Love | The Direction of Intention

Do It For Yourself [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on January 11, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

I have been writing long enough to know that there are sedimentary layers to my themes. The top layer, the most superficial, is the political layer, current events. I am not above shouting into the storm. When I run to the keyboard and ring the alarm or presume that my point of view is relevant enough to roundly criticize others, I know that, above all, I’m breaking the first rule of happiness: I can never determine what another person thinks or does or feels. On my superficial days, in my ranting, I write for myself.

When I was at my saddest, I set about looking for goodness. I walked the streets of Seattle with the single intention of counting acts of kindness. As you might suspect there were more than I could count. In this world where we story ourselves as aggressive, unthinking and unkind, we are remarkably compassionate. Good will is simply more difficult to see. It is not the focus. The deeper layers of my writing-archaeology emerge when I direct my attention, when I exercise the artist in me and attempt to see beyond what I think. Since these are the layers where I desire to live and work, I suppose it is also true that on those days I also write for myself.

It is a looping life-lesson for me: I have the capacity to choose where I place my focus. I will see in the dark ocean where I decide to shine my light. I will author myself according to what/where I decide to give my focus. It is, among other things, why the film ABOUT TIME is among my favorite movies.

Lately, as one of our get-through-the-pandemic-winter-strategies, we’ve taken to assembling jigsaw puzzles. Entire evenings disappear into our intense pursuit of pieces. Our puzzle sessions require absolute focus – all of the other nonsense and monsters that vie to plague our brains are banished. Our focus is so thorough that we rarely speak. We do, however, listen to the soundtrack of ABOUT TIME. Again and again. When it finishes, one of us walks to the CD player (yes…we play CDs) and play it again. Sometimes we don’t make it past the first track, Ben Fold’s THE LUCKIEST. “Do you mind?” one of us asks. It’s a rhetorical question. It warms us so a repeat is always welcome.

Sitting at the dining room table, hunting for bits of colored cardboard, with the soundtrack playing, all things come into focus. While the surface-layer is on fire with a circus of instability, a pandemic, a climate that is changing, all jobs gone, a broken wrist that is not mending,…the deeper layer beckons: DogDog sits under the table, BabyCat is asleep on the chair, 20 just called and made us laugh, a postcard from Jen made us cry, my phone dinged with a text from a dear friend. I look across the table at my wife, pursing her lips as she plucks a piece of the puzzle from the table and attempts to make it fit, and I know to my bones that I am the luckiest.

To see it or not to see it; it’s my choice.

read Kerri’s blog post about REPEAT

Filed under: Love, Merely A Thought Monday, Seeing | Tagged: about time, artist, artistry, Ben Folds, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, focus, focus placement, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, presence, Richard Curtis films, seeing, storying, The Luckiest, themes | Leave a comment »

Root In Love [on DR Thursday]

Posted on December 24, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

The truth is that I loved drawing Chicken Marsala. There was the cartoon strip and there was the single panel variation. Chicken strips and chicken nuggets…we are clever that way. The syndicates entertained them for a minute but they ultimately went nowhere. We put them on the pile and moved on to other ideas.

Unlike the million-and-one other ideas stacked on the pile, Chicken occasionally calls. “Have a look,” he whispers, “just for yourself.” He called to us this week. Out of the blue. I’m so glad he did.

It seems that life offers a variety of possible roots from which to choose. Chicken’s call, root in love, might seem like so much cotton candy but I distinctly remember drawing this nugget and considering all the facets of love. Once, out of love, I screamed at a child running into the street. He cried and, when he stopped running, I cried, too. Love can be fierce.

The first time I laid eyes on Kerri we linked arms and skipped through the airport. Love can be spontaneous and ancient at the same time.

Tonight, just like last night and the night before, DogDog will lay on our bed and wait for us. He will feign exhaustion but his tail will wag as we approach the room. We’ll scratch his ears, give him a belly-belly, some gentle words, and he will jump down and get into his crate. Love can be tender.

Kerri and I are in the ashes-phase of our phoenix-cycle. I think that is the reason Chicken called. It’s in the ashes that other roots make themselves available. Cynicism. Anger. Why-bother. All roots ultimately lead back to the main but that’s sometimes hard to see with ashes in your eyes. Love is the main root. “Why waste your time?” Chicken asked. “You’ll get there sooner-or-later so why not choose sooner?”

That Chicken! He’s a smart boy. Simple. He cuts-to-the-chase.

