After All [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on December 1, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

We spent some time hanging out with Frank over the holiday. He is 93 and doing a stint in rehab. Frank is filled to the brim with great stories told with the laughing good humor of a man who has made a friend of folly. On our way out the door he said, “After all, isn’t that what’s most important in life, what life is about? Good friends. The relationships we enjoy. The time we spend together” We nodded and he added, “It seems like we have nothing to complain about.”

Frank is among my role-models for how to age well. Stay wide-open to new experiences. Believe in the goodness of people. Dance the twist at every opportunity. Laugh at yourself. Cultivate your mischief. Stand firmly planted in gratitude.

A few years ago I read about a comic whose performances and life blossomed when he realized that his job was not to make people laugh, rather, it was to bring them to their laughter. It’s subtle but profound: focus on what you bring to others, not on what you get from them. Later, as we prepared our Guinness Irish stew and mashed potatoes, I realized this simple message was Frank’s superpower, the reason why I admire him: even at 93 years old in rehab, even while facing an impossible mountain to climb, his focus was on what he could bring to us. There was not a hint of self-pity. There was no mention of his aches, pains or growing list of obstacles. He told fishing stories and regaled us with adventures from his youth. We laughed and bantered and left feeling full to the brim with great stories and good humor.

“After all, isn’t that what’s most important in life, what life is about? Good friends. The relationships we enjoy. The time we spend together” We nodded and Frank added, “It seems like we have nothing to complain about.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about GATHERING

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When It’s All Said And Done [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on October 6, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

I discarded another post this morning. Aghast at the latest lies and childish memes I wrote yet another political rant. It was harsh. It was too much. It led us into a lengthy conversation about how we might live and write in this toxic environment and yet not let the toxins poison us. How do we remain healthy while not denying the reality – the horrors – of our democracy’s collapse at the hands of those who swore to protect it?

In truth, I have not been happy with my recent posts. So many years ago I began writing for a specific audience – and myself – to make the distinction between unhealthy control and generative power. The shorthand is this: Control over/Power with.

Control is wielded over others while power is created with others. Control is self-absorbed. Power is other-focused. Control is the product of duality: us/them, black/white, winner/loser…It is oppositional. It can only lead to discord.

Power is created in a dynamic triad. It is relational. It is complementary and reciprocal. It always gives rise to harmony.

I realized in our conversation this morning that I had myself slipped into a duality. My writing has become oppositional. As our nation grows more violent and ugly by the day, my impulse has been to push back, to sound an alarm. I want to scream, “I am not that! WE are not that!”

Ronald Reagan famously said that “Government is the problem.” He was wrong. Government is neither a problem nor is it a solution (a duality). Government is a service (a triad). It is made of elected representatives in service to their constituents relative to serving the greater needs of the whole. It is dynamic. When functional and fair, it is complementary. Symbiotic.

Government becomes dysfunctional when it tries to run like a business and pretends it is subject to a bottom line (profit or loss). It is death for any service organization that forgets its reason-for-being and attempts to be something that it is not: government is not a business. It’s a no-brainer: privatization of government services places the emphasis on the bottom line – not on serving the people. For instance, privatize prisons and the bottom line of profitability will require the creation of more and more prisoners. Businesses need to grow. The same levers are true when applied to healthcare (as we are seeing) or education.

I believe most of the people of this nation are well intended. I believe the endgame of this administration is control so it must necessarily define everything as Us-and-Them. Demagogues need to demonize vulnerable communities and blame them for the ills of the nation. Demagogues need enemies-from-within since pitting us against each other is the route to ultimate control over…Demagogues need a Them.

People who are not steeped in blaming others for their pain are more likely to take responsibility for their destiny – which means they seek opportunity – which means that they are more apt the reach out to help and for help. Opportunity is a triad. Blame is a duality.

You might rightly ask me, “How on earth could a prompt featuring Sesame Street characters lead to a post so toxic that you had to toss it?” The answer is simple: in a control strategy like the one raging across our nation, in a forced duality designed to appear as angels and devils, good guys and bad guys, the bad guys will always get the focus. That’s the point of a control game: to see bad guys everywhere. To become reactive, suspicious, and angry. To reduce an otherwise complex, diverse thriving nation into a simplistic monotone. We are angels. They are devils. Happy and sad, grouchy and glad.

