mythology | The Direction of Intention

The Only Question [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on August 22, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Breck the aspen tree is no longer a sapling. Since May she has grown a few feet taller. Her trunk is now the sturdy stock of a mature tree. Her bark is taking on the whitish hue of mature aspens. We stand at her base, crane our necks looking up, and marvel. In a few short months we have watched her come-of-age.

In a contentious time, an age of the disappearance of justice and the rise of a criminal, Breck is a reminder for us of all that is good. When we need a dose of sanity, when we need a reminder that nature takes little notice of human folly, we sit with Breck. We allow ourselves to be soothed by the comforting shimmer of her quaking leaves.

Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero With A Thousand Faces in 1949. I almost spit my coffee this morning when I read, “The tyrant is proud and therein resides his doom. He is proud because he thinks of his strength as his own; thus, he is in the clown role, as a mistaker of shadow for substance; it is his destiny to be tricked.”

I know it is a mistake to conflate myth with biography, yet, have you ever read a more perfect description of our authoritarian wanna-be?

Myth meets the historical moment. The tyrant is a clown. He is a mistaker of shadow for substance. He thinks his strength is his own. His destiny is to be tricked. Campbell also wrote that, in the mythic cycle, the tyrant, “usurps to themselves the goods of their neighbors, arise, and are the cause of widespread misery. They have to be suppressed.”

Usurping to himself the goods of his neighbors? Check.

The cause of widespread misery? Check.

In mythology, the tyrant is the harbinger of the hero’s rise (note: the hero need not be a male). “The great figure of the moment (the tyrant) exists only to be broken…The ogre-tyrant is champion of the prodigious fact; the hero the champion of creative life.”

The word “prodigious” in this sentence = unnatural, grotesque.

Locked in a shadowy lie-about-the-past with a monstrous clown? Or, progressing forward toward actual possibilities? We are a nation quaking to come-of age.

The tyrant exists only to be broken – and it makes sense in mythology and in the patterns of history. Breck can only grow in one direction. The same is true of us. The only question is how much damage will the tyrant do before we-the-people, the actual hero in our tale, awaken, open our eyes and rise?

watershed,(noun): an event or period marking a turning point in a course of action or state of affairs.

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Filed under: Heroes, KS Friday, Metaphor, Pattern | Tagged: artistry, clown, cycle, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, harbinger, Hero, Joseph Campbell, justice, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, myth, mythic cycle, mythology, pattern, story, studio melange, substance, the melange, tyrant, watershed | Leave a comment »

Cycles Of Change [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 26, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late.” ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces

It is a warm evening. The breeze has shifted and comes off the lake, blessed cool. The bird alights on the pinnacle of our roof. Like us it pauses in the refreshing breeze. It drinks it in and rests. This image, this moment, is ancient and I am taken by it.

In the midst of the chaos of the country, the seeming unprecedented circumstances we now face, it is somehow comforting (to me) to remember that no one escapes the cycles of mythology. Mythology is a universal growth pattern, cutting across culture, delivered through story. It is a human-life-map. It is unwise to confuse mythology with make-believe.

Our collapse of moral authority in leadership is not unique in history. Neither is the rise of our tyrant. Neither is the corruption of our court Supremes or the silent cowardice of Congress. We follow a historical pattern just as we perform a mythological cycle.

The Roman Empire fell for much the same reasons that the American Experiment is now wobbling: political corruption, the widening gap between the haves and have-nots eroding social cohesion (maga, the impact of inanity like “trickle-down-economics”, unfair taxation, granting “personhood” to corporations…), the exploitation of division, overspending on the military, limits imposed on innovation and education (the impact of DOGE and the decimation of research among other things).

When servant leadership is upended by self-serving-leadership, the path becomes explicit. It doesn’t happen all it once. It is gradual, this erosion of the foundation takes time. This is a mythological death.

