kindness | The Direction of Intention

The Necessity of Intolerance [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on November 13, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Life has a way of flipping you on your head. As a former facilitator of DEI workshops I have had innumerable conversations about intolerance and the necessity for standing in “the other’s shoes.” Tolerance is a step on the path to an open mind. Throughout the course of this election I have discovered within myself the necessity of intolerance. The absolute necessity.

There has to be a line. I cannot stand in the shoes of intentional indecency. I cannot afford an ounce of grace to the ugly racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, violent ambitions of maga or its dictator-wanna-be. In a democracy, there is no validity, nothing remotely defensible about their fascist aims. I cannot listen – even for a moment – to the rabid justification of a thought-less-babble-tower built of lies and grievance. It is less than sandy soil. It is a disaster in the making. A foul permission structure of deception and nonsense.

I have found my hard intolerance and I couldn’t be more proud to declare it. At first I feared it made me a hypocrite but lately I know better. There is a place for intolerance and it is this: Intolerance of injustice, intolerance of hatred, intolerance of fear-mongering, intolerance of misogyny… is the vanguard of an open-heart, the guardian of an open-mind.

There has to be a line.

I am learning that within my intolerance of this maga-hatred is the living-seed of common decency and respect of others. My intolerance of whipped-up division constructed by a pathological liar gives bright energy to my belief in truth and goodness. It points the way to the virtues I was taught, to the ethics that are my inheritance.

Our parents and grandparents fought against fascism. My imperfect and messy nation strives to fulfill the ideal that all people are created equal. As the stewards of democracy it is now our imperative – my imperative – to claim my utter intolerance of the authoritarian bilge poisoning our nation.

Every religion, spirituality and belief-system I’ve ever studied (and I’ve studied more than I can count) instructs that I am my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper – as they are also mine, to help others – especially those who are downtrodden. As Kerri says, “If it’s not about kindness then it’s not about anything.”

That seems pretty straight forward and absolutely unequivocal to me. Especially now.

read Kerri’s blogpost about TATTERS

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Filed under: Edges, Flawed Wednesday, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, authoritarian, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, ethics, fascism, hatred, history, imperative, intolerance, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, MAGA, necessity, open heart, open mind, politics, religion, steward, story, studio melange, the melange, tolerance, virtue | 3 Comments »

I Wonder [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on October 25, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” ~ James Baldwin

Our Melange posts generally begin with a visual prompt, usually one of Kerri’s recent photographs. Today, for the first time in our Melange history, she offered me a quote. The photograph, the stone heart, came second.

My dad used to tell me that I’d educated myself into stupidity. He was, of course, regurgitating the sentiments of his fox-news source; those were not his words or his thoughts. He was an educated man, early in his life a schoolteacher, yet his entire life he yearned to return to the simple life he remembered, growing up in a small town in Iowa. His yearning was sincere and pervasive. He was kind to his core and generous to everyone he met. He had no idea what to do with the complexity of the contemporary world and so he found solace in rejecting it.

One of my cherished memories of my dad was the day we spent in the cemetery of his small town. He was far down the road of dementia and wanted to visit his beloved small town one last time. I was taken aback that he had no desire to wander the streets but wanted, instead, to wander through the graves – so that is what we did. He’d point to a headstone and tell me the story of the person buried there. To him it wasn’t a graveyard, it was a reunion. He could not remember what he ate for breakfast but he remembered in vivid detail the people that populated his young life, the names on the headstones.

My dad worked most of his life as a foreman of a concrete construction company. His crews were mostly illegal immigrants. For a few summers I worked on his crew and I have never been more proud of him – or learned more from him – than I did watching his dedication to the men who worked for him. He understood their plight, he valued their hard thankless work, and they were as loyal to him as he was to them.

I can only imagine what he would think of the rhetoric of mass deportation, the radical dehumanization of the men he spent his life working with, the racist lies. I wonder if his yearning for simplicity would cloud his perspective or would he recognize the ugly authoritarianism masked in the maga mass-deception.

He was, at his core, kind. Generous. I cannot imagine he would sign on to the oppression and denial of basic humanity that runs rampant through the maga rhetoric. And, since I am “woke”, a progressive, a man dedicated to learning and asking questions, a believer in open minds and hearts, I am now one of the vermin populating the fox-maga-storyline. I doubt he would sign on to that.

