Stir

To stir is to gently mix a liquid/substance by moving an implement like a spoon around in it. To stir will blend the ingredients of the liquid. One of the interesting things about stirring things is that we stir them together and it is almost impossible to then get the ingredients apart again. I really don’t know how we could get the milk out of the cake dough or the milk out of the coffee, once stirred. So stirring is a powerful combiner

To stir things up is also to do the opposite of combine. A group of people are meeting/talking and someone loudly says something that is highly controversial. That can stir up the group and get people to taking up sides on the topic, maybe even fighting. That is not combining. This kind of stirring also mixes things up in a way that can be very hard to un-mix. What is it like to have someone stir you in this way?

There can be positive and negative stirring. To be stirred into action on human rights can be a positive thing. Could also be negative if it includes violence etc. This stirring thing, me thinks it is in the mind. I am prodded by something and decide to act, to move. That moving is the result of a thought and it is the thought that was the stirring instrument. I can stir folks sometimes, so can you. Which way do you like to stir?

Emile Waldteufel was stirred to write a waltz by watching figure skaters gliding across the ice. Now, when we listen to his music we are stirred to feel and envision skaters. His symphonic music piece is a classic called the Skater’s Waltz. The skaters stirred his imagination and musical muse. From that he wrote the music that now stirs all of us. So, sometimes one stir begets a return stir. Fun

We respond to being stirred with an emotion. I can feel a stir to write a poem, and I do write about crocus every Spring. Those lovely early splashes of colour stir me into action. I send my poem to many, many people and most are in turn stirred into a happier view of the rest of winter. The arrival of the crocus stir me to write. Others read and are stirred to smile a little bit more. “Stir on!”, I say. It seems a good thing.