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Up in the Hood

Day 4: Explore the Neighborhood

“Blogging is a communal experience; if you didn’t want anyone to read your posts or interact with you, you’d keep a private diary… Today, you begin the process of engaging with the blogging community, a key step of building an audience.”

Today’s assignment: follow five new topics in the Reader, and begin finding blogs (and bloggers) you love.

I’ve been here a little over a week I think.

Found some AWESOME blogs to follow already! My blogging friend gave me that assignment on my very first day here.

Check. Day 4 done.

So I thought I’d “explore the neighborhood” some in the folks that have found me here on my crazy little farm.

Anddd…soo..yeahhh..ummm…

About that.

I guess it makes sense that stepping onto the worldwide web would bring out opportunistic internet salespeople and make them glom on just like they do when you make a ton of online orders right before Christmas and then notice that your email is getting an extraordinarily high number of spam mail come January.

I get it.

But I guess there was an itty bitty part of my tender writer’s heart that thought this was going to be a cozy little place where all of us author wanna-be folks sat around with our doodled up notebooks and our skinny lattes and oohed and aahhed as we read each others brilliant words and passages and pieces.

Yeah. Not so much.

Where do these folks come from anyway?

And why do I have to have them taking up space around our little writing table with their internet sales pitches and their fake profiles that hide their pornographic websites?

You know the ones….they don’t even bring a coffee to the table.

No profile or website other than either a) a grainy pic that looks like it was snapped in someone’s basement or b) a “studio” pic that could be taken off a local real estate agent’s business card or c) a high adventure photo that includes white sand, snowboarding, coastal resorts or tan people in bikinis.

I’m fixin to cry here. I thought this gig would be me, some of my bffs, and a few new friends I’d make on blogosphere. And my high school English teacher of course.

Not single men looking for women or single women looking for love or photos of people who supposedly travel the world and do all the amazing-incredible-you’ve-not-lived-life-until-you’ve-lived-like-me sorts of jobs that us normal everyday boring in the dark schmucks like me are just waiting to sign up for so we can give up the drab nothingness we’ve lived so far and FINALLY have the life we’ve always dreamed of.

Puh-leeze.

Sigh.

{{Sip the latte}}

This must make me a Pollyanna amateur writer wanna-be, thinking this would be a great place to network, write, grow, sharpen my skills and learn how to start giving a little more time to the writer side of me.

Is this really how it is now?

Everyone after an easy buck?

Everyone glomming onto the coattails of other people so they can tout their get-rich-quick bs?

Ah, the bitter taste of disillusionment.

I’ll stick to my coffee thank you very much.

How funny is it that my husband tells me “if you want people to read your writing you have to put it in a place where people can read it.”

And by putting it in a place where folks can read it, I’m sitting among folks who have no interest in reading it.

This makes me mad. Mad for me, who gives darn good time to stringing these here words out, and mad for all the folks here who do the same. Flamin mad I tell ya.

But then I go peek through my itty bitty list. And not everyone’s a Take Advantage Of kind of follower.

There are some here in this place who LOVE writing.

Who LOVE catching up on the world via blogs.

Who LOVE sharing their words and honing their skill.

Who LOVE encouraging others.

Who LOVE me.

And THAT right there is why I’ll stay.

That right there is why I’ll  continue to blog and if you want to bring your nasty and your schemes and your sales pitch I will let you sit here because I have to, it’s a public blog after all, but I don’t have to listen to your attempts to take advantage of me, or anyone else here in this community. While I understand you need to make a living, the rest of us are here for the reasons of wanting to write, wanting to share, wanting to learn, wanting to grow and wanting to read what others have to say.

There’s no coat tails in them there reasons.

So.

Go on and jump off your ski slopes in British Columbia, and go on and bed the woman of your dreams in Bali.

But me?

Me and my friends, well we’ll be right here, writing our little  hearts out and living this boring old writer’s blogging life just like everybody else.

And we’ll be loving it.

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© Cassandra Rankin, This Crazy Little Farm

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Day 3 – Heaven Came Down, Crazy Little Farms, and Words that Come Forth

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Zero to Hero Blogger

Day 3: What’s on your mind? When you thought about starting a blog… Today, you’ll write it.

Today’s assignment: write the post that was on your mind when you decided to start a blog.

The post that was on my mind when I started to blog and the post I posted were two totally different things.

This blog was initially going to be Heaven Came Down. Because Heaven did come down.

But that name was already taken.

So I changed directions and used a piece I’d recently written as the inspiration for the name and feel of my little nook here on the net.

You can read it here: Life is Messy and Things Aren’t Always Little on This Crazy Little Farm

That really is who we are and what we’re all about on this crazy little farm.

And it’s funny how, with a family and kids and a farm and animals…they kinda all roll into everything you do and you’re learning always and even when it’s not about the farm it’s still about the farm ya know?

I don’t know if that makes sense to you.

But it does to me and that’s why my posts aren’t always specifically about farming.

It’s a guarantee though that they’re usually all about growing.

And maybe that there is where the farming comes in.

{{The piece that made me start my own blog}}

Heaven Came Down

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It’s been ten years since I told Jesus I do.

A short ten years. In that decade I’ve watched a lot of other people get baptized.

And do you know, after they come up we always sing Now I belong to Jesus. But on the day I came up it was Heaven Came Down. Just that once for some reason. Oh what a wonderful, wonderful day.