As someone once said to me, “It’s like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

I drank the poison. I’m so glad that our conversation this morning opened my eyes and left me asking, “How do I not bury my head in the sand but deal with the reality and still remain healthy?”

Triads, baby. Focus on the dynamic relationships and set about creating some real power with others. When it’s all said and done isn’t that the point of a democracy?

read Kerri’s blogpost about SESAME STREET

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Meeting The Madness [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 29, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Act 2 of Stephen Sondheim’s musical, Into The Woods, delivers a healthy dose of reality: there is no happily ever after. There is, however, a full-life with bumps and barnacles and growth and messy challenges and change. There is heartbreak and jubilation. There is a full-palette of feelings. There are bright days and dark days. A life without obstacles is a very boring affair.

In my past, when facilitating groups, I used to love proving to people that they like challenges, that they adore obstacles. If we don’t have hills to climb we create them. They are called hobbies. Or workouts. Or volunteering. We set goals that seem impossible and then meet them. And, among the greatest challenges we eagerly embrace is called “relationship”.

I knew how to teach about the challenge called “relationship” because I was once under the spell of happily-ever-after. I thought something was wrong with me when all of the colors of the relationship rainbow demanded attention. What was wrong with me was my unrealistic expectation, my dedication to a life without obstacles.

It’s what I love about this life: things flip over when illusions are popped. Happily-ever-after is no way to live. Each day I step out of bed looking for the miracles and find that they are always right in front of my face – and often they initially look like stumbling blocks. I can say with confidence that the road ahead looks to be riddled with hurdles and though I may grouse and complain, secretly I recognize and welcome the full-spectrum of color these hindrances will evoke.

My friend, Robert just wrote that, “…sometimes life throws big surprises at you.” We are living in a time when life is throwing big surprises at us in rapid fire each and every day. It seems that we are in an impossible situation with a government spiraling into authoritarianism. The vast majority of the people of this nation have had enough of the clown show and are turning out to meet the challenge.

There is no happily ever after. There is no return to a fantasy past. There are, however, millions and millions of people who are up for meeting the challenge, with all its bumps and barnacles, ready – more than ready – for the growth that meeting the madness will evoke.

read Kerri’s blogpost about I TOLERATE

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It’s Only Natural [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on September 23, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

This is a photograph of diversity: thriving tomato plants, basil, rosemary, cilantro, parsley, peppers, and autumn clematis. Look closer and you will spot bees, caterpillars and garden spiders. The chipmunk trail runs directly behind the bench. It is a tale of interconnectivity. Biodiversity is nature’s secret of success. Symbiotic relationships make the garden flourish.

Monoculture, on the other hand, all but guarantees a system’s collapse. It is true in nature. It is true of us as well; as human beings have learned again and again when soiling the nest, we are not separate from nature. We are not above it all. We are one thin ozone away from annihilation.

The word “symbiotic” comes from the Greek word for “living together.” Our democratic experiment is a test of human cultural symbiosis. For those of us who value actual history over made-up dross, it is undeniable that innovation has always thrived at the crossroads of cultures and the USA is an intentional crossroads.

White supremacy has been an ugly thorn in our democratic saddle since the nation’s inception but thankfully, until now, has never held the reins of power. As we watch the ICE horror story of racial profiling – astonishingly permitted by the Supreme Court, the assault on DEI, the erasure of people of color from our history, the vilification of Democrats (the party of diversity), we are witness to the insane attempt to force a monoculture into existence. And, as the insane – and inane – attempt at whitewashing our very colorful nation progresses, we step ever closer to our system’s collapse.

White fragility is at the epicenter of white supremacy. It claims to be a master race but fundamentally fears looking at its face in the mirror. It flees criticism. It touts being atop a pyramid built upon the labor and innovation of everyone else. It purports to represent the average citizen while embracing the economics of oligarchy (neoliberalism) and the politics of division. It knows how to pillage and rape and rig the game but understands almost nothing of building true strength, power, community and unity. It doesn’t have the first idea of the reality of symbiosis; it swirls in the fantasy-strut of mythical cowboy independence.

It is not a mystery that our democratic garden is in danger of dying. Perhaps, if we survive this race to destruction, we will at last be able to look in the mirror, see-embrace-and-deal with our full history. We will insist on building our home on the truth. All of it. Perhaps we will rise from the ashes without the idiotic idea that any race is superior to any other and truly, fully embrace the beating heart of our democratic union: that all people are created equal, that all people are protected equally under the law, that it is our experiment in diversity that makes – and has made – this nation great all along.