I wonder, if we were sitting on the patio drinking a beer, if he’d question, as I do, how his rural America, his imagined simplicity, became so ugly, so lost in the rantings of a fascist. So un-American.

I wonder if he, from his resting place in the graveyard, wishes now for a better story for his small town, for all small towns – the story of generosity and kindness he remembered as hallmarks of the people who populated his early years, the people and narrative who shaped him, his goodness, his life.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about OPPRESSION

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Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Story | Tagged: artistry, authoritarian, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, deception, generosity, goodness, humanity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, learning, loyalty, MAGA, narrative, open heart, open mind, progressive, simplicity, small town, story, studio melange, the melange, woke | 2 Comments »

What Remains [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on September 20, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.” ~ Pema Chödrön

The super moon called us out into the night. We ran-walked to the grounds of the Anderson Art Center so we might get an unobstructed view of the giant moon perched just above the horizon. Later, we walked the streets and paths that followed the shore so we could watch the moon shrink as it journeyed higher into the sky. An illusion.

My favorite part of our stroll was finding that we weren’t the only people called into the night. People – many people – gathered along the shore, some quiet, some giddy – all attending the march of the moon. “This is just like the old days,” Kerri said. A community joining together to share a common experience. No one cared about the politics or issues of the day. There was a common agreement as we passed others: “Isn’t it beautiful!” Strangers so moved by the enormity of the moment, so connected to this ancient traveller, that they were compelled to speak to each other.

Think about it.

The little stuff disappears in the face of the transcendent moon. I felt as if we were participating in a ritual that is as old as humanity. And, more to the point, this ancient ritual, the awe of the moon, invoked our humanity. We were, to a person, benevolent. In the timeless moon there was no space for the petty. There wasn’t a hint of righteousness or prejudice to be found. We waned in the face of the eternal light of the moon. What remained was a basic impulse to share the moment. To join. Primordial generosity. Kindness sublime.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE KEYS

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Filed under: Awakening, Identity, KS Friday, Metaphor | Tagged: Agreement, ancient connection, ancient ritual, artistry, awe, common experience, community, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, eternal, generosity, Harvest moon, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, moon, pema chodron, reach, ritual, story, studio melange, sublime, the melange, transcend, transcendence | 2 Comments »

Look Around [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 9, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Strolling on the path through the park, we followed the shoreline. Just at the spot where the path meets the marina, we found an appeal chalked on the walkway: be good people. As Kerri snapped a photo, I wondered who wrote it. Who felt compelled to bring their chalk to the park and petition goodness from passers-by? I wondered if they’d had their fill of bad examples of humanity, snapped-up their chalk, and headed to the original location of social media, the public square.

Or, perhaps it was not a plea but was their wish for us. “My wish for you is to be good people.” Why, on this day, did they feel compelled to make their wish visible?

There are many ideas, definitions and word associations of goodness yet they are bound together by a single notion-thread: consider first the needs of others. Brothers/Sisters keeper. “Good people” reach their hand to assist others.

I gathered a few words used to characterize “good people”: Empathy. Consideration. Accountability. Compassion. Kindness. Each word, each characteristic, is other-people-focused. “How can I help?” Share, because there is plenty-enough for all.

As Kerri took a picture of the message I jumped into a memory, a time of desperation. Some thought-angel dinged my noggin and sent me out into the city to witness acts of kindness. As I have previously written, I saw generosity everywhere I looked. People being good in small ways and large. Opening doors. Paying for a stranger’s cup of coffee. Holding up traffic so a senior could safely cross the street. Asking the bus driver to “Wait a second!” – someone was racing to catch the bus. A second made all the difference for someone.

Those good people, everyday people doing everyday things, buoyed me, filled me with hope and light. If I’d had chalk in my pocket on that day I might have scribbled on the sidewalk, “Good people are everywhere! Look around!” I saw them because I decided to look for them.

If I’d had chalk in my pocket, after Kerri was finished with her photograph, I’d have written a message for the “Be good people” writer: “Thanks for the reminder. See good people”.

They are everywhere.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BE GOOD PEOPLE

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Filed under: Gratitude, Language, Merely A Thought Monday, Seeing | Tagged: accountability, artistry, be good people, compassion, consideration, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, empathy, generosity, goodness, hope, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, share, story, studio melange, support, the melange | 1 Comment »

Walk In Joy [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on August 2, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Imagine our surprise when we saw the street was wearing a name tag. Grace. I wondered if the street chose her name or was it given? Was she tired of being referred to as a number? Third Ave. Did she want the world to know her name?

