Twilight was upon us and the western sky was crowded with enormous, fluffy clouds but this one was hanging out all alone. It was doing its own thing apart from the crowd.
I admired this cloud for its beauty and for its independent nature. No one was telling it what to do.
Silly, I know. But tell me something. If you aren’t admiring the clouds on a pretty fall evening, what are you doing with your life?
Have a great Thursday, friends. When in doubt, stop and look up!
This is just a three day workweek for me since I had a long weekend out gallivanting. No offense to my job or other aspects of my regular life because I’m grateful for all of it…. but … TGIF.
It’s so easy to get sucked back into everyone else’s troubles, bad work habits, and all the daily annoyances that tug at our brains and demand attention.
For this week, though, I have been working to mentally pull myself away from all of that at least for a moment or two at a time. When my brain starts to latch on to something negative, I take myself back to one particular moment on Saturday night.
After a glorious day of exploring the shores of a fairytale land called Presque Isle State Park, some light book shopping, and sipping milkshakes, we headed back to the beach to witness the sunset.
We left our shoes in the car but took towels and jackets. We took books in place of troubles. We took cold drinks instead of worries.
We staked out a spot on a small peninsula where the waves might trick you into believing you’re at the ocean and not at the Lake Erie shore in Pennsylvania. We dug our toes into the sand and I used my bag as a pillow while reclining to read.
As the sun began to descend, lower and lower against the horizon, the pleasantly warm day began to feel pleasantly cool. I stood to put on a light jacket. That’s when I noticed a large gathering of gulls on the rocks. All faced the western horizon as though they too were excited to see the cotton candy sky, colors so special that they can only be created by the setting sun.
And then, without warning, all those gulls simultaneously took off and left us alone to focus on the sky.
There was a slight breeze and the sand was turning cooler beneath my feet. I shuddered when a young woman waded out into the lake for one last dip in the golden hour.
I wondered aloud about the water temperature but she was happy doing her thing and I was happy doing mine.
And this, my friends, is where I am disappearing to in my brain when too much of the real world tries to crowd in this week.
We all need a happy memory, something with lots of sensory details that we can grab hold of and escape to when the world gets to be too much. I’m grateful for mine and encourage you to dig through your memories for one of your own. If you don’t have one, better go out and make some!
The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity — then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.
David Suzuki
If you drove past my house Saturday morning you might have seen me peering at the sunroof on my car with an empty envelope in hand which I was holding at an especially odd angle. There’s no good way to explain some of the things I do.
On that day though, I was trying to save a life.
This sharply dressed guy was seemingly taking a nap on the sunroof and I didn’t want him to get hurt when I went cruising down the road.
I had to Google it but it seems he is a net-winged beetle. That’s not a very exciting name for such a cool looking creature. From here on, I’ll call him Beau.
Beau the Beetle has a nice ring.
It took a few tries but I finally was able to persuade Beau up onto the envelope and he eventually took flight toward the Black Eyed Susans near my back walk.
Imagine waking up to some giant you’ve never met, trying to force you out of where you want to be! Poor guy!
It takes very little to help the small creatures of our world or to at least not do them harm. It’s Monday, friends. Let’s try to do no harm.
