Truly Powerful People | The Direction of Intention

Live The Metaphor

Posted on August 25, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

884. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

It’s 3am and I am wide awake.

I have been goading Horatio for years to write a screenplay called 3am Man. It’s about a man who can’t sleep. He is troubled about the events of his life and his insomnia drives him to the streets and he makes a pass through the culture of the night. After months of walking through the underbelly of the world he finds peace and sleep. I think the story is Greek in scope. It’s Orpheus descending into the underworld. He’s torn to bits and resurrected (put back together again). It is Osiris, the same story from an earlier mythology. It’s a universal cycle of life.

Mythologies are not dusty old stories. They are metaphors of our personal stories, the stories of our lives. If you know how to read them they can be enormously helpful during times of being lost or alone. They can help orient you when life is spinning you around. In this lifetime we will all be torn to bits and put back together again, more aware, and usually with a new assignment. This is the story of the year past for me. I’m like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. I lost my stuffing. Now, having been torn to bits and in the process of reassembly, I can help Horatio write his screenplay because I understand.

I used to work at this time of night. I found it peaceful to paint while the world slept. It’s almost as if the frenetic psychic energy of the daylight hours scrambled me. I found peace, clarity and an open channel in the quiet. Tonight, in this quiet, I am sitting in a house that is being pulled apart, the possessions of a lifetime pulled apart, put into boxes and divided among relatives. If I understand my mythology correctly, even this process of a life torn to bits will ultimately lead to reassembly somewhere down the road. New life will come of it. Energy will take another form.

Filed under: Energy, Identity, Metaphor, Story, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Seek The Small Moments

Posted on August 24, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

883. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

On one wall of the room where I am staying are dozens of photographs that stretch back 5 or more generations. There are so many photographs of couples posing on their wedding day. Those same couples are in photos taken many years later – they are parents standing with their children who are posing for their wedding photograph. I look at the wall and I see people who had hopes and dreams, people who worked and triumphed and fell. I see the stuff of life: relationship. As I looked at each photograph, scrutinized the faces of lives gone by, to wonder what these people did for a living. I asked questions about the faces and names and heard many stories of these lives-gone-by. Not once did I hear about work or a job. I heard about relationship. I heard stories of foibles and forgiveness. I heard about dreams gone awry and dreams fulfilled. I heard about personal triumph and happiness that came late in life. I heard lots of stories about love lost and found. I heard many stories of small moments.

Skip and I are working on software that will help sustain and maintain family story. All summer I’ve been asking questions of families about what would be useful to capture. What would help, not only to archive but to make a dynamic personal and family story? Beyond a photo album or a genealogy of static dates, what would you like to know of your ancestors? What would you like your children’s children to know about you beyond your birth and death dates?

In this past week I lost Tom and with him a lifetime of wisdom and story. I have some of it. In this past month I attended a family gathering celebrating my father’s 80th birthday; we spent 5 days telling stories and sharing pictures, 5 days passing the stories to the next generation. This week I am helping pack Beaky’s home. She is 92 and in a rehabilitation facility. She’ll never return to her home and her children and grandchildren are sorting through her possessions but more importantly they are telling stories of her life. Each pot and pan carries a memory and is an opportunity for, “Do your remember when…?” It’s the small stuff, the little things that make a life full and the meaning is carried through the relationships we mostly take for granted.

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Have Faith

Posted on August 22, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

882. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

In the past two days I’ve journeyed from Indianapolis to Tampa. With the exception of Kentucky I’ve traveled a corridor of this country that I had not before seen.

In Tennessee there was a rainstorm so intense that every car on the freeway pulled over. It was impossible to see. The storm came and left within fifteen minutes and when it was gone I thought I’d dreamed it. I saw a sunset in Georgia that included colors I’d never before seen. I gasped. Literally. I have no way of describing the shades of pink, purple and orange that melted through the sky. If I made up names for paint colors they’d be something like lavender explosion, sensational salmon pink (I’m laughing in disgust, too), and crisp aspen orange.