Of course, each death signals the birth of something new. As Joseph Campbell wrote of times like these, it is wrongheaded and naive to try and go back in time to capture some imaginary heyday. It is equally misguided to try to force the fulfillment of some imagined ideal. Both facilitate dismemberment.

Our protests of autocracy, our resistance to brutality, plant the seeds of our transfiguration. We will never restore our democratic republic as we’ve known it. Neither will we fulfill it as first conceived: exclusive; democracy for the few. Fire transforms and what will emerge from this hot collapse is anybody’s guess. I will probably not live long enough to see it. Gestation like this takes time, too.

However, I take heart knowing that the cycle will eventually present us with a new generation of servant leaders, people who rise from the wreckage and sacrifice personal gain for the common good. People who were transformed by this current fire. They will carry in their hearts the pain of their ancestors’ regret.

The bird on the pinnacle served as a herald of that distant day. The wind shifts, cutting through the heat, bringing with it sweet relief and the promise of the cycles of change.

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Identity, Metaphor, Pattern, Possibility | Tagged: artistry, birth, change, cycles, cycles of change, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, death, growth, history, ignorance, illumination, Joseph Campbell, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mythology, pattern, Roman Empire, story, studio melange, the melange, transformation | 3 Comments »

Or Will We? [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on March 19, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

And suddenly the winds arrive. The forecast warned us to expect powerful winds early this morning so I was taken aback when I opened the door to an eerie stillness. Dogga trotted outside into a world with nary a whisper of breeze. Three hours later, as we sat down to write, as if someone threw a magic switch, the first burst of wind rattled the windows. The trees moaned.

I was struck by this quote from Martin Prechtel:

“I knew that no worthy ritual was done for the experience of the ritual but was carried out to maintain a regular life of work and harvest, raising children and struggle.”

Rituals, like Easter or The Hajj or Diwali are appeals, acts of sacred orientation. They are acknowledgement of our smallness in the face of the vast mystery of this universe. They are meant to renew our connection to the immense, to life. Ultimately, they are the recognition that our actions, each and every day, no matter how small…matter; that we are active participants in the well-being, restoration and continuance of life. We are active creators of our relationship with the mystery.

Rituals are meant to affirm that we are not the overlords but are responsible for the care and feeding of “something bigger than myself.” We are a part of the whole. Nothing more.

Rituals are meant to remind us that we are not passive witnesses to the health of the community or the planet, but that we are stewards, active participants in our own and the community’s well-being: physically, mentally, spiritually. How we walk through life, how we treat each other, how we care for our environment, matters.

The aim is not the performance of the ritual. The aim is how the performance of the ritual intentionally orients us to daily life and to each other.

When the performance of the ritual becomes the point of the ritual it is a sure sign that the greater mythology is dying. Or already dead. And, mythology – a shared story – is the glue that holds a community together. Without it a community fractures.

Rituals need not be religious to be sacred. In the USA, our legal system and how it works is rooted in a ritual dedication to our national communal glue: the law. The Constitution is the sacred document at the center of our legal ritual and is built upon a sacred ideal: no man is above the law.

“In America, the rule of law is king...For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.” Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Historians will someday write of the collapse of our ritual of law. They will point to the Immunity decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, someone who swore an oath to protect our Constitution, yet somehow granted a president immunity from the rule of law. He put the whims of a man above the law. The center collapsed.

Today, we witness the dissolution of ours law. A judge ruled and was ignored by a White House that knows the executive branch is immune from law and can, therefore, be law-less.

Last week we saw that congress – our makers of law – had no will to uphold their sacred duty of checks-and-balance to the executive. They signed away their power and with it, our freedoms as protected by their adherence to the Constitution. They meet now for no other reason than to meet – having abdicated their function in the ritual of democracy, having lost their purpose, they now function without meaning. They forgot their role in the ritual renewal of democracy. They now merely pretend that their actions matter.