Symbiosis. Diversity. The same relationships that make our garden thrive will make our nation thrive. It’s only natural.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE GARDEN BENCH

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Our Natural Tendency [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 10, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

This sedum is a volunteer. It somehow took root beneath the deck and yet has found a way to reach the sun. It’s funny. Each day I check on this little plant because its resilience gives me some small measure of hope: good things can take root in dark places and through natural tenacity, find a way to the light.

When I step back from our national horror story and take in the whole picture, I am overwhelmed at the abundance of light. People showing up for other people. People expressing outrage at the treatment of others. The shadow spaces are small in comparison.

In this way people are no different than plants. Our tendency – our need – is to seek and find the light and the light is found in the community and what it values. A community can only stay in the dark for so long before it – like a plant – begins to perish.

“They have no respect for human life,” she said, showing me the latest video of an ICE arrest. And then came her list of disrespect: “Decimating USAID, cuts to Medicaid and SNAP…” It was a very, very long list.

I responded, “They have no respect for others because they have no respect for themselves.” It would be impossible to vote for that Big Bloated Bill and be able to look at yourself in the mirror.

They crawl into dark places to flee the light. The assault on the free press. The prevention of congressional oversight – and the nation – from seeing into their “deportation detention centers”. The restrictions (elimination) of due process and habeas corpus…This, too, is a very, very long list. Dark hearts creating dark places.

Here’s the thing: in dark places people lose track of where they are. Disoriented, they also lose track of where others are. In panic, they lose track of how important others are. They become physically, mentally and morally confused. They default into “every man for himself”. In survival-mode, people push others underwater in an attempt to elevate themselves. In the end, all drown.

In the dark we lose track of who we are because we can only know ourselves in relationship to others. Societies collapse in shadowy amorality and the dim fantasy land of every-man-for-himself (obviously).

It is the way of fascist regimes to drag the people of their nation into the dark. Our current leadership in these un-United States is following the Nazi playbook exactly. To perpetuate their dark intention they need to manufacture enemies; the trail of enemy creation will eventually lead back to themselves. They will eventually have to eat each other in their dog-eat-dog fascism. Even though it doesn’t look like it at this moment in time, dragging us into the dark will bring them to perish in an inky bunker.

Like the sedum rooted beneath the deck, it is our natural tendency is to reach for the light.

The only real question that remains is how much dark-malfeasance will we tolerate before we-as-a-nation say, “Enough,” break free and turn toward the light?

And, if we make it, if we survive this dark time and stumble back into the sun, I hope we will have the courage to look at what the light reveals to us – about us. I hope we have the capacity to see fully the totality of our history – all of it. I hope we are capable of asking why so many of us drank from a fox-fire hose of lies and so willingly embraced fantastic falsehoods. I hope we might once and for all align our actions with our rhetoric and put to rest the ugly idea that We-The-People only applies to a privileged few, but applies equally to all of us – a wildly diverse community dedicated to keeping the experiment of democracy vibrant and in the light.

Face the Sun, 18″x24″ mixed media

read Kerri’s blogpost about SEDUM

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Follow The Hummingbird [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on May 14, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

If you want to understand the power of story – if you care to discover how every cultural story is both universal and deeply personal, take the time to read and reread and reread Martín Prechtel’s small book, The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun. After telling the story, he peels back the layers of understanding, the story of the daughter’s disobedience is a roadmap to an intentional life. It is connective tissue to generational wisdom:

“…that though we as listeners have the illusion that we have jumped into the story, the story has actually jumped into us and uses our lives to tell out its story.”

Sitting in our backyard, the sun lowering in the sky, the hummingbird arrived. A hummingbird is featured prominently in the The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun and this little visitor brought the story to my mind. Like all deep-story-roots, it is a tale as relevant to us as it is to the Indigenous people who live it – to keep the story alive.

“This is a commentary on the inevitable human problem of tribalism and the tragic results of ethnocentricity. It reminds us that a preoccupation with purity is a sign that a people have lost their real stories, lost their place in history, lost their land and relationship with nature and in an effort to be “someone” they engineer mythologies that are rationalist inventions to corroborate a pure ancestry. This same rationalism probably killed their stories and their Indigenous relationship with the land to begin with.”