I think that’s probably why I loved drawing him so much.

read Kerri’s blog post about ROOT IN LOVE

this Chicken print [and others] are available on society6.com

chicken marsala ©️ 2016 david robinson & kerri sherwood

Filed under: DR Thursday, Love | Tagged: ashes, chicken marsala, Chicken nugget, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, phoenix rising, root, root in love, society6.com/chickenmarsala | Leave a comment »

Follow The Lights [on KS Friday]

Posted on December 18, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

Before moving to Wisconsin I had no holiday tradition. Being “not religious,” my celebrations were more spontaneous and improvisational than rooted in any specific custom or expectation. Dinners with friends. One year I baked bread with strangers. One year I took a boat to an island because there was a hot springs by the beach. One year, because I was alone and life was crumbling all around me, I scheduled for myself 30 coaching calls; that was the most memorable and profound holiday season of my life. I helped people. I met Kerri.

Since moving to Wisconsin my holiday tradition has been to help Kerri create choir performances for services. When I suggest that I helped, I mean I carried stuff, set up chairs, pushed pianos, moved bells into the choir loft, set up microphones, hauled big bowls of sand for candles. I am part Sherpa. It has been the busiest and zaniest time of the year. After playing the late night Christmas Eve service – the last of many running through the week, we come home, and with our neighbors, light luminaria up and down the street, pull two fire pits onto the driveway and stoke them for warmth. We open bottles of wine and place on a table bowls of snacks. People come and, huddled around the fire, we talk and laugh until the cold wee-hours of the morning.

This year, with the loss of jobs and collapse of community, with the pandemic spiking, our traditions are erased. For me, this feels like familiar territory. For Kerri, it is a profound loss and is disorienting. She had a full-on-old-fashioned-melt-down a few nights ago after cutting her finger on a broken wine glass. “It’s too much…” she sobbed. I couldn’t help but feel as she wept that I/We have walked a full-circle. Eight years later, life is again crumbling all around me/us. This could be the most memorable and profound holiday season of our lives. I didn’t offer my thoughts. I have learned in moments of crisis that silence is often more helpful than platitudes of encouragement. I am slow but sometimes I get there.

Leo had a Christmas tradition that I admired. He gave everyone in his circle an orange and a few walnuts. He grew up very poor and, as a child, those were the gifts he received. It was the most and best gifts that his parents could give. Throughout his long and successful life, he gave them to remind himself – and those he loved – that the holiday was not about the stuff. It was about the people who stand in the circle with you, the people who stand in the fire with you. The people who you love, who give all that they have: their hearts. An orange. A few walnuts. Big, big love.

This year, those people will stand virtually with us and we with them. The hot fire of this year has burned away the superficial. The recognizable patterns have all but disappeared. Yet, the essentials remain. The essential few remain. Deeply rooted. Deeply felt.

The cycle of life, the cycle of The Lights in Kerri’s song, reminds us of all that really matters. New life, linking back. Ancient hearts beating in our breasts. Full of light. Full of big, big love.

Kerri’s albums – including the lights – are available on iTunes

read Kerri’s blog post about THE LIGHTS

Share Fatherhood (morsel), prints and more available on society6.com

the lights ©️ 1996 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Family, Gratitude, Identity, KS Friday, Love | Tagged: community, customs, friends, holiday season, holiday traditions, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, loss, love, new traditions, pandemic, the lights, The Lights A Christmas Album, traditions | Leave a comment »

Wander Room To Room [on DR Thursday]

Posted on October 29, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

As a dedicated introvert who requires a great deal of personal space, it is one of the great surprises of my life that Kerri and I spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week together. And I like it. No, check that. I love it. We work together. We write together. We cook together. We create together. We walk together. We read together.

We didn’t plan or force our constant contact. We didn’t evolve into it. Hand-in-hand has been our way since the moment we met and skipped our way through the airport.

DogDog and BabyCat have, of course, grown accustomed to our togetherness. They are patterned to it and find it deeply unsettling if we are apart. So it was unnerving when Kerri flew to Colorado to visit Kirsten.

They wandered room to room looking for her. They’d periodically stop at my drafting table and look to me for an explanation. Nothing I said brought solace. I decided to wander with them. We cycled through the rooms of the house, looking, looking, looking. “Where is she? Where’s momma?” I’d ask after each loop and we’d make another pass through the house. Their hope never flagged. This time we will find her!

I’d like to report that, in her absence, we drank beer, ate pizza, played our music way-too-loud, and basically tore up the joint. Boys will be boys. But, we didn’t. We walked many miles, searching. We made a book chronicling our experiences of missing her, a gift for her return.