The ritual collapses. The glue dissolves. It remains to be seen if the people, the ordinary everyday people, the people who, in a democracy, are meant to hold the power, will come together and reclaim our ritual of law from tyranny. Or will we, like the congress and the courts, fear the new king, abdicate our responsibility, remain silent and watch our freedoms circle the drain?

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Filed under: Flawed Cartoon Wednesday, Identity | Tagged: artistry, balance, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, government, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kings, law, lawless, liberty, martin prechtel, mythology, ritual, Sacred, story, studio melange, The Constitution of The United States, the melange, thomas jefferson, Thomas Paine, tyranny | 1 Comment »

The Interim [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on February 28, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“You are in this time of the interim/ Where everything seems withheld./The path you took to get here has washed out;/ The way forward is still concealed from you.” John O’Donohue, Benedictus

Persephone has returned to the Underworld. Demeter, her mother, mourns and so the earth is cold. Nothing grows. It is the time of waiting. According to the bargain, after six months, Persephone will return to the upper world, Demeter will rejoice at the homecoming of her daughter, plants will flower, trees will bud, life will be restored.

It is not an accident that Persephone, the goddess who presides over death is also the goddess of fertility and new life. One complete cycle. It’s an archetype found in many cultures across our tiny planet.

This winter we’ve descended into a an especially dark season. With the firing of the military leadership, replaced by nincompoops loyal to a man rather than the constitution, the authoritarian takeover is nearly complete. Yesterday, by executive order, congress lost its power-of-the-purse. The last traces of democracy are being summarily scrubbed. The way forward?

History has taught us that these authoritarians are stuck in their adolescence. They have a bottomless hole where their hearts should be. They attempt to fill the the hole with sex or money or power or fame or alcohol or clothes or cars…It is a void that only maturity can satisfy. Maturity comes with the revelation that service to others rather than self-aggrandizement fills the hole. True to pattern, they will ultimately be consumed by the dark void in their chests, turning their power-lust on each other in a festival of self-destruction, perhaps taking our democracy with them.

And then Persephone will return.

We are in the interim. The path forward is unclear. Yet, it is still not too late to wrangle these child-minds into containment and return mature adults to the hill. Or, we can stay silent and let the children run the show. Lord of the Flies.

Either way, as order follows chaos, courage will reemerge. A new generation of leaders will find their moral center, value decency and join together, connected by service to the nation rather than self-interest. They will set about cleaning up the wreckage, sweeping up the mess. Persephone will return, Demeter will rejoice, life will bud, and perhaps our fragile democracy will be rekindled.

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Filed under: KS Friday, Metaphor, Perspective | Tagged: archetypes, artistry, authoritarian, chaos, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Demeter, democracy, John O"Donohue, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Lord of the Flies, maturity, mythology, order, Persephone, service, story, studio melange, the melange, void | 1 Comment »

Perhaps [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on January 16, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

It snowed last night. The temperatures have plummeted so this morning we are writing from the raft buried deep beneath a warming quilt. Dogga is fast asleep at our feet. These days he groans when he moves. His old bones, like mine, are not fond of the freeze.

Emotionally, this winter seems colder than most.

When I turned out the light on election night, knowing the result, my last thought before sleeping was, “The nation is now officially rend in two.” Even unplugged from the news and most of social media I am daily reminded of the reasons for the rupture. Today, responding to the terrible fires in L.A. someone out there – on the other side of the split – commented that, “They have no one but themselves to blame. They were warned what could happen if they didn’t rake their forests…” Cold heart, vacant mind. Empty soul.

A dear one recently suggested that it is time to focus on healing. She is wise and yet, each day I ask myself where we might begin to bridge the crevasse when a fortress of nonsense voids even the most basic compassion within those standing on the other side of the line.

Breck, our sweet aspen tree, serves as a hope-giver. She came home with us from Colorado and lived comfortably in a pot for the first few years of her life in Wisconsin. After we planted her she almost died. In fact, I thought she was already gone. After a replanting and a wish and a prayer, she pulled a Lazarus and managed to bud on her lower limbs. Now, a few years later, she is healthy and happy and growing like a weed.

