Spot The Angel [on KS Friday]

Posted on December 9, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

This is a true confession: one of my favorite holiday rituals is watching The Season of Miracles. Patty Duke plays an angel. Lynne Redgrave makes a cameo appearance that reaffirms my belief in justice. A young Mae Whitman steals my heart. I blubber at the ending every time, even though I know it’s coming. Who doesn’t want to love-blubber during the holidays?

This is another true confession: we’ve walked in and around Library Park dozens of times and never spotted the angel. She looks similar to the angel statue from the movie. I’d like to suggest that she’s usually hidden behind the foliage but that would be untrue. Apparently, we are not nearly as observant as we like to believe. Recently, on a walk to the post office, Kerri gasped and pointed. “It’s the angel from the movie!” she exclaimed. She wrinkled her brow and asked, “When did they put an angel there?”

She’s been there for quite awhile. She is a memorial statue for fallen soldiers from World War I. I’ve actually read the plaque at the base but, somehow, not noticed the angel atop the pillar.

In the movie, people have significant encounters with the angel-in-disguise. They turn away for a moment and she is gone. I’ve decided that we’re having the mirror of the movie experience. Our angel has been here all along, unnoticed. Hiding in plain sight. One day, we turned and she was present. Now, it’s impossible not to see her.

I’ve also decided to claim the angel-in-the-park as our metaphor. She’s been here all along, a guardian helping us on our fraught journey. She’s visible now because, like Patty Duke in the movie, we need an angel-nudge toward the best path forward. And who doesn’t want their good angel to be Patty Duke!

True confession: we’re very, very lucky.

read Kerri’s blogpost about ANGELS

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

this season/this season © 1998 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Gratitude, KS Friday, Metaphor, Seeing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Rest In It [on saturday morning smack-dab.]

Posted on November 19, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Each morning, after breakfast, Dogga retreats to the kitchen and sprawls near his bowl. It is the rendezvous spot, the place where he and BabyCat met each morning to snuggle and snooze. Every day, Dogga returns faithfully to their meeting spot. He doesn’t snooze. He waits.

BabyCat has been gone for over a year and a half. In our old house, at night, when a floor board upstairs creaks or thumps, I still think, “There’s that BabyCat!”

BabyCat was a BIG cat so there was lots of him to love. Like Dogga at the rendezvous spot, we know that big love never goes away. It’s always there – he’s always there – even if we can’t see him. We feel the love. It feels so good to find the right spot in the house, rest in it, and drink in that big warm wave of BabyCat love.

read Kerri’s blogpsot on this saturday morning smack-dab.

smack-dab. © 2022 kerrianddavid.com

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Learn The Lesson [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on December 2, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

the world will treat you royally copy

The exercise is simple: be an angel to someone for at least 3 hours.

There is only one rule: you can’t tell them what you are doing or why you are doing it.

When assigning the exercise, there is always one panic-question masked as two questions: What does it mean to be an angel/How do I do it? [pull the mask and the real question is: what will they think of me?]

There is only one answer to the question: What does it mean to you to be an angel? Do that.

After the exercise, there is always one post-angel observation: “It was scary at first and then it was really fun!”

After the exercise, there is always one post-angel revelation: “I received waaaay more than I gave.”

Receiving abundantly as the consequence of giving abundantly is the point of the exercise [in this case, define ‘exercise’ any way you want to].

This message is everywhere. It’s a Hermetic Principle. It’s cause and effect. It’s what we learned in kindergarten. It’s the message from grandmothers on every continent. It’s blow-back. It’s a Beatles lyric: the love you take is equal to the love you make. It’s an advertisement to sell Canadian Whiskey.

Because it’s ubiquitous, you’d think we’d have learned it by now. Perhaps we know it already but get hung up on the courage it takes to be an angel. Mean is easy. Division is as easy as falling off a log. Kindness takes a bit of pluck.

After the exercise, there is always one post-angel lesson: there are no sissy angels.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about LIVING GENEROUSLY

 

juiceglassesonHH website box copy

 

 

Filed under: Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Possibility, Seeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Touch An Angel [on KS Friday]

Posted on July 13, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

angel you are with photo song box copy

Kerri is thready. Important dates are always noticed and honored in our house. She is nearly Balinese in her attention to auspicious dates. Soon we will honor the life and loss of Wayne. Kerri’s brother Wayne passed away many years before I came into her life. I knew immediately about him. She adored him. He is certainly one of her good angels.

Through her stories and those memories warmly told by her family, I feel he is now one of my kindred spirits, too. Every once in a while, when I need a good bit of brotherly advice, I ask him questions – well, one question in particular (“What am I going to do with your sister?!! She’s out of control!”). He has yet to answer me but like all good angels I do hear him howling with laughter at her antics and my utter confusion.

On this KS Friday, reach for your good angels. Let Kerri’s song for Wayne put you on the back of his bike and take a ride into a special place and time with those you’ve loved and lost. Toast them with a good cup of java, as I do Wayne. From what I hear he was nearly as great a coffee lover as I am.