I had a call with Arnie this week. As we talked I watched DogDog circle the yard, clearing it of marauding squirrels and other potential threats to our safety. I listened to BabyCat’s way-too-loud snoring. Kerri was on a Zoom call in the other room. I wondered aloud about how much of my life I’ve tossed away at the idea that anything I-ever-achieve really matters or will matter. How many of my todays have I lost in pursuit of an imagined tomorrow?

Despite the lost jobs, the broken wrists, the out-of-reach healthcare, the pandemic,…all is right in the world right now. I know it because DogDog, BabyCat and I are not wandering room to room.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE MEETING OF THE MINDS

Filed under: DR Thursday, Family, Love | Tagged: appreciating life, appreciation, BabyCat, chronicle, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dog and cat, Dog-Dog, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, presence, present, sketches | Leave a comment »

Fill In The Blanks [on KS Friday]

Posted on October 23, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

Richard Stone from The StoryWork Institute often begins his workshops with this prompt: I come from a people who_______________, and from them I learned_________________. It’s a fast-track statement, a mainline revelation to the place you come from.

I thought a lot about this prompt during our recent trip to Colorado and visit with my parents. I come from people who persevere.

I was moved to tears over and over again watching the deep well of calm, the kind patience my mother taps as she travels with my father through his dementia. She is more solid than she knows, more steady in her root than she has ever realized.

Her father had his leg kicked off by a horse. He fashioned his own prosthetic leg – it looked more hoof than foot. He fashioned new gas and brake pedals for his car, a matching pedal for his bike. He did not slow down. He did not invest in self-pity or the notion of a disability. His missing limb became a new ability, a reason to invent.

My mother’s mother was a study in joy-within-difficult-circumstances. She grew up in a gold mining camp. She was a tiny person with a titanic spirit and bottomless capacity to laugh. She once took a neighbor’s horse and hid it in her kitchen because she caught wind that it was due to be shipped off to the glue factory.

I come from a people who keep walking and laughing in the face of hardship. And from them I learned [and continue to learn] perseverance. I will, with a little more resolve, I hope, develop the patience and discover the kindness that both my parents, my rich lineage, reveals.

It’s where I’m from.

WHERE I’M FROM from the album BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL is available on iTunes

read Kerri’s blog post on WHERE I’M FROM

where i’m from/blueprint for my soul ©️ 1996 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Family, Gratitude, KS Friday, Love | Tagged: blueprint for my soul, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, family, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, origins, patience, perseverance, roots, Where I'm From | Leave a comment »

Appreciate The Moment [on KS Friday]

Posted on October 16, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

The Final On-The-Road Haiku. A triple. Kerri’s chose this piece before we drove from home and it’s especially appropriate for this week.

We toured the basement.

“Look, this is my son,” he said.

Family picture.

He did not know me,

“He is his own man,” he said.

Dementia owns him.

The sweetest moment:

hearing tales of me, his son,

standing by his side.

Grateful on the album AS IT IS is available on iTunes

read Kerri’s blog post about GRATEFUL

grateful/as it is ©️ 2004 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Gratitude, KS Friday, Love | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dementia, father/son, grateful, Gratitude, grief, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, solo piano | Leave a comment »

Ask The Real Question [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 21, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Through a lack of love everything hardens. There is nothing as lonely in the world as that which has hardened or grown cold. Bitterness and coldness are the ultimate defeat.” ~ John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

We just watched a news segment about Taiwan’s successful response to COVID-19. At the heart of their response, the reporter said, is a sense of social solidarity. Social solidarity; we are all in this together.

American’s celebrate their independent spirit which leads them to the delusion that they can go-it-alone. Watching documentaries and television shows of people living remotely in the great Alaskan frontier, I’m always aware of the manufactured rifles and bullets, the chain saws, clothes and coats from the store, boots and knives and rope and gas…participation in an economy. There is an entire web of support, hundreds of human beings making possible even the most dedicated illusion of the cowboy spirit.

It’s where we get it wrong. We are blind to our reliance on each other. An economy is more than the production and consumption of goods and services. It is a living, breathing web of interconnection.

Income gaps are descriptors of belief. Terms like “consumer behavior” are scrubbed, antiseptic descriptions of relationship, ethics, communal participation. The story is told in the economics. How the money flows defines the legislation: who starves, who prospers, how we support each other or not. Who has access to power and who does not.

