My Treasures

I went out to lunch the other day to catch up with my friend Sammi, who had just passed her A levels. She was telling me about the poem 'If' by Rudyard Kipling; which she had read alongside other poems lately to keep her mind challenged since she had stopped revising for her A levels. I read it today and I did find it was an interesting poem with mind-probing ideas and written well. I decided to entertain myself by reading a few more poems and stumbled across this poem that I

enjoyed reading therefore I thought I would share it with you.

MY TREASURES by Robert Louis Stevenson

These nuts, that I keep in the back of the nest,

Where all my tin soldiers are lying at rest,

Were gathered in Autumn by nursie and me

In a wood with a well by the side of the sea.

This whistle we made (and how clearly it sounds!)

By the side of a field at the end of the grounds.

Of a branch of a plane, with a knife of my own,

It was nursie who made it, and nursie alone!

The stone, with the white and the yellow and grey,

We discovered I cannot tell HOW far away;

And I carried it back although weary and cold,

For though father denies it, I'm sure it is gold.

But of all my treasures the last is the king,

For there's very few children possess such a thing;

And that is a chisel, both handle and blade,

Which a man who was really a carpenter made

What I love about this poem is that it took me right back to when I was a child and would find something small and insignificant to others but to me it was so special and valuable, giving me so much joy to have. That is a wonderful ability that most children have, no wonder they have so much fun. This also gives one of many reasons to explain why God wants us to become like children to enter His kingdom. When I on purpose look for the beauty around me, I find God does reveal so much more little things that people tend to overlook because of the 'busyness syndrome' that I do receive a lot of joy from. Perspective is everything I'm coming to learn. On another note if you have any poems that you liked reading, share them with me! I'd love to check them out :)

Can you hear the sirens?

It's funny how something starts to feel all the more of a serious issue when it reaches your 'own front door'. Last night facebook was bursting with constant updates of London's residents reporting news of the riots spreading. On Saturday night, a riot erupted in Tottenham in what seemed to be in response to a police shooting of a man named Mark Duggan. Police cars, buses and buildings burnt to a crisp, shops looted and smashed, people injured physically and emotionally. In the media, the Duggan family declared that they did not condone any of this violence. By Sunday, the riots were spreading to other areas such as Enfield, Chingford, Ponders End, Islington and my own areas of Walthamstow and Leyton. My boyfriend's place of work, Tesco, was smashed and looted; with the unprotected night staff running to get to safety. I highly think that the people that are carrying on the riots now actually don't seriously care about the death of Mark but are just using the events in Tottenham as a greedy and careless excuse. It makes me feel so sad that people can want to do this. Eventually a lot of them will get caught as there has to be loads of CCTV cameras. As I laid in bed, the sound of sirens whirled from outside. Time to pray.