Have you ever read anything that so accurately describes our struggle in these un-United States? As we witness the scrubbing of DEI initiatives, the blatant and brutal whitewashing of our nation’s history in order to engineer and perpetuate a mythology of white male purity, a made-up tale planted in the shallow barren soil of nationalist Christianity…we see the undeniable sign that we have lost our real story.

As is true of all great storytellers, Martín guides us toward hope and renewal:

“The story of their cultural loss should be their story, and from that grief they could grow a new culture. If you go back far enough, all people are mixed no matter what they say, and that is no disgrace.”

There is a path. It begins with grieving our loss. Together. And then, there is this:

“The story also says that a peoples’ attachment to their homeland and customs is necessary, wonderful, and life-giving, but should never be allowed to fuel a destructive chauvinism that excludes the rest of the world’s love for its own life and land.”

These are just a few of the lessons carried within an ancient Mayan tale. They are relevant to us today. We need only care enough to open our hearts and listen. And listen again. And then simmer in the slow opportunity that avails itself in the land beyond “problem-solving”.

The promise of our crossroads nation: to grow a new culture. Isn’t that the heart of our matter? Out of many, one.

There’s a hummingbird that can show us the way.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE HUMMINGBIRD

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Mutually [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on April 30, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Objects are such only with respect to other objects, they are nodes where bridges meet. The world is a perspectival game, a play of mirrors that exist only as reflections of and in each other.” ~ Carlo Rovelli via The Marginalian, April 27, 2025

The tree stands beyond our back fence, its limbs spiral and twist, sculpted by time and the force of the winds roaring off the lake. Looking at her photograph, a silhouette against an evening blue sky, I remarked, “It’s a Jackson Pollock painting.” She looked again at her photograph through the lens of my remark, nodding.

Nature sculpts the tree that catches the photographer’s eye, her photograph invokes images of a drip painting. “…interaction is the fundamental reality of the universe, that there are no entities as such…”

We do ourselves a great disservice ignoring interconnection in service to our separation.

It’s human: we need to make sense of things so we compartmentalize. We object-ify, detaching tree from time and wind from photographer, assigning all to discrete little box-identities, placing emphasis on the noun rather than on the interplay, the intertwining verb. In our minds we stop the motion, sever interrelationship into distinct pieces, so that we might convince ourselves that we have a grasp on “reality”. In creating objective “reality” we blind ourselves to the greater mutuality.

Science dissected the world-body into parts which led to the smallest objective part, called a quantum, and discovered it’s a slippery devil, energy, that can only be described subjectively. It can only be known through its relationships. Mutuality.

I’ve yet to hear an adequate definition of the word “woke”. Maga world flings it liberally and with sharp derision to describe all manner of “progressive” ideals, yet stutters when asked what it means. It’s an umbrella term, a catch-all, like the grainy photograph of the Loch Ness monster, shaky proof of something to be feared but mostly unknown. In fox land, this Loch Ness monster is called “socialism”.

To Maga world I offer this definition of Woke: greater mutuality. Woke, like a quantum, cannot be objectified just as compassion cannot be fully defined. It can be experienced. It is an energy, connective tissue.

Woke flies the flag of equality. Woke understands that the suspension of due process for any single person is the suspension of due process for all people. Woke understands that prosperity reserved for the few means poverty for the many. Woke intends shared prosperity, an equal playing field, helping hands. “Float all boats” is a Woke ideology. Woke is not a hand-out, it is a help-up. A moral center – also known as mutuality – is Woke; we can be our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper or we can be their persecutor. Keeper or persecutor: both describe a kind of relationship.

Woke is what defines Maga just as Maga is now clarifying Woke. Maga desires separation. It strives for elevation above others; legislated privilege. Woke desires equality. It strives for a more perfect union: legislated inclusion. The promise of possibility.

We do ourselves a great disservice: we are neither red nor blue. We are not conservative nor progressive. We are not Woke or Maga. Those terms are boxes that ignore the fundamental truth of our – or any – nation. We are interconnected. We are a relationship.

Remove environmental protections and all of the air we breathe and the water we drink will be polluted. Remove election watchdogs and all of our elections will be corrupted. Remove a commitment to truth and lies will define us and pull us apart.

After all, Maga is a made-up-media term just as is Woke. They are boxes meant to give us an enemy, the illusion of separation.

Democracy is not a “thing”, an object. It is a movement, a quantum. We know it by our interactions as defined in our Constitution. We know it as a place where bridges meet. Where people from many places come together.

