday was traumatic. My thoughts are all a-jumble, so I’ll do it in bullet points:
* Yes, it was an insurrection and not a protest.
* It was incited, very directly by the country’s own president, which really makes it a coup.
* No actually, this is, unfortunately, very much who we are. It might not be who WE are, but we’ve had terroristic bands of White Supremacist thugs rising in our country since its beginning. So it’s who America is. And we’ve let them get away with their terrorism and murder and bigotry for too long. There were people inside that room who are as White Supremacist as any of the thugs waving Confederate battle flags in the hallways–they just do a better job of pretending to be socially acceptable.
* Make no mistake. This is about White Supremacy. It’s about wealth and power and White Supremacy. And they were creating their chaos at the bidding of the president.
* Had the rioters and insurrectionists not been almost entirely white people, you can be sure there would have been mass arrests and probably more than one person would have been killed. You can edit out that probably. It’s happened already–Black people have been killed for peacefully protesting the killing of Black people.
* There is absolutely no equivalence between the protests of this summer and the attempted coup of yesterday. Yes, some of those protesters did resort to violence and looting, but these were people protesting the murders of Black people and the fact that the murderers continue to get off without consequence, and yesterday was a violent takeover of our country’s Capitol building. No matter how stupidly tourist-like they may have appeared as they wandered through the halls snapping photos, they were violent insurrectionists.
* Hawley and Cruz, for starters, and probably a whole lot of others, ought to be censured in some way for their inciting words and behavior. Hawley offered the insurrectionists a fist pump as he walked into the Capitol in the morning. He needs to be held accountable. Can he be impeached?
* Yes, those congressfolx who backtracked and decided not to press their own internal coup yesterday ought to be commended, perhaps, for getting with the program, but they, too, have been part of the fuel in this fire, and we need to remember.
* Hey, did you hear the one about the Georgia Senate race flipping the Senate? I know, it seems like weeks ago now. Say it with me: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
* When I was a college student, a group of us participated in a protest in DC which included civil disobedience. We sat in a street, singing, and holding pots of flowers, and we were arrested in the hundreds by a very efficient DC Police Force. Yesterday’s force was Capitol Police instead, but I would have thought they would be equally or even more prepared to respond swiftly and efficiently to illegal protest (especially when they turn riotous and become an insurrection). I know they were overwhelmed, but they made 52 arrests. In the photos, I saw more than that number just wandering through the Capitol taking photos and selfies with the cops. And only 52 were arrested? People were rifling through Congresspeople’s desks and looting the Capitol building, and only 52 were arrested?
* I saw the video of the officer moving a barricade to let the insurrectionists in. There’s no re-interpreting that. It is what it is.
* Maxine Waters tweeted yesterday that she had been worried that something like this could happen and that four days ago, she had spoken with the Chief of Capitol Police and was told not to worry, that everything was under control.
* The lives of our elected officials were in danger yesterday. There were people in that crowd talking about executing Democrats.
* After the trauma of being violently taken over and evacuated, the people of Congress returned to their work, and stayed at it until at least 3:40 a.m., until their business was finished. Some of them, no doubt, left that work to go and continue to write the articles of impeachment that will, if there is any justice in the land, convict and then remove this president from office as soon as possible.
* Christopher Miller and Mark Milley completely bypassed the president himself and went to VP Pence, Pelosi, and Schumer to engage the National Guard. That is telling. Even if he hadn’t sparked and fueled this insurrection, even if he weren’t the instigator of the coup, he is so ineffective and incapable of governing that his own military muckety-mucks bypassed him to make a call in an emergency.
* I am so sorry that these Congresspeople are so tired, but they have work to do today in order to save our republic, to preserve our democracy. The president must be removed before he does anymore damage. (I don’t think I have ever before used the phrase “save our republic.”)
* If we know anything from women who have left abusive relationships, it’s that the moment she tells him she is planning to leave becomes the most dangerous time for her. Yesterday morning, Mike Pence essentially told the President that the US was leaving the abusive relationship, and he wasn’t going to stand in its way.
* For all his apparent grace under pressure and smooth leadership yesterday, Mike Pence still needs to stand accountable for his enabling of this house fire. He, too, has added fuel to this fire. But yes, even so, I am grateful that he decided to shift over from the dark side for yesterday’s business.
* To reiterate, we can’t let the rich and powerful white men (and a few others) of Congress, who helped to instigate and fuel this insurrection, walk away without keeping them accountable. The yahoos who disgraced the halls of Congress yesterday were merely the tools of people like Hawley and Cruz and Graham (no matter how sweetly he backpedals), McConnell (no matter how grandly he talks of upholding the Constitution), and especially the President and Mr. Pence.