I found the street’s choice of name to be hopeful, an aspiration for how she wished to be in the world. She intended to be courteous. Elegant. Or perhaps her chosen/given name is a desire for those who travel along her way. Polite. Moving with ease through life. Hers is a wish for humanity.

Imagine if the road we choose to walk each day could infuse us with the attributes of its name! I would stroll on a road named Grace every single day! I would make time to take a walk on Hope. I’ll bet Peace would get a lot of traffic.

Imagine if we, like Grace, brought to the street the attributes we desired to infuse into the world. Light heart. Good humor. Civility. Imagine putting it on a name tag for all to see. “Thoughtfulness.” Or, “Generosity.” “Courtesy.” Imagine walking in this world with name-tag-intention. A declaration of goodness. An exercise in actively creating the world we desire to inhabit. “Today I am empathy.”

In my children’s book mentality, what we bring to the road is what the road gifts back to us. Hope. Grace. Peace. Generosity. Kindness. Is it so far-fetched?

Joy is right in front of us… if we choose it…if we choose to vote for it…vote for her.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost on GRACE

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Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, attributes, civility, courtesy, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, empathy, generosity, grace, hope, humanity, humor, intention, joy, Kamala Harris, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, light hearted, love, peace, story, studio melange, the melange, vote | 1 Comment »

The Abdication of Answers [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on July 16, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Truth is a pathless land.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

I confess. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my life looking for answers. Mostly, the answers I sought concerned questions like “Who am I?” or “What’s my purpose?” I sought the answers as if they actually existed. Somewhere out there. I thought I’d find it if I kept looking.

“The whole of life, from the moment you are born until the moment you die, is a process of learning.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

It took a while but one of the later versions of myself quite suddenly understood that there was no answer to find. There was a life to be lived. I might arrive at answers – if I still needed answers – on check-out day. And even in that passing moment, my answers would most likely be a learning experience. A discovery.

“Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

On hot humid days we walk along the shore in hopes of finding a cool breeze. Our hot-day-walks are slow, ambling. Kerri stops periodically to take a photograph: the bamboo growing beside the marina, cornflowers in the community garden, a seagull atop a light post. We talk about what matters and what does not. The quiet river running beneath our conversation is the abdication of answer-seeking. We revel in the birds splashing in the birdbath, the first sip of coffee in the morning, the smell of onion and garlic sautéing…slow walks on hot days. Noticing a kindness. Answers are nowhere to be found. Presence is everywhere.

“When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Lately Kerri says, “I’m not all that. We’re not all that.” There is freedom found when perspective arrives, an undeniable truth in a vast, vast universe. We are passing through. Nothing more, nothing less. How we treat each other is on the list of what matters. Do we help or hurt others in the time we share together on our passage?

read Kerri’s blogpost about BAMBOO

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Filed under: Gratitude, Identity, Love, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: Answers, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, desire, discovery, helping, jiddu Krishnamurti, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, learning, life purpose, love, mattering, presence, purpose, questions, sharing, story, studio melange, the melange, understanding | 1 Comment »

Only With The Heart [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on June 12, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

I just re-read The Little Prince. Our imaginary child, Chicken Marsala, made me do it. He’s lodged an idea into my heart and suggested I revisit some classics. Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet is on Chicken’s short list of recommendations.

“One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince.

I suppose it might seem odd that our imaginary child makes book recommendations but before you leap into full-blown judgment, I would ask you to ponder this: why might you consider anything borne of imagination as odd? This device that I am typing upon was once a figment of someone’s imagination. Consider this: there is power in imagining kindness. Peace will come first to the world through our capacity to imagine it as possible.

This past weekend we were at Pride-Milwaukee watching our amazing son perform on large stages and small. I loved being in a celebratory mob that embraced difference, that celebrated the divergent, that held an all-inclusive understanding of love. There was not a hint of body shaming, in fact, there was the opposite. Can you imagine that? “One sees clearly only with the heart.”