Whether Maga or Woke, we will feel the loss of democracy equally just as we feel the disintegration of our values, our shared narrative, our aspiration for justice-for-all; mutually.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TREE

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A Legacy of Hope [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on January 23, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Tom was concerned with what would become of the ranch after he was gone. His concern was not the land so much as the family legacy. He felt as if he was the last, the keeper of the history. Who might carry the story forward? Who will re-member the steps walked by his ancestors?

I was moved to tears when the Balinese explained to me that, according to their belief, every child born was an ancestor returned. After seven generations, the ancestor comes back wearing the funny new face of the infant descendant. The important point is this: A community makes fundamentally different choices when they understand that the earth they leave behind is the earth that they will also inherit. The ancestor attends to the descendant because the descendant is the ancestor.

Through a translator, the Chinese master-acupuncturist explained to the students that the challenge he perceived in them was that they were rootless. The U.S. culture too easily plows under the sacred to erect a mall. We have very little connection to, understanding of, or respect for the past. He explained that eyes blinded by the shiny-new or obsessed with the algorithm will never access the ancient art of healing a human being. The whole being. With so little concern for what came before there is little awareness or care of the tracks made by marching forward. How is it possible to help balance the health of others when the healer is rootless and unaware of the impact of their actions?

“But what do we do?” It is the ubiquitous question asked by those who reject the malice and indecency that recently swept into power in the USA. The question thrust me back into the single challenge I faced as a DEI consultant: my clients were protected against the very thing that might help them. They wanted a solution – a fix – and saw no value in attending to relationships. The gods of efficiency and effectiveness had no time to waste. Eyes would roll when we suggested that they cease trying to fix problems. They’d panic when we proffered that a to-do list would never create the better culture they envisioned. In fact, it would prevent it. Cultivating “the space between,” paying attention to the quality of the relationships, would bring about the transformation they desired: a culture of mutual support grown from a history of ugly division.

This morning I was struggling to articulate my thought and Kerri stopped my mind-wander with this encapsulation: “What you are trying to say is that It’s not solution-based. It’s process-based.” Yes. Exactly.

“Solution-based” focuses exclusively on what-we-do. It is transactional and, after all, isn’t that the epicenter of what ails us as a nation? If the prevailing philosophy is the-ends-are-worth-the-means, then lying, cheating, grifting, demeaning, debasing, bullying are acceptable behaviors. We are currently witness to the amorality of attainment-of-power-by-any-means. It doesn’t matter who gets hurt or why. No one in power cares about the legacy, the traces left behind. Rootless. Unethical. Out of balance.

“Process-based” is concerned with who-we-are. Together. The opposite of transactional is transformational. Mutual support. Reinforcing connection. Paying attention to the growth of the whole as a means of attending to the growth of the individual. It’s a radically different philosophy in which the ends-are-the-means. Actions matter. Words matter. Choices matter. Roots matter. The legacy, the tracks we leave behind, matters.

And so we ask the question, “But what do we do?” We speak out. We use our voices for good. We begin by looking to the legacy of hope those who came before us left for us to follow. Perhaps we begin by linking arms, focusing on the space between, and continuing a legacy of hope and courage for future generations to follow.

from the archives: Doves

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read Kerri’s blogpost about THE TRACES WE LEAVE

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The Whole Of It [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on January 17, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Rather than cut back our ornamental grasses in the fall, we opt to leave them untouched until later in the spring. Not only do they provide shelter for the critters through the cold months, they are also visually stunning and, as an artist, to be stunned visually is high on my priority list. Raw sienna and ochre slow-dance against the cold ice blue of the snow. My favorite is the sunset playing through the waving winter plumes, orange, pink and purple.

The chipmunks have a highway that runs behind the grasses on the side of the yard. It stretches from their sanctuary, Barney-the-piano, all the way to Kerri’s potting bench just off the deck. Lately, a tiger striped kitty visits in the night and stays close-in to the grasses. Dogga has surprised it a time or two and it beats a hasty retreat. I know where the kitty has been during the night because Dogga starts his day by tracking the kitty-path, sniffing along the grasses.

Between the birds, squirrels, bunnies, chippies, the kitty and dogga…there is an entire world, a vibrant life story thriving in and among the winter grasses. They are more than ornamental.

