To change culture – create MORE culture.
Culture is simply someone’s distinctive choice leapfrogging through communities and time.
New art, new ideas, even new silliness can ripple in the water until the pond shimmers in a new light.
Take a stand on a Lily Pad of your own intention, take a leap, make ripples, and create more culture.
Debate: a lake where ideas swim,
A place where all surface a win.
Each throw threads with patient cast
Knit together warmth that lasts.
Rage-bait: a troll cast for a fight,
Catching only shadows & spite.
Snagging threads that kept us warm.
Holes reside where stagnation forms.
Fish for alliance, but first you should know
“Is it de-bait or rage-bait?” before you throw.
Why are we more timid to talk of the elephants
than to be pierced by their ivory spear?
We tiptoed around imagined exiles
while being trampled under literal fear.
Silence opened the door to the pottery house
clearing space for bulls trumpeted calls.
They’re sucking clean air out of the room
As progress shatters in bulldozed halls.
Talk of the elephants. Talk of the pain.
We have a world to lose, but a whole love to gain.
Ought we scold the sapling: “grow thicker bark!”
As the axe is actively hewing its mark?
Why, when our children are hunted here,
Do we cage their laughter and hand them fear?
Bolt the doors! Draw curtains tight!
turn the daylight into night!
Whisper soft: be small, be still,
Cry quieter! It’s “just” a drill!
Until it’s not.
Again and again we ask the fragile to bend
rather than burden the ones who impend.
Into the shadows you shrink the child
While the shadow’s arsenal grows more wild.
The threat won’t leave.
The axe won’t tire.
The forest burns down.
We put the wrong feet to the fire
Safety’s not silence.
Protection’s not gauze.
Stop clipping wings.
clip the claws!
Season speaks, it’s time to change.
Staying put, leaves you estranged.
A braver being adapts to say:
I’ve learned, I see another way.
The trees don’t shame the fallen leaf
let it go, find fresh relief.
Each autumn sky, with subtle art
shows letting go seeds novel starts
To change your mind is not defeat,
but courage over self-deceit
The proudest act that we can do
is trade the false coat to array the true.
Wear your change, your fallen flame,
a blaze that notes I’m not the same.
For only those who dare admit
can grow beyond the world they fit.
A blackbird gathers twig and stem,
to nest her littles from mayhem
But I, being human, must weave instead
with living love and worlds I’ve read.
We build our nests of page and voice
of questions deep revealing choice
To go through life with blinders up
Or eyes made aware of the corrupt
Twigs will break, the nest left bare
but minds take flight on what we share.
The truest gift, the one that stays,
is giving wings through widened ways.
Let our nests be rich with views,
Braided ideas in many hues.
Let them read, let them decide
Unfettered love on which to glide.
We’re spinning wheels
While they spin stories
So let’s go out for a spin
Feel the wind on a playground tire swing
As the world spins madly on
They’re spinning webs of lies
That get sticker with time
So let’s go out for a spin
And ride bikes through a forest trail
As the world spins madly on
I’ll felt wool while they spin yarn
I’ll hum a whisper while they spin heads
I’ll twirl my child while they twirl thumbs
As the world spins madly on.
I carried you for nine months,
but now I carry a pit in my stomach
as I carry the weight of the world that treats us both as dispensable.
I won’t apologize for getting carried away with all the care in the world for your future.
It’s our own cross to carry through intentional movement.
I’ll run as fast as my feet will carry me to make a change.
I hope in your lifetime, you’ll see the world’s heart unconcealed by those who used to carry a different kind of fear.
I hope you can trust that I, for one, don’t carry secrets, but I do carry love – transparent and revealed all the way to my grave.
As I carry you in my arms, I carry conviction.
I can’t carry a tune, but I’ll still sing to you
So that someday when you carry this torch – it will be a little bit lighter.
Moms demand action
Mothers demand care
Mommy sprints, shoes in hand,
racing heart suffocating air
Mama bear screams
Ma writes a letter
Mum is the word
On when it will get better
Mimi reads “Be Kind”
While Mee Maw posts a plea
Mommy mommy mommy…
Who will protect me?
Recently I found this drawing of a puppy done by a mindful child. It was calling for me to memorialize it into a patch. The stylized details, the cute simplicity…
While I needle-felted, Aimee Carty’s song “Child Again” cycled through my playlist. It’s a lovely song that reminds us that the things we admire about childhood are hardly as out of reach as we proclaim them to be:
“Oh, to be a child again,” they said
To have a brand new heart and brand new head
To find the smallest of all things exciting
To find the biggest of all things inviting
“Oh, to be a child again,” they said
At first, I thought it too
But now I’m thinking
And I don’t know if I do
’cause I’m just thinking
That maybe we don’t miss being younger
Maybe we just miss the wonder
We miss the point of viewBut we can have it too
If we really try
All you have to do
Is open your eyes
The world is just the same
As it has always been
The beauty is alive
It’s eager to be seen
So don’t dismiss the colours
Don’t dismiss the sounds
Find comfort in the rain
Find magic in the clouds
As we get older
We fall into a spell
To blame it on the world and not to look inside ourselves”
There are things that do change as we grow older, including responsibilities. However, there are things we can carry forward into adulthood that we all to often unintentionally let go of in that process of change. Most of the things that we long for when we say “oh to be a child again” are still ours to hold. We can continue to hold the wonder of our childhood while still maintaining our growth. We can continue to hold creation and imagination. We can continue to hold bold new friendships. We can hold onto hope even against the darkest days.
So, if I may, add a verse to Carty’s song – one about what we can do the next time we long with despair “to be a child again”:
We gather all the paper planes we folded in our youth,
Launch them on the winds of louder, unapologetic truth.
We paint outside the margins where the fearful lines once ran,
And write our names in colors only grown-up hearts can span.
We’re slower now, but every soul can still leap off the swings,
Reclaim the sound of laughter and the power hope still brings.
When the playground echoes call, remember where they’ve been:
The child we were is cheering on the grownup we are in.
Oh to be a child again – or rather walk together with the child still within.
Create, love, speak, share, and dream with the combination of your childlike spirit and your life-living wisdom.
