dark days | The Direction of Intention

Live Inside The Altar [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on July 25, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Dear reader, you have done me a great service. You’ve connected my past to my present.

I’m not sure why but, initially, I numbered rather than named my blogposts. My 623rd blog post was about a practice I’d all but forgotten. Building an altar of gratitude.

Someone out there read #623 so it popped up in my analytic. “This is old!” I thought, staring at the screen. A numbered post! Another era. “I wonder what I was writing about?”

2012. Thanksgiving. Among the darkest days of my life and yet, on that day, I was deeply, profoundly grateful. Life had chased me to a cliff. There was nothing to do but leap. I remember like it was yesterday wandering the streets of Seattle placing notes of gratitude in the cracks of walls, at bus stops, at coffee shops. I felt as if I was invoking. I wanted a better world. If I wanted it, I needed to offer betterment to the world. It was a prayer. A weaving. It was the last time I built my “altar of gratitude.”

A year later I lived in an entirely different world. Everything went to ashes.

2022. Kerri and I are walking our trail. We’re giggling because we just planted a painted rock in the elbow of a tree. “Do you think someone will find it?” her inner 5 year old asks, too wiggly with excitement to stand still. I expect her to skip in circles of enthusiasm.

“Yes,” I laugh. “Someone, someday, will find it.”

As I reread #623 I realized that, in rising from the ashes, I was no longer building my altar on a single day in a single season. I was no longer invoking gratitude. I was no longer hoping for a world that might someday come into being.

I am creating it. Not on a single day or special occasion. I’m practicing gratitude every day. I’m living gratitude every day. Painting rocks, making dinner, watching sunsets, buying groceries, writing blogposts.

Because you sent #623 back to me, a marker in time, I’ve realized I’m living inside my altar. All the world….

read Kerri’s blogpost about EXPLORE

Filed under: Awakening, Edges, Emergence, Gratitude, Identity, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Uncategorized | Tagged: altar, artistry, ashes phoenix, dark days, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, explore, Gratitude, intention, invocation, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, meditation, painted rocks, practices, prayer, presence, Sacred, spiritual practice, story, studio melange, thanks giving, Thanksgiving, the melange | 1 Comment »

Wait [on KS Friday]

Posted on November 15, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

waitingsongbox copy

Here in the northern hemisphere, these are the dark days. It is cold. We go inside (literally) for warmth and we go inside (metaphorically) for reflection. We wait. We look toward the solstice. We have faith in the light’s return.

The return of the light. In the sweep of the cycle of the seasons there is a time for waiting. A time to stop all pursuit. A time to pull the cloak tighter, to conserve. To hibernate. To light candles and fires. To sit with friends and make soup. To appreciate. To warm the core.

Rest and appreciation go hand in hand. After the harvest and after the festival it is appropriate to stop, to let the deeper work happen. To rejuvenate the root.

Reflection IS movement. Rejuvenation IS growth. It is necessary. It is beautiful. It happens slowly in the dark. And, as Kerri’s quiet composition suggests, it feels like hope, like WAITING.