What gratitude does one offer on a morning like this?
I’m grateful for the results of the Georgia race, grateful that the Senate is flipped.
I’m grateful that there was not more death in the halls of the Capitol, that the people of Congress were kept safe, that they were able to get their business completed.
I’m grateful for the net of beloveds who hold me, hold each other, hold the world, in love and prayer.

Thursday’s Thoughts:
I don’t have the internal space today to search out quotations that might be more apt for the moment, nothing for the rage I am feeling today, for the deep wells of anxiety. Here are some grounding quotations that might help me breathe–and maybe you, too?

“We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us, tell us to love or hate, to see or be seen. Often, too often, stories saddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do, and we do it without questioning. The task of learning to be free requires learning to hear them, to question them, to pause and hear silence, to name them, and then become a story-teller.” —Rebecca Solnit

“There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.”
—Zora Neale Hurston

I see her walking
on a path through a pathless forest
or a maze, a labyrinth.
As she walks, she spins
and the fine threads fall behind her
following her way,
telling
where she is going,
telling
where she has gone.
Telling the story.
The line, the thread of voice,
the sentences saying the way.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (from “The Writer On, and At, Her Work)

Advent 11: Letting Go

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Advent, Musings

In the story of Inanna descending the labyrinth to see her sister Ereshkigal, she had to leave some outward emblem of her power at the gates at each turning. The symbols that represented her identity as the Queen of Heaven were stripped away from her, one by one.

What are the images of your identity that you cling to? What “clothing” hides the true and essential you?

In the daytime summer worlds, certain aspects of my self serve me and help me to do the work I am meant to do. But here in the darkness, on the way to meet with my shadow-twin, all the trappings of my personal power and identity only get in the way of the deep recognition of self, shadow and all.

Right now, I am trying hard to live with the picture that I have everything under control. While there’s a certain truth and effectiveness to faking it until I manage to get back in control of things, I think that holding on to this image of myself is actually hindering the work. I am desperately behind on the grading, more than is comfortable for me or for my students. Every day, every evening, there’s something that pulls me away, takes energy and time that I need to get my work done. Still, I pretend to myself that I’ve got this under control. I think it’s time to relinquish that emblem of my sense of personal power, admit that I don’t have everything under control, and make a plan that will help me to catch up. Here, in the dark of the eleventh day, I lay down that piece of myself.

I cannot meet my shadow self and understand her, truly, until I can look honestly at my daytime self. I have no stone to lay at this turning, as I do when I walk a labyrinth in real time. Here is a long, sighing outward breath to symbolize my relinquishing of this inner belief that I am in control of things.

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.

Today, I think of the people of Le Chambon, France, who resisted the Vichy attempts arrest Jewish people by hiding people in their homes. As a village, a town, a region, they did what was right, not because they wanted to be heroes, but simply because it was right. They held a vision of what is the right thing to do–quiet, dedicated harboring of people in danger for their lives–and in doing so, actively resisted the violence of the political machine in which they lived.

Enter the Portal

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes, Musings


Two crow feathers in one week. The world is full of messages, if we know how to look,
if we know how to read the text of the landscape.

Gratitude List:
1. Teaching the spectrum. I have begun teaching college-in-the-high-school courses this year, and I am loving the conversation, the determination, the bright-eyed desire to LEARN of these soon-to-fledge upperclassfolk. I also have much younger students just coming in as ninth graders, both the 101s, and the students coming into my Foundations class to get some more literacy skill-building to prepare them to succeed in high school. This latter group tends to be more shy, more uncertain about school, but they’re ready and shiny-eyed in their own way, and eager to learn. I saw stirrings of deep understanding in this group on Tuesday when I showed them Kendi Ibram’s speech about what it means to be an intellectual. My heart is full.
2. Monarchs. Every day on the drive to and from school, I can count 3-5, and sometimes more, flitting across the road or in the roadside wildflower buffet. Sun in their wings, dancing in the breezes, determined wings setting a course for the beach. My heart is full.
3. Joe the Duck and the Cat Clan. Now that school has started, we pick up ED every morning and drive down the road where Joe the Duck lives, and where a colony of half-feral cats lives. We pause at Joe’s personal paddle pool to say hello, and drive slowly through the territory of the cat colony. There are new kittens: black, ginger-and-white, and a greyish-tortoise-shell. My heart is full.
4. Learning New Messages. “I am an organized person.” Ellis and I are reminding each other of our Organized Person identities, and I’m at least beginning to override the old story I habitually told myself about being unable to remain organized. And I see him doing the same. My heart is full.
5. My children are excited about school. Ellis has been advocating for himself to take Spanish 2 when it looked like he wouldn’t be able to fit it into his schedule. In the end, he and three others got permission to take a computer course in the library during the time others are taking Spanish 1. He’s taking charge of his learning, and that makes me proud. Right now, he’s downstairs on a Friday night doing his Algebra homework. (I think he knows it’s Friday.) And Josiah had three extra days off this summer because of mold in the school district, and while that was exciting, he is chomping at the bit to get back to school. My heart is full.