And on that day Heaven did come down. And glory filled my soul.

But some days it’s just too much. And that filled soul just wants to weep.

When there are people dying of cancer. Or when three families stagger under the loss of their loved ones and whole communities grieve their stunned hearts out. Or when a mama leaves early and her babies are little, so little. Or when a baby leaves early and her mama is left just a shell. When cities riot. When a dear friend’s heart is breaking. When a country falls apart.

And today the preacher talked about a caterpillar. Tucked up tight in its cocoon, all wrapped up in there.

Clinging.

A thread.

Holding right there tight to the branch. Secure, that tree keeps the cocoon from falling…

…right on down into nothing.

Into death.

Those strong men today telling Jesus I do, up out of the clean, getting stronger. They didn’t fall. Slippery floor they stand and against the stagger they stood and they said Now, I belong to Jesus.

And then that cocoon…

…oh what emerges. The butterfly…flying, and don’t we all know that story? That beauty of when Heaven came down?

And we weep with joy.

But we weep with sadness too. At the weight of what death leaves behind. The shell.

But when it emerges, when we watch for it, if we look and see, search for it with all our hearts….

…in the falling we can still find the beauty. Right there in the weight of it all, right there in the sadness…

…glory fills our souls.

…weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. Psalm 30:5

© Cassandra Rankin, This Crazy Little Farm

Last Day of a Decade

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My life is no longer than the width of my hand. An entire lifetime is just a moment to you; human existence is but a breath.  Psalm 39:5

On the last dIphone photos Summer 2013 501ay of her twenties it was all new.

New in the marriage that, at a decade old, was starting to change. New in the child that was not yet two. New in the friends that were coming into her life. New in not working the job she once loved to instead work each day in her warm old house. New in the baby that was still at her breast.

And it was especially new in the Book she was reading, that anthology of 66 that was teaching her so many things…so, so many of them…all brand new.

New ways of living. New ways of learning. New ways of growing. New ways of reacting. New ways of saying yes. New ways of saying no. New ways of trusting.

She was fresh up from the water.

New.

And when she turned thirty, her friends came and her husband smiled and her heart beamed. And she wondered.

The old could still cling on.

She wasn’t sure what the pull inside was exactly, it just felt…new.

So she kept following it. Even when the old pulled on.

Then two more babies later, and many more times in that Book, through that Book…late night prayers and late night tears and missing him when he had to go to work, sometimes far away, and loving him when he came home, and smiling when he too came up fresh out of the water, and learning how those children grow and how they act and how they love and what makes them giggle…and praying, praying all the years along and then one day soon before she knows it…

…it’s the last day of another decade.

And it’s not the old kind of new anymore.

It feels like a different kind of new.

A comfortable new. A familiar new. A warm new.

An old new.

It might not be a new new but in this life, isn’t every day new?

A sunrise, a good morning smile, jobs waiting, chores to be done, friends to be made, people to love. Another day, just one day, fresh, ours, air into the lungs, God into the heart.

New.

The old can still cling on, but not so much anymore.

The last day of her thirties she smiled the whole day through.

Through the leaky roof and the chores and the blue tarp and the mud and the rain that just went on and on.

When her boy, not near two now, but near on twelve, did the wet and cold and messy man work on the farm while his Daddy worked hard for their paycheck, her heart smiled and she thought of him as a toddler. Back then he liked to help Mama bake cookies, his strong mama who held him tight. He liked to help her do the fun work of homemaking. Now he likes to help his mama with the hard work, the ugly work of farm making. She doesn’t have to be so strong when he’s there. Almost a man he shows her.

And her heart smiles joy.

That girl, that baby just a decade ago, she tends too, but she tends tender and keeps the young ones inside, warm and dry and away from the parts of farm life that just might hurt a heart too young. She protects without even knowing that’s what she’s doing and because she does, they get a little more time to just be little. Almost a mama that girl could be.

And her heart smiles love.

Those other two, precious babies, so tall now but always her babies, coming in the first half of the decade, they hold her heart and make her smile. Growing so big. But still so fresh. So young. So new.

And her heart smiles peace.

And that old that clings on doesn’t cling so tight.

And the new she feels is an older new.

A wiser new.

A thankful new.

What can another decade bring? This marriage, still new but almost crossing the two-decade line; these children, growing so strong, learning so much, changing each minute;  these friends, holding her up, making her laugh and growing with her year by year, what more could come?

What new could come?

Could it be here in that Book? That Book, that 66 volume Book, old but so fresh.

Alive.

Active.

Ancient.

New.

She flips through its pages that last week and realizes how much more she wants to learn. There is so much more to know about Him, that One who wrote it for her, for all of them, and she looks forward to a whole new decade of learning…reading…studying…growing.

The old that clings on now is the old that smiles.

Her history.

The path that brought her round on to Him.

The road to Jesus that marched her straight through her thirties. That two-track that feels like the road she always wanted to take…the road she never wants to veer off of.

She feels the pull and it still feels…new.

New ways of living. New ways of learning. New ways of growing. New ways of reacting. New ways of saying yes. New ways of saying no. New ways of trusting.

How much more can another decade bring when the past ten years brought so much?

Those are the things she ponders up in her heart on that day….

… the last day of a decade.

Ancient words ever true…Changing me and changing you…We have come with open hearts…Oh, let the ancient words impart…Image