voting

Election day Invocation

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

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

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

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

We do now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Making Tuesday’s News

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

It’s not my most poetic of poems, but RLB’s prompt at Writers Digest was to write a news poem, and right now, I’m preparing my inner self to deal with the this coming Tuesday’s news. I kind of copped out at the end. . .

What will you do with Tuesday’s news?
Will you lose your head in a whirling tizzy
or sink into a slough of desperate sadness?
Will you dance on political graves
of the ones you wanted to vanquish?
Will you wear a crown of gloating laurels?

Will you follow the call of your guru and your gut
to make the world a kinder place?
Will you follow the call of your humanity
to make the space more humane?
Will you call out the gleeful cruelty,
and stand up for those who were left behind?

What will you do for democracy?
What will you do for your neighbor?

Really, please vote. Please help to stand up to the forces of fascism. Stand up for kindness and goodness and love and democracy.

Gratitude List:
1. Democracy–it’s really a good idea
2. Kindness
3. Zooming with my beloveds
4. The color! Oh, the color!
5. How prayer changes me
May we walk in Beauty!

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

Chasing Chickens
by Elizabeth Weaver-Kreider
.
I’ve counted my chickens.
A dozen times or more they’ve dashed–
dashed, I tell you–
into blackberry canes,
wings whirring.
.
White clouds of dust engulf me.
Their voices chuckle
from the cliff’s edge.
Don’t tell me about chickens.
I’m green, baby. Green.
And I don’t know how
I’m getting home from here.
—Beth Weaver-Kreider

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

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

We stumble on the journey, O God.
We lose heart along the way.
We forget your promises and blame one another.
Refresh us with the springs of your spirit in our souls
and open our senses to your guiding presence
that we may be part of the world’s healing this day,
that we may be part of the world’s healing.
—John Philip Newell

Mist, Moon, Mist

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments


As November 6 approaches, and amid all the squeamishness I am feeling about the privileged way we do politics in this country, I am thinking about the “right” to vote.

June 4, 1919: The 19th Amendment finally offered women the right to vote in this country.

Except. Only White Women. Women put their bodies on the line for this right. They went to jail. They were beaten. They were brutally force-fed during hunger strikes. They were called terrible names, and experienced social shaming that destroyed their reputations. And they were white women, and they fought for white women. Some of my heras from that fight were notably silent on the subject of race. Others actively campaigned against women of color being included in the mix.

On this hand over here, I honor them for their selfless and courageous fight. They saw their moment and they took it, and the world was at least a marginally better place for it.

On this hand over here, though: Is it a victory, really, if it actively marginalizes such a large number of us?

My heras have feet of clay. Fatal flaws. Lack of real vision and insight and completely human compassion. Still, their work paved the way. But not for all of us. Did it at least open the door for all of us?

The Snyder Act, in 1924, finally gave the country’s original inhabitants the right to vote, five years after white women could vote. And looking at the kinds of voter suppression that took place for African American people after white people finally passed the 15th Amendment, it’s likely that many Native American women didn’t vote until much later.

While the 15th Amendment in 1870 ostensibly gave African American men the right to vote, we don’t have to look so far back into the mists of history to see how recently the Voting Rights Act was passed, to REALLY give black people the right to vote. It was on 1965, two years before I was born, and I’m not that old. So, while my grandmothers could have voted if they’d wanted to (it was against their religious principles, so they didn’t), my grandmothers’ African American sisters couldn’t vote until they were in their forties or fifties.

So this year I won’t be posting any images of the white suffragettes marching for women’s right to vote, as door-opening as that period was, as sacrificial as they were. And I am having trouble celebrating any movement to bring about ACTUAL Democratic voting in this country while the Supreme Court can take away the voting rights of First Nations people in North Dakota, while unscrupulous people are suppressing the black vote in Georgia, while elderly black voters are removed from a bus taking them to a polling place. There are more stories. Look them up.

I will honor the intent of the suffragettes who fought for the right to vote, for the doors they opened, and I will truly celebrate the life and work of the tireless Congressman John Lewis, who nearly died in the fight to bring about the Voting Rights Act.

There will always be undemocratic forces in this country that try to garner power for their own ends, to control the people. Voting, and fighting for the voice of all people to vote, is part of the bedrock of the democratic process.  And I will speak out–and I beg you to speak out, too–for the rights of ALL Americans to vote for those who are chosen to speak for us in the halls of power.

Gratitude List:
1. Good fiction. I am listening to The Book of the Unnamed Midwife. I don’t know why post-apocalyptic literature is so charmingly comforting in these difficult times. Perhaps it has to do with reminding me that things aren’t as bad as all that. Yet. Feel free to psychoanalyze me.
2. Speaking Truth to Power–all the people who do so
3. Cool fall days
4. The river, the river, the river
5. Magical, prayerful, contemplative acts

May we walk in Beauty!