May we walk in Beauty!

Friday’s Meditations:
“Fear is the cheapest room in the house.
I would like to see you living
In better conditions.” —Hafiz
*****
“When your world moves too fast and you lose yourself in the chaos, introduce yourself to each color of the sunset. Reacquaint yourself with the earth beneath your feet. Thank the air that surrounds you with every breath you take. Find yourself in the appreciation of life.” —Christy Ann Martine
******
“Every word you utter to another human being has an effect, but you don’t know it. If people began to understand that change comes about as a result of millions of tiny acts that seem totally insignificant, well then, they wouldn’t hesitate to take those tiny acts.” —Howard Zinn
******
“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” —Leonard Bernstein
*****
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” ―Elie Wiesel
*****
“All forms of racism must be rejected directly and openly.” —bell hooks and Cornel West
*****
“Our mission was to make a beloved community in the world where everyone would be free to live well.” —bell hooks

A Very Simple Secret

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


Today’s prompt is to write a self-destruct poem:

When you are finished reading this poem,
it will self-destruct. The words
will fly outward, shards of ideas
exploding, lacerating skin,
feelings and notions piercing the soul,
shredding elevated egos
and mangling worn-out theories.
You will not be able to escape
into the house of another poem,
for all poetry is designed to explode,
to burst, to shatter into a thousand colors,
like the fracturing of light.

“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
*
“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

Gratitude List:
1. How dreams keep revealing themselves
2. How the leaves fly down from the sky
3. How children see things that adults miss
4. How the work gets done
5. How starlings move as a single bird

May we walk in Beauty!

Violence and Peace

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes, Poems

Since it is Tuesday, the poetry prompt is a two-part poem:  Write a poem about violence and/or peace.
Here is my #readapoem aloud poem for today.

 

In the spring, there are skunk cabbages,
purple pods rising from the marshes,
spathe and spadix (look them up)
scenting the air, first in the race
to lure the waking pollinators.

Snowdrops and aconite bring the wood alive,
their blossoms whispering amid breezes,
the buzz of the first honeybees,
the Louisiana waterthrush singing
about the creek that mutters over stones.

And at night, while the owls utter longing
to the moon, and a drizzle coats the moonlit branches,
the mud salamanders wriggle from their winter burrows
and slither down to the vernal pools to lay their precious eggs.

What will they do when the bulldozers come?
When the trucks arrive with their gravel and pipes?
Where will the birds find quiet branches for nesting,
the spotted salamanders find soft muddy springs for their young?

Someone has studied it, surely,
made a proposal based on plan
which is based on a study
which dismisses in fine language
the impact of pipelines on wildlife
in tender wild places.

The chances of leaks in the pipe
are slim to nothing, so they say.
Tell that to the ducks of Mayflower,
to the marshes of Ripley, Missouri.
Tell it to the wheat farmers of Tioga,
to the wildflowers of the Oak Glen Nature Preserve.

Tell it to the tender dogtooth violets
before you tear them from the soil,
to the otters who dance on the creek banks.
Tell it to the shy hermit thrush
before you slash through the wood
with your heavy machinery.

We cannot unring this bell.
We cannot unkill the wild.
We cannot unbreak our hearts.

 

Gratitude List:
1.   Louisiana Waterthrush
2.  Toads sing!  I did not know this when I named my book.  Turn on your sound and click here.
3.  A sense of purpose in uncertain times
4.  Fresh energy
5.  Chaperoning a field trip

May we walk in Beauty!

The Sacred Work of Raising Children

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes, Musings

I have always resisted too intense a categorization of genders.  Now, with two boys to raise, I often find myself caught in that tight spot between the noticing of their particular energies and the awareness of cultural beliefs about gender in children.  In some ways I see them behaving in the particular ways that people say boys will behave, and often they defy such artificial categorization.  They are who they are, separate from notions of gender.