We are without doubt moving into and through a national wasteland. As mythology instructs, the more we try to fix it, the worse it will become. It is beyond fixing. Shattering the facade is, in fact, a necessary part of leaving the wasteland behind. I suspect that we are now seeing what has always been there and there is not a bandage big enough or medicine potent enough to deal with the infection. It must burn itself out. It might very well kill the nation-body.

Absent of fixing, what remains is choosing. Each day, faced with yet-another-example of heartless-hogwash, I become more clear on what I value, more certain of what I believe. Perhaps the healing my friend suggests is in the act of choosing. In clarity, we each choose who we want to be.

Here’s what I know: if fire took the home and life possessions of that taunting-someone-out-there, I would reach, I would choose to help them. I would not choose to taunt them or blame them. I would not withhold aid from them. I would not politicize their pain. I would reach. And, I hope, when the hot fire of the incoming malfeasance burns through their fortress of nonsense, when bereft, they will recover their senses and regain their compassion. Perhaps their hearts will start beating again. Perhaps their minds will re-engage. Perhaps.

Perhaps then they will be capable of reaching back and the nation, like Breck, will take root in better soil, pull a Lazarus – and live to see another -healthier – day.

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Edges, Identity, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, compassion, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, disease, divide, healing, health, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, L.A. Fires, Lazarus, metaphor, mythology, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Out Of The Many [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on August 8, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Among other things, Wade Davis is an ethnobotanist, studying how people – cultures – use plants for food, medicines, dyes…in hunting and in ceremonies. The study of plants as living symbols. In a different life, in another path, I would have followed him around attempting to know-what-he-knows. Mythology beyond the abstraction.

For us, this week has become about the coneflower. Earlier in the week I wrote about its symbolism: strength, vitality, healing energy… The color of the coneflower accents different attributes. Orange evokes vitality and enthusiasm. Purple accents strength. Yellow, acceptance and perseverance.

I thought of Wade Davis because his study has taken him to indigenous cultures who live their symbology, their mythology is visceral, a deep-seated guide for how to conduct their lives. For them, the attributes of the plant are not curious abstractions, something to be found in a Wiki or a book or a religious tome. It is ancestral. Lived everyday. He writes beautifully about what he has experienced.

I wanted to know what a coneflower represents so I looked it up. It is not integrated into my being, pervasive to my clan and has not been passed to me by my elders. I want to identify with it so I write myself into the story. I write us into its meaning. It is, for us, new. We will give it roots, make it conscious by planting it in our symbolic garden.

As a society, many of our symbols are unconscious. It is a happy and fortuitous accident that the Olympic Games are happening in the midst of the ugly divisive rhetoric coming from the right in our political campaign. Each day I look at the athletes from the United States and I see a beautiful living symbol of our nation as it really is: diversity, a celebration of ethnicity – united under a single flag. It is, I believe, what our flag – our symbol – represents. Out of many, one.

This flag is one of our few conscious symbols. E pluribus unum is our tradition. It is our intention, written into our founding. It is our ancestry and inheritance. We are the many, united as one. It is what we strive to achieve. Our athletes represent us; they represent who we are beyond the abstraction.

The red hats and their authoritarian leader would have us understand our symbol differently. You can hear it in their language, placing the accent on racial division. Their obsession with degradation, their glee at name-calling, their unwavering commitment to a victim narrative…exposes a dedication to subverting the humanity of those that do not look or think like them. They would have the flag symbolize white nationalism, a radical uprooting of its meaning. Their notion of “one” rejects the many. It is, quite literally, flipping the symbol upside-down (as was proudly flown over the house of Justice Samual Alito).

They are not hiding their intention. They are counting on us to misconstrue or willingly discard the meaning of our sacred symbol.

