meditations | The Direction of Intention

Forward The Story [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 22, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

A Haiku

A new era dawns./A chapter closes, fresh earth/forwards the story.

Bellaruth Naperstack often ends her meditations with the phrase, “…and so you are.” As cousin Kate guided us through the forgotten cemetery on the other side of town, she led us to the gravesite of my great, great, great, great grandfather and grandmother. The writing on the stone was nearly washed away with time. As Kate read their obituaries, Bellaruth’s phrase popped up in my mind. The summation of a life, punctuated by the survivors. The children and grandchildren. The next generation. And the next and the next.

It took me by surprise, this meditation on life. The phrase popping into my head was not a reference to the end of the lives of distant grandparents, but to me. “These are your people. This is your root.” They lead to me. I am the next chapter, the continuation of the story.

“And so you are.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about AND SO YOU ARE

if you like it, then like it. or forward it. or buymeacoffee.com. or let us know your thoughts.

Filed under: Family, Gratitude, Identity | Tagged: ancestors, artistry, Bellaruth Naperstack, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, death, family, grandparents, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrisherwood.com, life, life stories, meditation, meditations, obituary, root, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Touch The Liminal [on KS Friday]

Posted on February 3, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

I did not know the word columbarium: a room or building with niches for funeral urns to be stored. Each niche, a life. Or two.

Bruce just sent an article from The Atlantic, The Eerie Comfort of Liminal Spaces. The article helped me put my finger on the feeling I had the day we interred Beaky’s ashes. Row after row after row of niches. I was oddly comforted standing in the Florida sun between the rows at the columbarium. I felt ancient and that feeling surprised me.

Liminal spaces are threshold places. I turned my face to the sun and appreciated how, in this liminal space, all the trials and tribulations of life fell away. The divisions dissipate. Sisyphus sits in the boat in the underworld and watches all the souls wander on the beach, believing that they are all alone, until they play out all the worries in their minds. Once their stories are “told”, they see each other, gravitate toward each other, and join together, becoming a single bank of mist. From one form into an other.

In this resting place, I felt the essence of the threshold. The comfort of a liminal space. The rows and columns are for those of us on this side of the veil. On the other side, the need to seek or tell or feel is suspended.

I reached and wrapped my fingers in Kerri’s hand. It was glorious, this capacity to feel, so under-appreciated every day. Here, I knew without doubt that touch is the ultimate liminal experience. Thich Nhat Hahn offered a meditation I appreciate (I can’t recall the book) that begins, “Darling, I am here with you.”

That sums it up.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about COLUMBARIUM

Filed under: KS Friday, Language, Love, Metaphor | Tagged: ancient, appreciation, artistry, columbarium, comfort, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, legacy from released from the heart, liminal spaces, meditations, musician, released from the heart, sisyphus, solo piano, story, studio melange, The Atlantic, the melange, thich nhat hahn, threshold, touch | 1 Comment »

Learn Where To Listen [on KS Friday]

Posted on October 29, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Her mother told her she could grow up to be anything she wanted to be so she grew up to be the strongest of the strong, the strangest of the strange, the wildest of the wild, the wolf leading wolves.” ~ Nikita Gill

A long time ago I wrote and illustrated a children’s book about a young fox who had extraordinary abilities. Her talents made her an outlier in the pack, something strange, so they hammered her into compliance. She buried her gifts. The story is, of course, how she came to embrace her gifts despite the court of fox-public opinion.

Lao Tzu wrote, “Care about what other people think of you and you will always be their prisoner.” It is a lesson that every artist must learn. Do your work. YOUR work. Some will love it. Some will hate it. Some will walk by without a second glance. You can never determine what another person sees or thinks so waste no energy in that fruitless cause. Do your work.

It’s a tough lesson, a mammoth paradox, since we are, after all, a pack animal, a social being. An artist has no reason to work if there is no audience or community to receive the work. Traditionally, artists live on the edge of the community so they can both see in and express what they see but also serve as a channel to what lies beyond the spiritual perimeter. The tightrope walk is about belonging while marginalized enough to remain clear-sighted. The artist must step back from the painting in order to see it.

I’m enjoying a slow read through Kent Nerburn‘s book, Dancing With The Gods: Reflections On Life And Art. Master Miller recommended it and I’m finding the simple wisdom of an artist-elder a refreshing daily meditation. Were I to write a sequel to my long-ago-children’s-book, it would be about this: coming back to your gift is not a one-and-done affair. It is a cycle. We embrace it and run from it and embrace it and lose it and find it and smother it and resurrect it and step back and look at it. Again and again. To become the strangest of the strange, the wildest of the wild, is not an achievement, an arrival platform, it is a relationship. Yes, with the community, but it is mostly a walk with your self and what lies beyond that spiritual perimeter. It is ongoing. Never static. Somedays you are the strongest of the strong. And, on other days, you are empty and weak. Full spectrum palette. The only way to know and reflect all of the colors of life is to experience them firsthand. And, so, it is imperative to learn where to listen, where to invest your tender care.