There’s nothing like a long road trip to pull you out of the everyday numbness and re-excite presence. If you put away your gadgets and look out the window you’ll see an endless number of adventures beckoning. Every little side road is a temptation. Every roadside attraction or vegetable stand begs you to stop and have a conversation. Every community is an opportunity to explore or merely linger. Although there are Cracker Barrel restaurants everywhere in this part of the country – and I religiously avoid the mass-produced – I’d never been in one so we stopped, ran inside, and played with every toy. We laughed at the candy I’d not seen since I was a kid (there was a huge box of double bubble bubble gum!). We ate BLT’s and chatted with the women stocking the shelves. There was no hurry to get going. There was no place else to be.

I read a phrase recently in Brida, a novel by Paulo Coehlo, that every moment of our lives is an act of faith. We never know what the next moment will bring – even though we like to believe that we do. Even though we convince ourselves that we’ve done this before and that we are bored, in truth, we never know what the next moment holds and we step into it anyway. I think road trips bring us closer to that truth. Each step every day is a step into the unknown. Every day is packed full of the new when we stop pretending that we’ve been here before. I’ve never lived this day. I will never have this day again. I have no idea what it will bring. I will step into it anyway.

Filed under: Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: presence | Leave a comment »

Share The Quilt

Posted on August 20, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

881. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Linda led me around her house and told me stories of her quilts. She has a large atrium with dozens of quilts draped over the balcony. There are quilts on every bed in the house. “This one my grandmother made for me on my 5th birthday,” she said. “Grandma died shortly after that so I never really knew her. That’s why I cherish this quilt.”

She explained to me that many people are shocked to see her family quilts in use or displayed. “They tell me that they’ll get ruined or the colors will fade.” She paused for a moment and added, “But I think these were made to be used and seen, not to be tucked away in some closet. Life is meant to be lived, not preserved.”

This has been one of the lessons of this past year: Life is meant to be lived, not preserved or maintained or suffered or controlled or endured. It sounds like a cliché. You will find the phrase on greeting cards everywhere. But ask yourself, “Why do we have to remind ourselves that life is meant to be lived?”

I’m learning that living life fully is impossible if you have cut yourself off from your root. Living life fully requires a deep and solid root system that supports your arms as they reach to the sky and drink in the sun. Linda is surrounded by her legacy. She cannot tell me about the quilts without telling me of the people who made them and the moment she received them. Her roots are alive and well. She lives fully. You can tell by the sparkle in her eyes.

“The one on the bed where you are sleeping was made by mother. She loved to quilt and so do I,” Linda smiled. “Here’s the thing,” she said, “quilting takes time and attention, something most people don’t have enough of these days.”

Filed under: Love, Story, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

See The Hope

Posted on August 19, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

880. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I am deep in the woods in Indiana. It is night and the crickets and frogs are thunderous, pulsing. There are no city lights blotting out the stars so the night sky is vibrant and shimmering. Coyotes howl in the distance.

Bill and I have been talking all evening about hope. His focus is on health care and the movements that are circumventing the established systems. I have been talking about education and the power of access via the web to level the playing field for all people.

We sat on the porch until we were cold and then moved our conversation inside. We talked about how we are living in the greatest period of change in the history of humanity. We are living in the age when the line has blurred between science fiction and ordinary existence. In times of great change the old established systems grab on for dear life. They try to strangle the new. That is how systems change. The old fears the new. The old cannot recognize the power and potency of the new. The caterpillar can never truly see or understand the butterfly. And, since we are seeing so many white knuckles on the establishment, there is reason to celebrate. The butterfly is coming.

Filed under: Emergence, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

Know Your Root

Posted on August 18, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

879. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

With Tom’s death yesterday I’ve been thinking about legacy. So many people called me today to make sure that I knew of his passing. I’ve had many wonderful and brief conversations with people who knew what Tom meant to me. All of them said, “His passing has left a hole….”

Tom taught me more about the theatre and teaching and story than any other person. He was my great mentor and later my friend. The irony is that I never saw him direct a play (I caught a rehearsal or two) or teach a class. I did, however, spend hours and hours listening to him tell stories. Tom was an amazing storyteller. I spent hours asking him questions. I carry forward his philosophy of working. All of my work in education is sourced in Tom. Every time I stand in front of an audience and tell a story I carry him forward.