Every-man-for-himself is not only a cold and bitter road, it is also a fantasy. The isolation of every hermit is made possible by the production of others. The existence of a leisure class is not possible without a successful working class. Prosperity is a team sport, especially in a capitalist economy.

No one walks this life alone so the real question is how we want to walk it?

These once-united-states have grown cold. We are hardened. We are divided. Fewer and fewer feel the wealth. There are no rules that apply, no ethic to the game of governance. Fearful and angry people are easily led into wild tales of deep states. Neighbors become enemies. Economies teeter and fall when balance is ignored. No one thrives for long in a bitter divide.

The ultimate defeat is ours. No garden grows in hard soil. We will have required no enemy invasion, no conqueror breaking down the gate or overrunning the ramparts. All that was required was to turn our backs on each other. To think we are two distinct teams, and need to win over the other at all cost, no-holds-barred and no rules apply, go it alone, protect the freedom of the individual with nary an understanding that no individual survives in a vacuum.

It is a lonely supper, indeed, at a table for one.

read Kerri’s blog post about CARING

Filed under: Identity, Love, Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective | Tagged: capitalistic republic, covid 19, cowboy spirit, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, divide, economics, economy, individualism, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, social economics, social solidarity, solidarity | Leave a comment »

Give Light [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on September 8, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

“What is to give light must endure burning.” ~ Viktor Frankel

We walked downtown a few days after the fires. We decided it was time to go see for ourselves what had happened in our town only a few blocks from our home. In truth, the sound of speeches ringing through the neighborhood drew us. We were already walking when we first heard them. We couldn’t understand what they were saying or where exactly they were coming from so we followed the sound. The amplified voices and cheering bounced off the buildings and sometimes seemed to be coming from all directions.

We followed the echo to the street that runs by the civic center. From a distance we could see the crowd. ACLU observers wearing blue vests roamed the area. There was a first aid center. Tables were manned to distribute water to the crowd. When we saw the burned out car lot Kerri took out her camera and began taking pictures. “Why did they burn this?” she asked. Yes. Why?

It is uniquely human to ask why. To need an explanation. We attempt to record and document. To gather evidence. All in the pursuit of sense-making. To find meaning. And, if no meaning is easily found, no readily graspable answer to “Why?” is available, it is among our greatest human powers to make it.

To make meaning. To find meaning.

Viktor Frankel, a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, asked “Why did some people survive and some not? He looked for an attribute that favored survival in such extreme, random and deadly conditions. He concluded that, after sheer luck, survival in the camps favored people who made meaning from their circumstance. The people who sought meaning from their circumstance soon lost hope. He wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

On the hood of one of the burned out cars someone had stenciled this appeal: Let’s Be Better Humans. What might it take for us to be better humans?

When I was in elementary school great pains were taken to teach me how to be a good human and function in a civilized society. Wait for my turn. Open the door for someone with their hands full. Help where you can. Listen to others. Raise my hand before speaking. All of these simple lessons shared one thing in common, a specific organizing principle: consider others. Be considerate to others. Good humans are mindful and cooperative.

All of these simple lessons ran contrary to the rules I was taught about succeeding in the world: it’s dog-eat-dog. It’s a fierce competition. Do whatever it takes. In other words, it’s every man and woman for themselves. It’s just business.

So, like all of us, I’ve wrestled with the national schizophrenia: I can either be a good human and consider others or I can succeed. Not both. Said another way: in order to succeed I have to abandon my goodness.

As is the case with most either/or framing, it is a false choice. Money need not be absent of morality. Success can be the blossom of compassion.

It is important as we stand at this national crossroad, this opportunity for reckoning with our past, that we look at this polarity, that we step into the gaps between all of the false choices, black and white. Our troubles will not go away until we attempt to live our rhetoric, until we unpin white success from black subjugation. Equality of opportunity, equal justice, equal (fill in the blank) has not been afforded all members of our community. To be better humans we need to challenge our either/or false choices and instead walk toward a center that includes a full spectrum of color, choices and opportunities for all.

If we can find our center, if we can challenge our rhetoric, we just might find our path to being better humans living in healthy inclusive society. In the end, we may even come to the same conclusion as did Viktor Frankel: “I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

read Kerri’s blog post about BE BETTER HUMANS

Filed under: Love, Perspective, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: cooperation, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, freedom, hope, Kenosha, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, meaning, meaning making, mindfulness, organizing principles, questioning, seekers, sense making, Viktor Frankl | Leave a comment »

Face In [on KS Friday]

Posted on August 28, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

figure it out copy

“…gentleness can be a greater force for transfiguration than any political, economic, or media power,…” ~ John O’Donohue

Here is my utopian fantasy: The protesters put down their signs, the police put down their shields, the militia drops their weapons, the citizens of all races, creeds, colors, political identities and economic stripes come out of their houses and hold hands facing into a circle of their creation. Nothing need be said. What are we protesting FOR if not this?

