It’s Saturday, and that means I’m finding my inspiration for the week.

I’ve started and deleted this post so many times. It just wasn’t one of those weeks where inspiration is easy to find. There were flickers of it here and there, but I just wasn’t feeling the passion. Maybe it’s just me.

So I got up this morning planning to go to the farmers market. I planned to come home with a bag full of goodies, and maybe a camera full of photos. My plans, didn’t happen. After driving to two different cities, spending the whole morning in circles, no farmers markets cold be found. Like my inspirations, I was looking every where for something that just wasn’t there.

So I came home, fed the kids crap food ’cause they were too hungry to wait for me to cook, and trudged into the flooded swamp of my backyard to see how the storm ravaged my plants last night. The peas and tomato took a beating, and the bean plant doesn’t look happy. But there were still little flickers of green, smiling up at me, happy to have a cool drink after a week of brutal heat.

And there it was. Small and helpless, not yet ready to harvest, but growing as best as it could. My inspiration.

Funny how that works.

It’s Saturday, and that means I’m finding my inspiration for the week. Because lets face it, some weeks you either get inspired or stare at pictures of birds trapped in oil for hours until you can’t stop sobbing.

This week, I’m letting the kids at the Miller Valley School in Prescott, Arizona inspire me. Cause those kids spent two months painting a beautiful mural on the side of their school, one that featured actual students from the school, doing green and earth friendly activities. And they kept on painting while “adults” drove by screaming racial epitaphs, while “adults” used positions of power to denounce the entire thing, and while “adults” threw tantrums over the fact that some of the students at the school have skin a little darker than they prefer.

The children and the artists who stood out there every day, bearing the brunt of hatred and intolerance, to bring a little beauty to the world … yeah, they make me tear up in a good way.

Fuck ‘em. If they tear it down, rebuild it. If they white out your face, repaint it. If they can’t find a word to say outside of their own blind hate, stand there smiling. You’ll last longer than they will, and be better loved for it.

When I decided to do Inspiration Saturdays, I didn’t expect that by the second week I’d be straining. But lets face it, it hasn’t been a very inspiring week for me.

So this Saturday, I’m trying to be like the dirt. Lie low and still, and let the storm clouds just rolls right over me. Sure, I may get a little muddy from time to time, but soon the sun will come out and dry it all up. And from all that rain the flowers get a chance to grow.

Yes, that wold be the cheesiest analogy of the year. But it fits, so I’m using it.

Breath in, breath out. Let the clouds roll on by.