beauty | The Direction of Intention

Play The Ukulele

Posted on August 30, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

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

Last night I was at Ukulele practice in a garden on the shores of Lake Michigan. I am a rank beginner and learning to play the Ukulele with 47 other people. We were laughing our way through Over The Rainbow. I was playing air Ukulele pretending that I was expert at my chord progressions, when a sphinx butterfly circled us, flew into the garden right next to me, and began drinking from the flowers. It was close enough to touch. I’d never seen anything like it before. I was so captivated by the butterfly that I forgot to pretend that I was strumming.

A sphinx butterfly looks like an exotic hummingbird. It is shaped like a hummingbird, its wings beat like a hummingbird, it hovers like a hummingbird, and yet it is not a hummingbird. My section of the ukulele band completely dropped their chord progressions and joined me in gaping at the butterfly. We entered an intense debate about whether it was a hummingbird or indeed a sphinx butterfly. The people seated to the left of the garden voted for hummingbird. Those of us on the right were solidly in the butterfly camp. I had no idea so I went with those seated around me. Each camp had solid justifications and good reasons for their point of view. The butterfly paid us no attention. It was not concerned about our debate or our need to identify its species. It continued feeding regardless of the label we attached to it.

I can’t help it. In moments like this I step into the role of witness. I watched people enrapt by a butterfly. I watched their loving debate, their laughter, their awe. I watched this group of amazing people hold their treasured ukuleles of many colors – green, purple, midnight blue, orange, red, pink and sky blue, white and black – watching a butterfly of many colors – pink, orange, purple, salmon, white, blue and black – and I was in awe of their awe. They did not see how beautiful they were as they admired the beauty of the butterfly.

This is the role of the human being isn’t it? To see the beauty of the world. To appreciate and give a name to the awesome and unimaginable. To engage with the beauty and then to join in a simple way with the creation of beauty: this group who gathers each Wednesday night to play their ukulele’s together and laugh and drink wine and gape in utter amazement at a butterfly.

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Gratitude, Perspective, Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: awe, beauty, witness | Leave a comment »

Meet The Beautiful

Posted on January 26, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

688. 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 is one of those glorious clear nights in Seattle and the moon is round and bright and high in the sky. I was leaving the Samurai Noodle restaurant, one of those lovely tiny crannies turned into a food establishment. It’s the kind of place where you need to keep your elbows in tight or you’ll upset the table next to you and nobody cares because the chili noodles and genmaicha are to die for (the noodles are homemade, the tea is renowned, the food moans are genuine).

I stepped out into the cold night and was stopped in my tracks by the moon. I was not the only one who paused in my arc from here to there. Shoppers from the grocery store stopped, too. The moon called and we took a moment to listen. In a city where the lights blot out most of the stars and we the people are in a perpetual rush to be somewhere else, it requires a potent call to reach us, to make us look up from the ground, to bring us to a full stop for just one moment. And, in that moment, we touch that deepest of human places, the appreciation of beauty, a single breath given to the sublime.

Because the good people at the Samurai Noodle gave me a to-go cup and more hot water for my tea, I decided to sit for a while and watch people answer the call of the moon and touch the transcendent. My favorite part is the moment of recognition, the moment that the light of the moon stops the story, and for an instant, peoples’ faces relax and reflect the light back at the moon; just for an instant, a single breath, the beautiful meets the beautiful, time suspends, and there is not discerning which heavenly body is the source of the light.

Filed under: Transcendence, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: beauty, light, listening, moon, stars, transcendence | 2 Comments »

Truly Powerful People (449)

Posted on June 1, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

449.
Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

My great aunt Dorothy was wise. She lived a simple life in the mountains above Central City, Colorado when it was still a mining town – long before the casino conversion turned it into an amusement park. Dorothy pieced together a living with my great uncle Del. They moved through their days with the sturdy simplicity of two people content to be right where they were – alive and grateful for every day. Their aspiration was to walk the hills, appreciate the seasons, and learn the deep quiet of the mountain. In turn the mountain evoked the deep quiet from within them.

For some reason they welcomed their rowdy nieces and nephews; we’d stay for weeks at a time. We shattered their quiet and complicated their simplicity and they loved us for it. Dorothy cooked hearty meals on a wood burning caste iron stove in a house that felt as if it might slide down the ravine at any moment. She collected blue glass, kept the hummingbird feeders well supplied, and made sure Poncho, their ancient dog, was in the sunniest spot.

Once, she took me on a hike. We followed a path through an aspen grove and crossed a field into a stand of pine trees. On the far side of the pines stood the remains of two-story house. Trees grew through the floor and branches reached out the windows; it was as if the trees were wearing the house for a coat or a Halloween costume. We peeked inside and tried to imagine people living there. I’d never before seen the earth reclaim a house. As if she read my mind, Dorothy said, “You never really own anything, do you. It’s all on loan.” Her eyes sparkled as she poked the rotted floorboards with a stick before stepping on them. “Isn’t it beautiful,” she sighed admiring the dilapidation. When I wrinkled my brow she laughed and said, “I suppose you have to know you are on loan before you can really see the beauty.”

Filed under: Seeing, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: beauty, seeing, simplicity | 4 Comments »

« Previous Page