Incite Some Deviance [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

I searched for it but couldn’t find it. A short clip of Carl Sagan placing life on our tiny planet into the perspective of the enormity of the universe. A little sun in a galaxy of suns in a universe of billions and billions of galaxies. Through this lens, it is mind-boggling, the hubris necessary to believe we are the center of it all.

Initially this morning, I wrote a post about grace but cut it. I asked a question about the collision of values: loyalty-to-a-group smacking down telling-the-truth. It’s a uniquely human dilemma. The insistence upon tribe, Us-and-Them, spins some very dark necessities. I tossed it because grace was overshadowed by gloomy.

This is what I intended to write: on this tiny blue ball there is a group of Us defined as “All Humans”. Loyalty to this group is understood as idealistic. How can we possibly reach across so many imagined boundaries? What would we do with a definition of Us that was all inclusive? We would invite grace. Float all boats.

Each year, everywhere I wander, I am steeped in songs-of-the-season that appeal to the best of our nature. Peace on earth. Goodwill. Love one another. Perhaps we should listen to the lyrics of these songs. They are written by us for us as an appeal to our idealism, a sentiment central during this season of light’s return. Peace. Peace. Peace. We should “take it to heart.”

Let’s face it, loving one another is deviant if it is all inclusive.

It’s a reach, I know, but it’s really not so hard to imagine Us in the context of this vast universe, on this tiny ball spinning and spinning around our minuscule sun, one of billions and billions and billions. In such a context, the boundaries-in-our-minds dissolve and invite a different set of questions to arise: How can we better share this blue dot together? Conflict makes money yet collaboration creates possibility.

Pouring a little light into so much dedicated tribalism is deviant. It requires a touch of dignity. Pouring light into darkness is called Grace. Grace, in the face of so much division, is deviant.

When I cut my initial post I wondered what it would take to breach the code of tribe, reach beyond the singing platitudes, and incite some deviant behavior like peace-on-earth and all-inclusive love-of-one-another.

read Kerri’s blogpost about DEVIANT BEHAVIOR

like. share. comment. support. lending a hand to anyone is a way to support us. think on it.

buymeacoffee is a force like gravity helping the artists you appreciate keep their feet on the earth.

See The Spiral [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

20 asked if we saw the milky way when we were living on the island. As seen from space, two arms spiraling from a center. A spiral of billions of stars. From our seat on the island, as is true from most places on earth on cloudless nights, we saw the milky haze.

John and I often discussed the Fibbonacci sequence. The numbers of spirals, the keeper of the golden ratio. “It’s everywhere in nature,” he said. “We just don’t see it.”

Spirals in the stars. Spirals in the seeds of sunflowers. Macro to micro, through-and-through. And how is it that we routinely miss our interrelationship with all things?

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” ~ Carl Sagan

embraced now, 48x36IN, mixed media

read Kerri’s blogpost about SPIRALS

comment. share. like. support. all are greatly appreciated.

Juxtapose [on Merely A Thought Monday]

NYE copy

 

I come to this eve of the new year holding two images, two art experiences juxtaposed. One is a review of the past. The other a resolution. Together they resonate.

The first, the review of things past that influence things to come, is Peter Jackson’s World War I documentary film, And They Shall Not Grow Old. It is a miracle of film making (stay to see the segment about how it was made that rolls after the credits. You will shake your head with wonderment). It takes you into the trenches and horrors of war.  We left the theatre both wowed by the film-making and shocked by the utter senselessness of war. Wowed by the human capacity to innovate and despairing at our capacity to willingly destroy ourselves for imagined gains. Both are technical achievements.

The morning after seeing the film I opened Brain Pickings and, given the film, I was smacked by a photograph of Earth taken from The Voyager spacecraft in the mid 1990’s. The Pale Blue Dot. It brought instant perspective to war – and everything else we imagine to be so important. Within the vast expanse of space, “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” I had to look twice to see the speck that is Earth. Our imagined importance is out of perspective with the realities of our circumstance. The fragility (the miracle) of our existence is generally lost in our daily myopia.

Two images.  Juxtaposed.

 

read Kerri’s blog post on THE NEW YEAR

 

trinitychristmasphoto website box copy