 

ANGEL YOU ARE on the album AS SURE AS THE SUN available on iTunes & CDBaby

 

read Kerri’s blog post about ANGEL YOU ARE

 

www.kerrianddavid.com

 

angel you are/as sure as the sun ©️ 2002 kerri sherwood

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Unfetter Kindness

Posted on December 23, 2015 by davidrobinsoncreative

Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog on a roadtrip

Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog on a road trip

Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog has no problem communicating his needs. I know without doubt when he wants to go out. I know when he wants his belly scratched or have his ears rubbed. He lets me know where he expects to be scratched. He is abundantly clear when food is his need. He does not second-guess his needs. He does not doubt his desires or confuse himself with obsessing over his reasons why.

Love is one of his needs. To give it and to receive it, exuberantly or tenderly, he does not invest in how I receive or return his love. He is not vulnerable because he has no need to hide or color his love-need. He has no brakes on his exuberance because it is pure, innate, and without story.

One of my favorite exercises to assign during my teacher/consultant phase was the Angel exercise. The assignment was simple: For three hours be an angel to someone. The only requirement was that the recipient could not know. Be an angel with no expectation of recognition; write about what you discover. The assignment was always greeted by a flurry of protests and questions (“I don’t know how…,” or “What does it mean to be….”). Angel-ing is scary business!

Once, to experiment, I assigned the opposite: be a devil/trickster. Instead of protests there were gales of laughter and excitement! No one asked “how.” In midst of their exuberant, fearless plotting and scheming, I reversed the design. Before they went into the world to demonize, I required them to flip their plan and do the opposite to their intended target: be an angel. Their sudden fear was palpable. “Now that you know how to torture this person, do the opposite,” I said. “Be their angel.”

Regardless of how we entered the assignment, the students/clients would return the following week exultant. Their experiences of Angel-ing, of unfettered kindness had profound blowback. They talked of their pre-Angel terror and the unexpected thrill that came with unfettered secret service to another person. They talked of the clarity that came with Angel-ing. They had fun. They felt good. They felt alive. Everything became simple. The greatest surprise of all – something that in this season we see on posters, holiday advertisements, Hallmark cards and screen-savers, something that is a cliché when proffered but rarely experienced: kindness begot kindness. Kindness begets kindness. Kindness clarifies life when it comes with no expectation of reciprocity. Kindness simplifies inner debates when it is wielded without need of reward.

Dog-Dog loves unconditionally. Love may be his only need. For Dog-Dog there is, I suspect, no distinction between giving and receiving. His exuberant love is not meant to gain access to heaven or to change the world in any way. It is without agenda. Angel-ing is like that…

photo-1

 

Filed under: Edges, Gratitude, Love, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Matter.

Posted on May 10, 2015 by davidrobinsoncreative

From the archive: 'Angels At The Well.'

From the archive: ‘Angels At The Well.’

Paul used to tell the acting students at the conservatory that they should never underestimate their power to impact another person’s life. In other words, their work – how they brought themselves to the stage – mattered. Simply by doing their work they had the capacity to open a mind or challenge a story. The caveat, of course, was that, in all likelihood, they would never know the impact that they had.

His lesson applies as much or more in daily life as it does on the stage. What if we lived as if we understood our power to impact others? What if we recognized that the small stuff matters? What if we didn’t need to know – but simply brought ourselves to our days knowing that our actions and attitudes mattered?

Sitting outside at a Starbucks in Wesley Chapel, Florida, a young woman Skyped into a bridal shower happening in Pennsylvania. It was her bridal shower and, because she was starting a new job, she couldn’t get the time off to fly home. So, via Skype, she checked in on the party and giggled at the celebration. Kerri and I sat at the next table listening to the conversation, the love and festivities. I watched as Kerri, stricken with the grief of her mother’s passing, change. Her heart lightened. It changed her focus. The young woman, with no knowledge, eased Kerri’s grief. Kerri ran into the store and bought the woman a gift card. “Congratulations on your wedding,” she said as she gave the card to the young woman.

In coffee-desperation we pulled off the highway in Salem, Illinois. We bumbled into the M&M Coffeehouse on Main Street. Mike, the owner is a master chef. He told us the story of love that brought him to Salem, the story of his love for making food and how he became proprietor of a coffeehouse, the story of how the community was embracing his gift and returning the love; the coffeehouse was now also a catering business. He was teaching cooking classes and volunteering his time to the monthly Elks club hamburger dinner fundraiser. The Elks were raising tons of funds since he started making the meals. “You never know where life is going to take you,” he smiled. Mike never knew the gift he gave us; he was simply being chatty with strangers. We needed a good dose of hope and encouragement to carry us the final 6 hours of our long drive home. He filled our hope-tank to the top.

Whether we know it our not, it matters. Always.

 

Filed under: Gratitude, Love, Perspective, Possibility, Power, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

  • buy us a coffee :-) Thank you!

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  • Lucy & The Waterfox is also available on Amazon.com