The gift grows as more colors enter the paint box.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HER MOTHER TOLD HER

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

Filed under: Art, Creativity, KS Friday, Power | Tagged: aarp, art, artistry, children's books, composer, Dancing With The Gods, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, elder, Kent Nerburn, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lao tzu, lucy and the waterfox, meditations, mentor, musician, Next Page Books, Nikita Gill, painting, poetry, solo piano, story, studio melange, the melange, wisdom | Leave a comment »

Realize It [on KS Friday]

Posted on October 5, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

i am alive song box copy

Years ago, at the retreat center on Whidbey Island, Kendy talked with me about her budding meditation practice. She was having difficulty quieting her mind chatter. To help, a teacher gave her a mantra to use in her meditation. The mantra gave her busy mind a focal point. It was a simple phrase: I Am. I Am. “It’s the craziest thing,” she said, “I feel like I need to add a description, I Am…what? I am happy? I am fulfilled? I am a loser? I am bored? And then it occurred to me that it’s the descriptor I’m trying to quiet! Why do I need to define everything? Judge everything? Assign a score to everything? Isn’t the whole point to realize how profound it is to be alive? I Am.”

There is a photograph of my uncle Al, just months before he died of cancer, fulfilling a dream of flying on a trapeze. At the moment of letting go of the bar, he reaches into space. The catcher is not in the frame. Al’s face, wracked with his disease, is shining with the joy of his moment. The simple pleasure of his moment of I Am.

There is a lyric in Kerri’s song, I Am Alive, that brings me back to my conversation with Kendy and the enormity of her realization. It makes me miss Al. The lyric goes like this: we are bonded by the power of this dream that is I Am.

Cut through all the chatter-of-the-day and it’s plain enough. It’s simple enough. Add the final descriptive word to the I Am. Realize, as Al did in that gorgeous moment of flight, of not-here-or-there. I Am Alive.

I AM ALIVE on the album AS SURE AS THE SUN is available on iTunes & CDBaby

read Kerri’s blog post about I AM ALIVE

i am alive/as sure as the sun ©️ 2002 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Awakening, Edges, Gratitude, KS Friday, Transcendence, Uncategorized | Tagged: as sure as the sun, awakening, cancer, cancer survivor, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, I Am Alive, inspiration, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, meditation, meditations, realization, society6.com/kerrisherwood | Leave a comment »

Let Me Bring Peace [on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 26, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

I identify the chapters of my life through specific paintings. There was the era of August Ride. There was the era of Shaman. Iconic marks a remarkable and productive period. This morsel is from An Instrument of Peace. It is the painting that marks the most recent phase, a creative left turn when alphabets and images ran together. It marks a time of paradox, tighter constraints and spontaneous freedoms, a time when I wandered lost in the only place I’ve ever known as home.

Midway through the painting process, working fast and loose, I picked up my charcoal and scribbled in one long string of letters The Prayer of St. Francis. I randomly repeated some words and phrases, ran them off the canvas. I sealed them in acrylic, smudging some of the characters.

Just like all the others, I knew An Instrument of Peace was a life-marker when I painted it. I knew it was the end of a cycle, a little death. Now, as I work and wait patiently for the new cycle, sometimes I go into my studio and tack this very large painting on the wall and sit with it. In this era of division and discord in our country, I think there might not be a better aspiration, a more relevant sentiment than this painting and poem suggest: where there is hatred, let me bring love.

An Instrument Of Peace, mixed media, 48 x 91IN

Peace products available at society6.com

read Kerri’s blog post about PEACE

www.kerrianddavid.com

August Ride

Shaman

Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Uncategorized | Tagged: acrylic paintings, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life work, markers, meditations, milestones, peace, prayer, society6.com/davidrobinson, studio melange, the melange, the prayer of st francis | Leave a comment »

Two Artists Tuesday

Posted on March 27, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

A thought for your Tuesday from the melange.

we call these pieces, “just words.” double meaning? perhaps!

If I had to write a how-to book on soul wellness it would be brief and could be summed up with simple phrases like, lighten up, or cease the practice of taking yourself so seriously [or, the inverse, practice not taking yourself so seriously]. Soul wellness and lightheartedness are companions.

Many southwestern native American traditions include a sacred clown. Don’t you love that phrase! Sacred clown. A sacred clown serves many purposes but usually they lob some light into the too-serious-ritual; they shock us out of our attachment to “how things should be” and spin our dials so we can see “how things really are.” Those wacky sacred clowns know that the path to center is more often found with the assistance of light than when stumbling through the heavy dark. Stephen Colbert is a sacred clown. Jimmy Kimmel is, too. John Oliver. There are many great clowns to help us laugh our way to soul wellness.

The jester, the sacred clown speaks truth to power when no one else can. Power rarely likes to hear truth so most often surrounds itself with sycophants. Power needs a mighty sacred clown to keep it honest. The same rule applies with inner monologues and the runaway stories that plague our minds. A good inner-jester, the practice of not taking yourself so seriously, acts as a mighty dope slap, a necessary reminder that an alternate focus, beyond the insurmountable obstacle or the unsolvable incessant problem or the unshakable attachment to being right, is possible.

Feed well your sacred clown and you will invariably find the path to wellness with your soul.

IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL merchandise/reminders