He liked to tell this story: When he was a little boy the 90-year old Countess Valencia would visit the ranch each Sunday to have a chat with his grandmother. The Countess was a local girl who’d married a count. They lived on a vast ranch nearby and the count was long dead. Because the Countess was too old to get out of the car, Tom’s grandmother would sit with her in the backseat. They’d have tea and talk. One Sunday, the Countess opened the car door and called Tom over. She asked him to sit in her lap. Tom said she was a little bird and brittle and he was afraid that she would break but he crawled into her lap never-the-less. She said to him, “I want you always to remember what I am about to tell you. This might not seem important to you now but it will later when you are old enough to understand.” She paused and said, “Thomas, you are sitting in the lap of someone who sat in the lap of Abraham Lincoln. He smelled of lilac water and saddle soap.”

He had a lifelong fascination for Abraham Lincoln. He read every book. He even looked a bit like Mr. Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln is not so far in the past. Two long lives stand between him and me.

Tom impacted more people than any other person I’ve since met. If I ever have or will tell you a story, I’ll be introducing you to Tom.

Filed under: Love, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: legacy | Leave a comment »

Lift A Glass To Tom

Posted on August 17, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

878. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Tom died this morning. I heard the news while standing at lands end, literally. I was at the end of a pier looking across the water when my phone rang. He would of loved the moment, the dramatics of the scene. I sat on a bench and talked with Marcia, Tom’s wife, and we talked about the good angels that were with her through the long months of his dying. His amazing beautiful mind scrambled into dementia and then his body let go and throughout the right help came just when she needed it. Life is extraordinary that way.

Many years ago, late one night, Tom and I were drinking white wine, and he suddenly turned to me and said, “I need your help. I have an obligation to Isabel and I don’t know how to fulfill it.” Isabel was his great grandmother, a woman he never met. She died 30 years before Tom was born but she was present with him all of his adult life. His obligation was to tell the story of Johnny, the son that Isabel lost to typhoid fever. Tom found plastered into the walls of the old ranch house a trunk of Johnny’s possessions. Isabel packed the trunk after Johnny died. People believed that the fever could be passed through possessions so Isabel was instructed to burn all evidence that Johnny existed. She couldn’t do it. She wrote notes that she placed with artifacts in the trunk and knew that someday, one of her descendants would find the trunk and tell Johnny’s story. Tom found the trunk when he was 52 years old. And, although he’d shared the trunk and Johnny’s story with scores of school children, he never felt that he’d honored his obligation to Isabel.

For a few years, every couple of months, I flew to California and spent a week with Tom. He unpacked the trunk for me and told me the stories. He took me to the graveyards and introduced me to his ancestors. He told me a tale of lost boys and covered wagons and an epic search for spirit. He took me to the land were his people settled and toiled and prospered and squandered their inheritance. Tom was the rememberer of his clan and because there was no one to pass the stories to, he passed them to me. Over and over he asked, “What am I going to do with that trunk?” We wrote a play for him to perform but his mind started to go before we could produce it.

Sitting at lands end, I smiled at the irony. I am 52 years old and the rememberer of a clan’s story – a clan that is not mine by blood. I knew this day was coming. I stare out across the water and of this I am certain: I do not know what to do with the trunk, either. But the right help will come along when I need it. And I need it. In the meantime, I’m going to get a good bottle of white wine and toast Tom and all that he taught me about life and the power of story.

Filed under: Story, Truly Powerful People | 1 Comment »

What Are You Saying?

Posted on August 16, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

877. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Here’s a funny collection of phrases from my box of funny collections. This set is about the word, “say.” Three little letters comprise a surprisingly powerful word. I imagine that we’ve each had these phrases used on us at least once. If you doubt the power of the word, “say,” sample the phrases below and remember the moment it was used with you:

If you don’t have anything to say, say nothing.

What do you have to say for yourself?

If you had a voice, what would you say?

Say what you think!

What do you want to say?

I wouldn’t say it if I were you.

Enough said! (past tense;-)

That goes without saying.

Say when!

