protests | The Direction of Intention

A Little Bit Of Hope [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on January 15, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

We were gifted a day with sunshine instead of the incessant rain promised by the forecast. We threw on our vests and headed for the trail. We stopped at every sun-soaked curve and drank in the warmth. “This will get us through the next few weeks,” she said. A little bit of sun in a dark, dark time generates a full tank of hope.

The rubber band disintegrated and the ancient roll of tracing paper unraveled. It revealed a crinkled and torn tracing of a painting I completed decades ago. I have no memory of making this tracing. I don’t trace my paintings. I must have wanted to keep a template or record of the lines. I must have been about to send the painting out into the world. In the spirit of experimentation, in a spontaneous moment of play, I adhered the crumpled ripped tracing to an old canvas, retraced the lines with the last bit of charcoal I had in the studio, sprayed it with hairspray in an attempt to fix the charcoal, and slathered it with acrylic medium. It was messy and fun and decidedly un-serious. I had no idea what would happen. It reminded me of how I worked when I was very young. No – not how. Why. It reminded me of why I ran to the edge of every idea and jumped without reservation or plan or parachute: to find out “what if”. Playing with that tracing paper was like the little bit of sun on the trail. I basked in it. It will carry me a long way.

I’ve been thinking about Renee Nicole Good. I am haunted by something in the video made by her executioner. In the last 25 seconds of her life, she told her soon-to-be murderer that she’s not mad at him. As a citizen of the United States, as someone who lived her entire life under First Amendment protections, as someone who believed in the freedom to protest and the rights afforded her in the Constitution, it never occurred to her – not for a moment – that her life was in danger. It never occurred to her that her rights were null and void in the eyes of the regime that employed and empowered the man in the mask. He was there, not to protect her rights, but to make her an example. He was there to strip her (and, therefore, us) of her/our rights. The hope? The people gathering on the streets blowing whistles, the people protecting each other by recording each outrage, the small acts and gestures of everyday people, like Renee Good, who believe in exercising the freedoms and values afforded us in the Constitution…are like that little bit of sun. Renee Good’s unwavering belief, like the people who show up on the streets for their neighbors, like the people marching against this tyranny – around the nation and the world – give me hope. And a little bit of hope in this very dark time can carry us a long way.

read Kerri’s blogpost about WINTER SHADOWS

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Dissolve The Image [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on September 2, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

We watched a live stream of the protests yesterday. The streamer interviewed many people. He chatted casually with others. What became abundantly clear was the myriad of issues driving people to the streets. The catalyst may have been the shooting of Jacob Blake or the president’s visit but the deep matter that drove each person to the street was utterly individual, personal. Unique. All trying to give substance and voice to their deep matter.

So many people alone together. I was witnessing a part of the Sisyphus saga that I’ve written about repeatedly. A boatload of souls arrive in the underworld, disembark, and wander along the beach. Each is completely unaware of the other souls. So wrapped in their story, they think they are alone. Finally, their stories play out, and in the silence they begin to see each other, and in coming together, dissolve, and blend into a single bank of mist. From separation to unity.

A quote from Krishanmurti roared into my mind: “You say that if the mind has faith in the image, then the image will give power to the mind. Obviously; the mind creates the image and then derives power from its own creation. That is what the mind is everlastingly doing: producing images and drawing strength, happiness, benefit from those images, thereby remaining empty, inwardly poverty stricken.”

The mind creates the image. The mind gives power to the image. The mind creates the story. The mind gives power to the story. It’s a fantasy feedback loop. We are mistaken to call our image, our story, “normal” or believe it to be “truth.” The protesters stand toe-to-toe and shout into the faces of others, a screaming match of conflicting images. A story collision.

“But the mind cannot create truth. What it creates is not truth, it is merely an opinion, a judgment.“

Even as I write this I think, “Who cares?” The shouting, de-friending, families dividing and plunging into right-or-left-media-madness that matches the image-of-the-mind is escalating. The tug-of-war for story dominance is vicious and it seems Ethic and Moral have packed their bags and fled to a safe house.

Despite warning and wailing and prediction, the streets were silent last night. So still. Perhaps in our silent moments we will begin to see each other, and like the souls in the story, be drawn together, dissolving our individual images into a single bank of purpose. Perhaps.

read Kerri’s blog post on this Not-So-Flawed Wednesday

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Drop The Condition [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on April 27, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

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Anyone who tells you that people are not fond of suffering has either 1) never experienced love or 2) never loved an experience. Kerri assures me that giving birth to her children was at the same time the most painful and most joyful experience of her life. It is why humanity, throughout its diverse cultural variations, all bandy-about some version of the phrase “unconditional love.” As they say, love is a sword that cuts both ways. Or, to use a weapon-free metaphor, love is a lemon, both bitter and sweet. All inclusive. No conditions.

If we are lucky, we do what we love. Whether climbing to the mountaintop or walking the path of an artist, both come with a fair amount of suffering. They also come with an inordinate amount of elation. Moments of passing fulfillment. It is just as I have been taught: the secret to happiness in this life is to do what you love simply because you love it. Walk toward your love and the suffering will make sense. It will make sense because the suffering-in-love is always transcendent. All inclusive.

Walking toward your love with an added layer of condition (i.e., it has to make money) and you lose what you love. It contorts or goes to dust.

The Buddhists have a phrase: joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. This world is filled with sorrow and suffering and injustice. To be fully alive is not to protect yourself from feeling the sorrows or from experiencing the suffering, but to stand in them. Participate. Engage. Drop the notion that life is an achievement and you will open to the full experience. Colors on the palette.

This is not an abstraction or a dose of idealism. If you are not walking toward your love you are, in all likelihood, walking away from what you fear. With fear as a motivator, the natural destination is a fort. Separation. Self-preservation. Exclusion. Living in a fortress makes for a very small world, a narrow band of experience, lots of rules and a multitude of dull and angry days.

We are living in a time of overwhelming challenge. This pandemic mountain is steep. There is undeniable suffering. Fear is being fed. Conflict nurtured. Division fueled. Fear drives people to gather at the governor’s mansion and demand to open the economy. In their blind-fear-madness the protestors rave about acceptable losses. The mind can be a dull angry fortress when the heart is lost in the conditional. Souls twist.

Love, on the other hand, brings nurses and doctors, after attending to the sick and dying, to stand silently in the midst of the fear protestors. Their message is simple. Go home.

Do not doubt that these nurses and doctors are suffering, climbing a very tall and dangerous mountain, but it all makes sense because their love is without condition. They are asking all of us to do no more than think of the suffering of others. They are. Love without condition is simple. All inclusive. No loss is acceptable.

read Kerri’s blog post about SUFFERING GLORIOUSLY