THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING, THANK GOD!

I found another Kindergarten worksheet.  It was an April Fool's "what's wrong with this picture" kind of thing.  There were flying picnic baskets and trees growing lightbulbs and all sorts of unlikely things happening.  I meant to pick it up, but it was floating in a puddle and pretty wet, so I let it lie.

It's been feeling kind of like that these days. So many unlikely things are happening. 

There's the Tea Party, of course.  They're pretty nuts, but in a more complicated way, health care passes, and that's great, but it means that the kids might be paying more on their insurance so their grandparent's health care costs don't go up. Yet most of the kids that I know are having trouble finding a job.  How are they going to afford health insurance in the first place?

And speaking of jobs, we hear that more people are employed, and then we find out that, yeah, one of the reasons it looks so good on paper is that the government has hired thousands of census takers.  Those are temporary jobs, so there really hasn't been much of an improvement at all.

It's been a confusing and devisive and contentious time; and I wonder who we can trust. Once again like bread crumbs leading me to my conclusions, the universe provided these as an answer.

First I found lip gloss, and then, a few steps later, lip balm.

I puzzled over these items for a while, and then I remembered my question: "who can you trust?" Lip gloss and lip balm help keep lips smooth and slick.  Immediately I thought about smoooooooth talkers and slick operators.  I realized that there really is no one outside of ourselves that we can trust.

I don't mean to sound cynical.  I don't feel cynical.  I do feel like critical thinking is essential right now.  We have to strap what we hear to our internal lie detector and feel our way into the truth. 

When a statement makes our world look hopeless, it's a lie.  We know there is always hope.
When a statement makes us angry, it's a lie.  We know that we're not hearing the whole story.
When a statement makes us afraid, it's a lie.  We know that, essentially, all is well. 

Our inner being knows that life is change and flux and flow.  What's here today is gone tomorrow.  Today's tragedy is tomorrow's opportunity.  We have to remember that we are not stuck anywhere.  It's like they say about the weather:  You don't like it now, wait 15 minutes.  It'll change.

Things always change, and that's a good thing.  And fast-changing times like these are perfect venues for creative thinking. I think that we'll be amazed at how the insolvable problems of today will be solved by some amazing person in the future.

So you see, I'm not cynical.  I believe in us.  I believe in our creative power.  Inventiveness is a huge part of our nature.  I believe we can trust ourselves to create the life we're wanting.  All we need to do is trust life.

Love, Kristine