I’m reading about initiation rituals. I came upon this sentence and read it a few times: “…we boys realized that every human being’s goal in the village was the eventual admission into the pursuit and maintenance of the sacred.” [Martin Prechtel, Long Life Honey in the Heart] Pursuit of the sacred is eventual. Admission into the pursuit of the sacred comes with living a bit of life, navigating hardship, peeling off layers of self-importance and fully grasping the reality of mortality. Developing eyes that can see the sacred. Nurturing a heart that opens and appreciates the smallest-as-the-grandest of moments. My favorite word in the sentiment is “maintenance” – it suggests participation as well as responsibility. The sacred is connective tissue to the future and the past and disappears without tending. The maintenance of the sacred is a relationship: attend to the sacred and it will attend to you.

Actions with service intention. Living with attention.

In my reading I’ve learned of the fate of the uninitiated, those who know no responsibility to the village. They are destined to be adolescents forever, void of any greater perspective or sense of communal responsibility. Never capable of approaching their responsibility to maintaining the sacred since, to them, nothing is sacred. Self-serving. A life that collapses into dull inattention and usury.

It is one way of understanding the incoming administration and comprehending the sad, sad confirmation hearings: we are captive to the uninitiated. The uninitiated enabling the uninitiated. Thuggery is the inevitable aim and refuge of the perpetually adolescent. In this cadre, clearly, nothing is sacred. Nothing disqualifies.

The eventual admission into the pursuit and maintenance of the sacred. Every human being’s goal – if they mature into well-rounded human beings. It’s not a given. It’s a realization that comes from an orientation: a sense of greater responsibility to the village: the village – not only a place, but a relationship of people to a place, to ancestry, to tradition, to each other, to a dedication for the soul-health of all, now and into the future.

These days I feel grateful to those elders who felt a responsibility toward me, to steward my growth. To those who took time and care to orient me onto a life-path pointing toward the eventual admission and maintenance of the sacred. To those who helped nurture in me eyes capable of seeing beyond the ornament, capable of seeing the vibrant colors in winter grasses, capable of relishing the abundant life taking shelter, playing chase, enjoying safe passage…the whole of it a sanctuary.

GRACE on the album RIGHT NOW © 2010 Kerri Sherwood

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about WINTER GRASSES

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A Successful Ripple [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 15, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

In 1890 Eugene Schieffelin released 60 starlings in Central Park. A year later he released another 40. Starlings are not native to the United States and Schieffelin “…hoped to bring all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays to North America…” It is estimated that 100 million flocks descended from his original 100 starlings. One of the 100 million took respite in our neighbors tree and their sheer number stopped us in our tracks. Beautiful individually, beautiful en masse.

That’s quite a successful ripple. It reminded me of Paul who taught me never to underestimate my power to influence the lives of others. We never know the reach of our actions, the power of our words. The ripples we launch.

A lover of metaphor, I am given to researching symbolism, the genesis of every story. I was unusually moved by the starlings, by the unity of their movement in flight, so, imagining that they were messengers, I wondered what might their message be:

“When the Starling Spirit Animal comes into your life, it suggests careful consideration as to with whom you spend time and how much they influence your thoughts and behavior. It’s great being part of a sizable group, but not every single member has a positive impact on you. You need friends. That’s normal. But always take care with whom you let into your inner circle. Stay with folks who support your growth and positive thinking.”

I laughed when I read it. Could there be a more pertinent message for our divisive times? “Take care with whom you let into your inner circle.” We’re in the process of circling our wagons. We’re recently very particular about the information we plug into, the conversations we entertain, and with whom.

And then there was this relative to starlings as symbol:

“Don’t be afraid to put your truth forward. It takes a little practice, but relationships require clarity.”

As I’ve written, these troubled times have provoked quite the ongoing debate within Kerri’s and my Melange. What are the boundaries of what we write? “Put your truth forward…relationships require clarity.”

I was also amused to read this:

“Starling Spirit Animal offers insight on how you can remain assertive, but not overbearing.”

Ask Kerri. I could definitely use some insight in not being overbearing and the starlings are no doubt great masters and a worthy place to start.

And so, 135 years ago, Eugene Schieffelin let fly a starling ripple and his messengers recently landed in my neighbor’s tree which prompted me to ponder these very worthy missives:

“Put your truth forward.“

“…remain assertive, but not overbearing.”

“…take care with whom you let into your inner circle.“

read Kerri’s blogpost about STARLINGS

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