I had a minor epiphany standing behind the stage at the street fair. Watching the revelers, strangers dancing with strangers, people fearless in their acceptance, reaching one-to-the-other – these people unashamedly promoting acceptance-and-love-of-others are regularly branded as deviant. Our world is upside-down. Or perhaps it simply lacks imagination.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HEART LEAF

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Filed under: Creativity, Flawed Wednesday, Possibility | Tagged: acceptance, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Diversity, imagination, inclusion, judgment, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, love, peace, pride, story, studio melange, The Little Prince, the melange | 1 Comment »

Beyond Words [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on May 29, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Sometimes the obvious is hard to write about. A heart path. A heart on the path. My mind jumped to the easiest association: a heart path is a metaphor for a spiritual life. Despite the countless tomes written across cultures and through the ages, including the current river of memes flowing across our screens, a spiritual life is impossible to wrap in words. Yet we have a long and complex history of trying.

I have friends who are Buddhist, friends who are Christian, friends who are Jewish, friends who are Muslim. I’ve spent time with Hindu priests and I’ve been introduced to the Tao. As they say, many paths, one destination. Heart paths, all. It is worth remembering that no single path is better or worse than any other. As Joseph Campbell suggested, religions are vehicles. A ride share.

A spiritual path need not require a deity or a book of rules. As Kerri says, “If it’s not about kindness it’s not about anything.” Kindness is an expression of the heart. Kind-heartedness. Warm-heartedness. Tender-heartedness. A heart path invokes this quality: selflessness. Deities and rulebooks can be twisted, human-made as they are, to serve un-kind, selfish intentions. Stoke divisions. Division is the opposite of a heart path. Kindness is an expression of unity.

A heart is a good symbol for the path because we all have one – every single one of us. Skin color, cultural orientation, systems of belief, sexual identity…do not alter the simple fact: we have hearts in common. Many hearts (plural) reaching for the single shared heart. One heart (singular).

Transcendent.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HEART ON THE PATH

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Language, Metaphor, Transcendence | Tagged: artistry, belief, beliefs, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, heart, heart path, Joseph Campbell, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kind hearted, kindness, life path, path, religion, religions, selfless, selflessness, spiritual life, story, studio melange, tender hearted, the melange, unity | Leave a comment »

Small Ripples [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 6, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

We made them for a Wednesday evening film, part of a series, when we were running a performing arts center. The film was Wonder. The message was kindness. We chose that film because the local arts community had a history of being particularly unkind to each other.

Theirs was an age-old challenge: the tension between the old and the new. The conservative impulse colliding with the necessity of progress. There were territories claimed. Feelings maimed. Status games abounded. As newcomers to the community and managers of the newest facility, we were the rope in the tacit tug-of-war. We experienced both ends of the spectrum: incredible kindness. Breathtaking mean-spiritedness.

None of it was personal.

Art is never supposed to be competitive. Great art creates generous audiences for everyone. COVID ended our time there but in our brief window, we acted as peacemakers. We heard the complaints. We helped vent the pressure. We found avenues to collaboration. We drew clear boundaries. We tried hard to be impeccable to our word: say what we mean and mean what we say. Averting confusion in a community versed in double-speak.

The buttons were available beyond the screening to anyone who wanted them. It felt yummy and subversive to show a film about kindness, about looking beyond superficial appearances to find the rich beauty in others.

I’d forgotten about the buttons. So much has happened in our lives since our time at the performing arts center that I’d almost forgotten about our varied experiences and the lessons we learned there. The buttons still exist on our site. We put them up after Kerri designed them, and although everything else has dropped out of our store, the buttons remain. An epicenter, perhaps. And, thank goodness. Recently a school was organizing a Be Kind Week. They found our buttons and, in some small way, it feels extraordinarily satisfying that our buttons, borne of our desire to break through walls of discord, are now supporting their kindness initiative.

Small ripples. Simple intentions.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BE KIND

Be Kind Buttons

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: artistry, arts community, be kind, be kind buttons, collaboration, community, conservative impulse, creative tension, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, discord, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, peacemaker, performing arts center, progress, story, studio melange, territory, the melange, trueblood performing arts center, washington island, wonder | 1 Comment »

Feel The Light [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on December 23, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

We sit squarely in the center of a community of generosity. At night, when we turn out all the lights except those wrapped around our many holiday trees, we close our eyes and breathe it in. We feel it. The quiet grace. The kindness. The support. The friendship.

Earlier this year, traveling through our metaphoric miles of very rough road. Kerri said, “We should lean into the light more.” That’s why we sit in the twinkling light of the trees, eyes closed. We feel the light.

This we know: we are rich beyond measure.

read Kerri’s blog post about FEELING IT