Look at the athletes representing the USA. Take a walk in the park on the 4th of July and look at the people sharing the celebration in the commons. They are US. Rich in diversity. United.

Acceptance. Perseverance. Strength. Borne of the many, striving to be one.

Instrument of Peace, 48″x 91″, mixed media on canvas

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Identity, Metaphor | Tagged: acceptance, artistry, culture, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, DEI, e pluribus unum, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mythology, out of the many, perseverance, story, strength, studio melange, symbol, symbolism, the melange, United, unity, vitality, Wade Davis | 1 Comment »

Walk The Path [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 30, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s been awhile. I’ve fallen into an art book, Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art. I bought this book after attending the exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. It was – and still is – one of my favorite exhibits, reaching me on many levels. I went back again and again so I might spend quality time with a few of the paintings.

The paintings of the Aboriginal artists are mythologies, though not as we think of mythologies. They are more than dusty stories. Explanatory. They are active guides on a life path. Were I Aboriginal I’d “read” them. I’d know the stories so each piece would speak personally to me. The paintings would escort me along my life-path. Mythology as my story.

This is what amazed me most: many of the pieces were as abstract as a Rothko or Frankenthaler. Vibrant lines and color. They shimmered. Dreaming. Living foundational narrative carried in energetic swirls and dots of paint.

In my experience it is not uncommon in a gallery or museum to come across someone puzzling over a painting by a master artist and hear them say, “I don’t get it.” The abstraction is a closed door. “I could do that,” I heard a man huff while staring intently at a Jackson Pollock painting. The door is not closed between the Aboriginal artist and his or her community. The mythology has not broken down. The artist is not exclusively serving an individual expression, rather, they are maintaining an ancient connection, drawing from and carrying forward the deep well of communal story. “Meet Blue-Tongued Lizard Man…” Artists paying homage. Artists serving their role as keepers of the flame.

Kerri and I talked of our artistry as we walked the paths of the John Denver Sanctuary. He was a guide-star for her and continues to influence her work. Simple lines. Music that does not rely on acrobatics or embellishment. It was poignant that we had the sanctuary to ourselves. Sometimes it is nearly impossible to know whether or not our work-in-the-world reaches anyone or serves any real value beyond satisfying our imperative to create it. And sometimes, like that day walking the path through the sanctuary, the clouds rolling over the mountain, the Roaring Fork River singing at our side, the ancestry is clear. “This is where I come from,” she said. “This is where I belong”.

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Gratitude, Identity | Tagged: Aboriginal Art, abstraction, ancestry, ancient, ancient connection, artistry, connection, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dreaming, guide, guide star, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, John Denver, john denver sanctuary, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Mark Rothko, mythology, Seattle Art Museum, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Step Out. Step In [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 27, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“In rivers, the water you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes: so it is with time present.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci

I might say that, in the mountains, in the sanctuary, we stepped out of time.

We sometimes forget that time is a relatively new invention in human history. The mechanical measurement of our moments. So, when we say that we “stepped out of time”, I literally mean that we temporarily exited the quantification of our moving experience. Future/past. To-do lists and locators. It begs the question, “If we step out of time what do we step into?”

Everyone knows the word “present”. The present. It’s a very big little word. The English language would have us understand it as a place. An arrival. We look for it, strive for it and, paradoxically, we enter it by forgetting to look or strive. It is where we are – always – and yet we so rarely know it. It’s where meaning is found and connection. It’s where peace and beauty are realized.

A poet might write that to die is to step out of time. To be born is to step into it. It’s the epicenter of our mythology, this cycle of dying and rebirth. Into and out of time. Winter and spring.

We stepped into the sanctuary and stepped out of time. Our cares dropped away. We took a deep breath. Sometime later, we stepped back into time and both felt renewed. Of course.