We are excellent at pushing against what we do not want. We are practiced at screaming in rabid reactivity. Finger pointing and blame is among our most popular Facebook pass times. We like to make noise and bluster about the violation of our rights and ignite fearmongering fires warning of imagined assaults on our amendments. Propaganda and lie make for good reality television ratings. They provide permission to smash glass, loot, denigrate “others” and give cover to murder in all its forms, but are lousy foundations for a civil and civilized society.

Truth is intentional, not reactive. It steps toward an ideal. It provides a national focal point, a guide-star that will not cotton with lie and propaganda.

We seem utterly inept, absolutely incapable at walking toward what we profess. Our ideal is printed on our dollar bills and chiseled into the facades of our buildings: e pluribus unum: out of many, one. Our division is chiseled into our history.

My utopian fantasy is not so hard to realize but notice it requires a common first step: a putting down of weapon and rhetoric and dedicated division. The second step is also not difficult: reach out, take the hand that is closest. Circle up with those who you most disagree. The third step may be the hardest: say nothing. Defend and justify nothing. Prove or claim nothing. Face in, not face off. The greatest intentions, like the most profound truths, are often silent. Step four: live the circle.

We can figure it out. It’s no greater matter than walking toward what we want, what we espouse, instead of forever pushing against what we do not want. Perhaps our first truth is to admit that there is a lie built into what we chisel in walls and what we actually live. We need to intend oneness if we are to realize our central ideal.

Doc Rivers, a black man and coach of the LA Clippers said this yesterday: “It’s amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back.” Love. Love back. There is no better or simpler statement of intention. Walk toward it.

He also famously said, “Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth.” His dictum applies to nations as well as players: great nations want to be told the truth. Average nations want to be left alone.

FIGURE IT OUT on the album RIGHT NOW is available on iTunes

read Kerri’s blog post about FIGURE IT OUT

Filed under: Awakening, Emergence, KS Friday, Love, Possibility, The Direction of Intention, Transcendence, Uncategorized | Tagged: circle, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, Doc Rivers, figure it out, ideal, intention, John O"Donohue, Kenosha, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lie, love, propaganda, right now, silence, transcendence, transfiguration, transformation, truth, utopia | Leave a comment »

Close The Distance [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on August 12, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

you hate me framed copy

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ~ Rumi

John O’Donohue wrote that spirituality has to do with the transfiguration of distance. “At the heart of spirituality is the awakening of real presence.” Here. Now. His message is about our busy minds that incessantly create separation. Busy minds create obstacles and keep us seeking. If we are lucky, as the old cliche’s goes, after the long search we learn that we had “it” all along. Separation is the creation of distance. Presence is the elimination of distance. Love is the absence of distance.

The transfiguration of distance is the power and purpose of art.

On our walk through downtown we saw this message stenciled on a wall: You hate me. There is no greater distance-creating word than “hate.” You. Me. Hate is the creation of distance between us.

One of the Hermitic Laws is the Principle of Correspondence: As above, so below; as below, so above. As within, so without; as without, so within. Applying the principle, if hate is the word you place between you and me then it is likely that hate is the word you place between you and you. It is nigh-on impossible to hate me without first hating yourself.

Doug used to tell me that health was determined by the distance between who say you are and how you actually live; the shorter the distance the healthier the person. As without, so within. Applying Doug’s rule, our nation has been distinctly unhealthy for a very long time. We are currently witness to the illness (once again) breaking through the skin. Any physician worth their salt would tell us we have an acute distance problem and health will come when, as a nation, we close the gap and live what we espouse.

I am reminded of an exercise I used to facilitate. Step one: Walk about the space and point at the others in the group and say, “NOT LIKE ME.” Step two: Walk about the space and point at others in the group and say, “LIKE ME.” Step three: Walk about the space and point at others in the group and say, “ME.” Step one is a rejection. Step two becomes an appeal. Step three is a recognition. Step three always brought whispers and a profound shedding of distance.

Rejection. Appeal. Recognition. What is the distance between you and you? What is the distance between you and me?

“From a distance you only see my light; as I get closer and you see that I am you.” ~ Rumi

read Kerri’s blog post about YOU HATE ME.