Say It! Just say it!

What are you not saying?

Just for grins, look up the word “say” in the dictionary. To speak. To reveal. To express an opinion. To give voice. To influence. According to the data, most people would rather die than stand before a group of people and say what they think. How many times a day do you ask someone, “What are you thinking?” How often do you get a response other than, “Nothing.”

This year, each morning, I have asked myself a series of questions: What do you need to say? What are you not saying? What are your actions saying? What are you saying with your life? Do you need your life to say anything at all?

Filed under: Language, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

Follow Barney

Posted on August 15, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

876. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

It’s morning and I am sitting in the sun. I have coffee. There is a gentle breeze blowing off the water and rustling the leaves in the trees above me. The shadows are dancing. In the distance I hear a train, a mower, and some wind chimes. The birds are lively and playful. There is a pond to my left with a gentle fountain gurgling and adding to this morning’s symphony.

A few weeks ago I followed Barney up the hillside through the vineyard. Barney is jolly like Santa with roots, like Santa’s, that reach back to Odin. He is filled with laughter. On our way up the hill he plucked flowers, showed me roots, talked about soil and nutrients and cycles and seasons and energy and motion and force. He taught me about polarity and balance. Midway up the hill he stopped and said, “This is what people used to worship. It is life, concrete and tangible. Now we have this abstraction called spirituality.” The penny dropped for me. It’s sacred – all of it. That is no longer an ideal. It is tangible like soil and seeds.

Once in class, after leading a meditation, Alan and I talked with the class about the purpose of meditation. The purpose is not to take you away from reality but to bring you in to presence. Using meditation as an escape, to move away from the moment, is to protect yourself from presence.

Presence is word like paradigm: it is so overused, misused and abstracted that it has come to mean nothing. Be present. Be Quiet. Be. What does it mean to be present in an urban (urbane) world with clocks in every device, lists, lists, someplace else to be and something else to buy? How can presence be anything other than an abstraction when separate from the root? How can we understand presence when we do not experience it or ourselves as growing, changing, energy exchanging, vital, inhaling and exhaling, and full of life? It’s not an abstraction if you take your shoes off and stand in the dirt, feel the breezes, and listen.

Filed under: Awakening, Energy, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: presence | Leave a comment »

Invite The New

Posted on August 14, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

875. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

This morning I caught my first whiff of fall in the air. It was subtle yet distinct. There was a chill in the breeze, the scent of falling leaves, harvest and melancholy. People are running to the beaches or into the parks “for the last time” this season. What seemed boundless just a few weeks ago is now limited. I’m counting the number of times I hear, “I only have a few more days!” It is the limit that makes life precious.

For me the fall is the time of renewal. It is a time of new beginnings just as a new school year represents a new beginning. For the past week or so I’ve been meditating on what I want to invite into this new beginning. What energy am I bringing into the world and what energy do I wish to allow into my life? Last year at this time I was pulling things apart, melting down the known, stepping off the edge; I was inviting in chaos. I was opening the door to fire and hot transformation, to forge and anvil.

I am quieter now. I have no room for crazy-makers or backward looking. I have no room for my self-inflicted crazy-making. Once in a workshop a woman asked, “Why did it happen?” I responded, “The question ‘Why?’ doesn’t matter. It happened. What will you do going forward?” Sometimes to ask “Why?” keeps alive the pain-loop – it’s a great strategy for not taking the next step. The question “Why?” can be a swamp. Who knows why?

I have lived too many years of my life with my eyes in the rearview mirror asking “why?” The last year of my life makes no sense and I have spent an inordinate amount of time either looking for sense or trying to make sense of it. I can explain it fifteen different ways and many of the explanations are contradictory. None are true. All are true. In the end it will have the sense that I give it. It will have the energy that I assign to it. It will carry the sense that I invite into my life. Sense making is energy creation. It is a lens. So, I ask myself, “What is the energy that I want to bring into the world and what is the energy that I want to invite into my world?” I’ve had enough of fire. Now it is the time for breathing. Now is the time for inviting new breath and clean air.

Filed under: Emergence, Truly Powerful People | Leave a comment »

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