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Filed under: Awakening, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, connection, cycles, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dying, experience, future, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Leonardo da Vinci, life cycles, meaning, moments, mythology, past, present, rebirth, renewal, spring, story, studio melange, the melange, the present, time, time present, winter | 1 Comment »

Balance [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on March 6, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

It looks like Persephone is back from the underworld. Or at least she is on her way. Demeter, her mother, goddess of all things that grow in nature, is starting to celebrate.

Persephone is early and, although Demeter, like all mothers, is over-the-moon with excitement with the early return of her daughter, the rest of us should be wondering “What’s up?” When those fickle gods change pattern this dramatically there’s good reason to wonder when the storm will arrive. Balance is off; things are about to tilt.

This morning I opened the back door to let the Dogga out and was completely captivated by the bird song. The full chorus was singing and they were glorious. In truth, the full chorus has been singing the sun up every morning for the past several weeks. Spring arrived in February. I am often awake when the first bird, the early soloist, takes the stage. I wonder if they know. Listening to the birds, looking at my untouched snow shovel resting by the back door, I thought about my dear friend in Reno who wrote, “We never get this much snow…”

Balance. Persephone ate six pomegranate seeds, the fruit of the underworld, so a bargain was struck: for each seed consumed she must spend a month in the underworld. Six months in the underworld. And, six months in the light with her mother, the earth celebrating their reunion. Six and six. This year, the bargain must have collapsed since we are three and nine. What about the other three seeds?

What about the balance?

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Metaphor, Story | Tagged: artistry, balance, birdsong, celebration, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Demeter, greek mythology, hades, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, light, mythology, Persephone, seasons, story, studio melange, the melange, underworld | 1 Comment »

Share The Symbols [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on December 22, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

When I was a wee-turnip I found a textbook on the shelf from a course my dad took in college. Comparative religions. It’s a big-big book full of many-many comparisons. It now resides on my shelf. This book sparked a life-long fascination for me. The universal nature of myth and story across individual cultures and how these stories and symbols are, over time, pulled and twisted like taffy, co-opted, integrated and sometimes claimed as the private property of religion x or y.

Today, as I write this, we sit squarely on the solstice. I thought a few tidbits of story-symbol might be fun to visit so, together, we might taste the taffy.

In Italian tradition, La Befana is the goddess of the solstice. She rides a broom through the skies leaving candy and presents to the good little boys and girls. As a broom-riding pagan goddess, she predates Saint Nick by more than a few centuries. The Christian tradition snagged her and after a bit of twisting, she became a character in the Magi story. On a cold, cold night she gave shelter to those three wise-men but declined to join them on their quest because she had unfinished chores. After they left she had a change of heart but couldn’t find the manger on her own so she gave the gifts she had in tow to the nice children she met during her manger-search.

On the solstice, the goddess Isis gave birth to her son Horus, the sun god. Leta gave birth to Apollo on the solstice. The Persian god of light, Mithra, was born on the solstice. These births were technically virgin births since the conception in every case was immaculate. Egyptian. Greek. Persian. These stories predate the Christian story by centuries. It’s a ripple across time and culture of the same human impulse: after a long dark season to celebrate the return of the light.

We lose more than we know when we – to borrow a great term from Joseph Campbell – concretize a symbol. The stories and myths are meant to open us to greater unity with each other and the world we share. They are not meant to be taken or understood literally. Holding them literally slams the door on their greater meaning and unifying power. It renders them a possession, a plot point on a map.

On this winter solstice I can imagine no greater gift to this divided world than to recognize we are, through our unique symbols and characters, telling the same story, yearning for the same possibilities, sharing the same ideals whether they soar through the air on a broomstick or in a sleigh, both rides brimming with toys for good girls and boys. We borrow each others best ideas and ideals, rewriting them to fit our unique audience. From Isis and Horus to Mary and Jesus, it’s time once again to celebrate the rich warm return of the light through our myriad forms and cultural traditions, to feel the push and pull of something ancient and deeply human. Together.