Cricket’s Thoughts

Have you ever wondered how two people can look at the exact same thing and each sees something totally different? It happens often enough that it is almost miraculous that we are able to effectively communicate with friends and loved ones at all.

When I look at this picture, I see a beach filled with broken pieces of life. Others may see the circle of life, nature simply taking back what was hers.

What do you see?

Perhaps the art of effective communication is as simple as asking what the other sees.

P.S. A special shout out to all my friends who are participating in the V7N 30 Day Blog Challenge. I know you can do it!

Now and then I retreat into a world of my own, a place of stillness with muted emotions, a place to just be. It isn’t a light switch that I can switch on and poof, suddenly I am in the quiet place, but rather noticing over several days that I have become quieter, with very little interaction with others.

Sometimes I discover that somewhere in the back of my mind I have been dwelling on something that I should probably deal with. Other times I think perhaps it is just a mini-vacation from too much going on in a short period of time and I simply choose to reduce the stimuli around me for a bit.

Maybe it is a protection mode or wall that we all put up occasionally…

P.S. A special shout out to all my friends who are participating in the V7N 30 Day Blog Challenge. I know you can do it!

Do not watch the petals fall from the rose with sadness, know that, like life, things sometimes must fade, before they can bloom again.” Author Unknown

When I took this picture of a rose, I put it away into one of my “someday” files. It just didn’t say anything to me at all. It was just a rose, ya know?

I simply hadn’t captured what I was seeing inside of me. The words were buried deep inside my very soul, but the image just wasn’t saying what I wanted to say.

It felt like one of those special whispers from Spirit when I came across this quote (above) within moments of taking this picture back out again.

It fit the moment in time perfectly for me.

Maybe it is all about the timing…

P.S. A special shout out to all my friends who are participating in the V7N 30 Day Blog Challenge. I know you can do it!

When I was young, my granddaddy would tell me stories about the “good old days” and how kids these days didn’t have the sense God gave a goose. Of course, he also loved to tell me how he used to walk 20 miles to school, uphill both ways, and barefoot.

Every once in a while he would add a few feet of snow into the memory.

I would sit there giggling at him, loving his stories, dreaming of a simpler life, and how wonderful it was to know him. I also secretly thought about how all old people told these same stories, but I never got weary of listening.

Guess what slipped right out of my mouth today?

“When I was a kid…”

Lord help me, did I really say that?

When did I become one of the old people?

Sighs…

In my defense, I didn’t bring up walking to school a million miles (or so) each way. Probably because I didn’t. A bus picked me up about a block or so from my front door. We did however whine about how long we were stuck on that dang bus. (grin)

I was just thinking of a time when life was a bit more simple when we didn’t have cell phones, computer games, and laptops to occupy our time. Amazingly enough, though, we were never bored. We spent hours playing neighborhood games of kickball. If we didn’t have a ball, we played kick the can.

We rode our bikes for miles down trails and jumps we made ourselves.

We didn’t have fancy backyard gym sets, but we knew if we had a nearby creek and a rope, we could spend entire days on that rope swing laughing until our sides ached.

Life was just simpler I think.

When I was a kid…

It takes a village to raise a child.” African Proverb

Listening to all the nearly vicious political debates in the news, I began to wonder. In the middle of all of this, who is watching out for the children?

Is this truly the example we want them to learn?

How can we claim to be good Christians if we live a life filled with hate? Children hear and remember our words, but they learn and mimic our actions.

Are we taking hopes and dreams away from the future of our nation?

It is little short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not completely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.” Albert Einstein

This year, I have been so disappointed in the school my daughter attends. They built a brand new school and football stadium, but they have fewer teachers teaching more students, and classes without enough (if any) books.

Discipline issues are at an all-time high which seems to coincide with how these kids are treated. I have heard teachers speak to children in a manner that I would not speak to a rabid dog. And we wonder what has happened to the attitude of teenagers? If we treat our children like thugs, guess how they start acting?

Yes, we as parents are fully responsible for our children, but does it mean we don’t stand up for the children of others? Why on earth do we allow anyone to treat a child with disrespect? I agree there are some incredible teachers out there and they are simply not paid enough, but I also believe we have teachers right now that shouldn’t even be allowed to train an animal, let alone our children.

It doesn’t stop there either. Spend one day living the life of a teenager, and tell me what you see. Cops hassling kids hanging out at a park for the day? Why? Because they MIGHT be thugs? A couple of teens take their allowance to a store to buy new things and they are followed by security. Why? Because they MIGHT be thugs?

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Bernard Baruch

Again, I agree there are problems out there, serious problems that desperately need to be solved. I just don’t believe that labeling all children with the same cloth is the answer.

Yeah, I was in the mood to rant. I will step back off my soapbox now. 😉

It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” Mark Twain

I am smack dab in the middle of some serious spring fever. Enough so that I am digging through old spring photographs I have taken so that I can recapture those scenes inside of me, if only for a moment. I literally crave spring days filled with sunshine, butterflies, and tiny wildflowers blooming as far as the eye can see.

I am not sure what it is about spring that brings me so much joy. I think perhaps it is a season of hopes and dreams…