Rhapsody Part 7 – Mary Oliver

If you are in the garden, I will dress myself in leaves.
If you are in the sea I will slide into that
smooth blue nest, I will talk fish, I will adore salt.
But if you are sad, I will not dress myself in desolation.
I will present myself with all the laughters I can muster.
And if you are angry I will come, calm and steady, with
some small and easy story.
Promises, promises, promises! The tongue jabbers, the heart
strives, fails, strives again. The world is perfect.
Love, however,
is an opera, a history, a long walk, that
includes falling and rising, falling and rising, while
the heart stays as sweet as a peach, as radiant and
grateful as the deep leaved hills.
*
“You either walk inside your story & own it or you stand outside your story & hustle for your worthiness.” ~BRENÉ BROWN
*
Duck, duck, goose.
Goose, goose, wren.
Mist, moon, mist.
October.
–Beth Weaver-Kreider
*
“Live the question now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some day into the answer.” –Rainer Maria Rilke
*
“and if i hear one more time
about a fool’s rights
to his tools of rage
I’m gonna take all my friends
and I’m gonna move to Canada
and we’re gonna die of old age” –Ani Difranco

Worth a Try

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Today’s Prompt is a Two-fer: Write a days of the week/weak poem.

On a November Tuesday
you might wear scarves
and long white skirts
to remember how to vote.

You might take your knitting
and stand in a long line
waiting for your chance
to be a part of history.

You might fidget
when they ask your name,
might feel a tremor when you see
that yours is the only Democrat on the page.

You might recall other Tuesdays
in November, when you believed
in the process, when you knew
that your voice counted, too.

(That’s pretty depressing, and I think it went deeper into the sense of helplessness than I might be feeling at this moment, though I definitely cycle into that place where I lose my belief that my voice matters in this “democracy” anymore.)

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

“I don’t think it has to be a choice. We don’t have to choose between the closed heart and the broken heart. We can be awake and yet not despair. It’s worth a try.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
*
“Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.” —Mae Jemison
*
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” —Frederick Buechner
*
Alice Walker—”Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.”
*
Found on a T-shirt: I am totally happy and not dangerous mostly.
*
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” —Marcus Aurelius

Gratitude List:
1. I voted. I don’t know for sure how much I believe in it anymore, though I am liking some of what I am seeing in the results today, and the poll-folks are friendly, and the photo-art on the walls of the local high school/polling place is really excellent.
2. The sweet justice of a transwoman beating out the incumbent who called himself Virginia’s “chief homophobe.” Maybe I will start to trust the democratic process again, just a little.
3. Tea. The sudden shift in the weather has me cringing in blankets and hats and scarves. Tea takes the edge off. And it’s one thing I share in common with a particular student who hates my class, so I am grateful for that.
4. Color. I forgot to take Ducktown over the bridge this morning because I have become so used to going left and taking Valley View while the bridge was out. We turned onto Valley View just as the sun cascaded through cloud behind us and hit the forested ridge off by the River. The colors were dazzling.
5. How people take care of each other.

May we walk in Beauty!

Repeating Herself

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

leaves

Today’s prompt is a Two-for-the-Price-of-One:
Nothing will be the same. Nothing will ever change.
I’m going to add a third in my series of History poems. You can see the other two Here and Here.

You Don’t Have To
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

History has caught up with me again.
She sidles up to me in line at the polls.
“I like the new look, Sister,” she says
fiddling with her many scarves and shawls.
“Yup. I like the new look,” she says again.

I watch her fidgeting and fussing
like she always does. She can’t keep still.
She makes me jittery. A feather boa slips
off her shoulder to the floor.
I don’t think I’ve changed a bit in twenty years,
except for wrinkles and sags. But now
I look at her more closely:
“History–Is that a black eye?”

She avoids my gaze and sighs,
occupied with tucking in her shirt,
adjusting her wide hat upon
her elaborate hairdo.

“Okay, okay,” she says finally,
“So I dressed as Susan B. for Halloween.”
I watch her gather up her shawls.
“I dressed up as Susan B. for the Elec–”
“I know,” I interrupt. “You don’t have to
repeat yourself.” For the first time ever,
History looks me right in the eye:
“You’re right, Sister. I sure don’t.”

Gratitude List:
1. Poll Workers. Thank you to all of you who have given your time to make our democracy run. A friend of mine was among a group of poll workers threatened by a voter today. Police intervened.
2. Susan B. Anthony
3. Birds
4. The constants. Love, for instance.
5. Fresh air.

May we walk in Beauty!