Perhaps all children go through the hitting phase, no matter their particular shading of gender identity.  I can only speak to my own family’s experience: My children hit each other.  Often, and without holding back.  We do not hit our children, so they did not learn it from us.  The seven-year-old is developing better impulse control, fortunately, but this puts him more at the mercy of the four-year-old.  Of course, Seven is a master of provoking Four to violence.  There now, have I gone and blamed the victim?

I do not handle their violence well.  I think we need some help.  It hasn’t worked to keep repeating the scripted phrases, “When you hit, I feel worried because I am afraid you might hurt your brother.  I need you to stop hitting now.”  It hasn’t worked to threaten to take toys or video time.

Yesterday, I tried the technique I have heard about of holding the hitter in a chair until s/he calms down.  I could feel his frustration building, could feel the need to lash out rising within him.  Needless to say, it did not seem to be a successful intervention.  I want to do more simple acknowledging of strong feelings, more talking it through.  Too often, I go in yelling too:  “This is not acceptable in this house!  We do not hit each other!  How often do I need to tell you that?”  Umm.  Not helpful.

Yesterday I finally watched the video that everyone has been posting on Facebook in which Patrick Stewart speaks of the work he is doing to end domestic violence in memory of his mother, and now in memory of his father as well as he learns of the role PTSD played in his family’s story:  “Violence is never, ever, ever, a choice that a man should make!”  I often tell the boys that we do not hit each other, but I have started using a variation of Stewart’s phrase for the boys:  “Violence is never a choice we should make.”

We do talk about it, and I suppose it is sinking in to the corners of their consciousness.  Yesterday as we were driving, I began to rhapsodize about the Valley we were driving through, and Four perked up from the back seat, “I thought you were starting to say Violence.”  Okay.  So he’s learning the words, at least.

Yesterday someone also sent me this simply-written article from The Huffington Post.  While I am pretty sure I am not like the parents in the story who let their son run rough-shod over another child’s imaginative realm, it was another good reminder of why this work of socializing our children is so crucial to their development.  When people dismiss aggressive behavior in boys as simply the uncontrollable behavior of their gender, how deeply does that become part of their psyche as they grow up and relate to women?

I went into the day weary of the constant tasks related to helping these children learn to interact with each other without violence, and came out of it weavng together the video and the article which remind me that this is sacred work, this work of helping these two boys learn to control their impulses, to name and acknowledge and express their feelings in open ways, to respect each others’ space.  I’m still at a bit of a loss about how to handle the hitting, but more hopeful that each conversation, each interaction, is a moment for learning how to be mature human beings.  For all of us.

 

Gratitude List:
(It’s been a few days, so I am going to break the rules and let myself have ten.)
1.  A sparkling, humming, magical swarm of bees.  I am sorry that the beekeeper was unable to catch them–they settled too high in the tree before flying off, but I will hope that they will establish a powerful and healthy wild colony.
2.  The panicky-sounding “Yeep!” of the bullfrogs when we startle them as we walk by the pond.
3.  Listening to Alice in Wonderland with Ellis, and watching him catch the jokes and puzzles and puns.  It is such fun to laugh with my children.
4.  The enormous Yard Sale at Lebanon Valley Brethren Home.  It was a delight to explore the treasures with the kids.
5.  The temporary grace offered by a little pharmaceutical assistance when the herbs just seemed to be insufficient to help my body cope with the current onslaught of pollens.  I will still hold out as long as I can because I don’t like to live in the mental fog, but it’s nice to know it’s there when my eyes blow up and I can’t stop sneezing.
6.  Someone saw a big black snake at the farm.  It has been a couple years since one has been spotted.  Snakes are a good sign of a healthy ecosystem.  Now to keep my evening eyes peeled for bats. . .
7.  Lupines growing from the stones at the edge of the highway!
8.  Roadside sign that said, “Let us walk Honestly.”  That’s nice.  So often I dismiss those signs because they tend to be consigning people to hell, so this was a lovely change.  And then I saw one that said, “Be ye merciful.”  I like that one, too.
9.  Family expedition to Weaver’s Dry Goods in Fivepointsville.  Mini Doughnuts.  The wonder of exploring the toy section with the children.  And Jon, too–he was like a kid himself.  (But don’t get me started on the prominent display of Roundup in the front of the store.)  In the parking lot on the way out, we saw something you don’t see every day, a plain Mennonite woman driving a tractor, pulling a trailer with a load of supplies and three or four girls in it.  I hope they weren’t going far–it looked sort of dangerous.  But amazing.
10.  Entering Weaverland Valley from Terre Hill (say Turr-eh Hill).  Something sings in my bones at the view of the light playing over the valley, the farms, the green meadows and tidy fields.

May we walk in Beauty.