Posted on January 1, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative
There is no more appropriate symbol on the first day of the new year than the pine cone. It is an ancient symbol that reaches across cultures and religions. Spiritual awakening, inner vision, new growth, enduring spirit.
When we were married, Joan gave us a box of pine cones. We’ve followed her suggestion and each year commit a cone to fire to release the seeds. New life. The symbology also includes resilience because fire is often required to free the seeds. Fire transforms.
2025 was like a forest fire in these un-United States. It is my hope, our hope, that the hot authoritarian fire of 2025 released the seeds of democracy’s renewal, that we awaken – reawaken – to the enduring spirit of our diverse nation and the promise of equality under the law, the expectation of liberty and justice for all. It is the epicenter, the aspiration-seed planted by our founders and protected by our Constitution.
On this, the first day of this new year, 2026, there is no more appropriate symbol of hope for our future than the pine cone.
Posted on December 26, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative
“We have fallen out of belonging. Consequently, when we stand before crucial thresholds in our lives, we have no rituals to protect, encourage, and guide us as we cross over into the unknown.” ~ John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
What does it mean to fall out of belonging?
This season brings us Christmas and Hanukkah and Rajab. Since they are rituals of identity they are cycles of renewal. They affirm these are my people and with them I know who I am and what I value. Each year, through our rituals, we reaffirm who we are and what we believe. It is one way – perhaps the most important way – of understanding the return of the light.
To fall out of belonging means that the rituals are enacted but their purpose has collapsed. They are no longer the glue that binds but have dissipated to become merely economic. To fall out of belonging is to be alone together. It is to be valueless since value is an aspect of relationship-with-the-whole. To fall out of belonging means there is no whole – and no way personally or communally to be whole.
That seems like an apt description of this nation once again at war with itself, dismantling every value, trying to sort out whether belonging is inclusive or exclusive. Are we equal under the law or unequal members in an ever uglier caste system? Who are we and where are we headed?
The glass blocks on the stairway seemed an appropriate metaphor for this threshold we are about to cross into the new year. The image is murky at best.
I used to be certain that I did not belong until an unlikely voice challenged my certainty. “Belonging is not an issue,” she said. I realized how wedded I’d become to my story of not-belonging. Not belonging was central to my identity as an artist. My culture defines artists as deviant. I laughed aloud when I realized that my place on the margin was my role in the society, it was how I belonged.
I also realized that It was not so much that I didn’t belong to my society but that I did not want to belong to it. It frightened me, this community that regularly conflates money with morality. This society that fears facing the totality of its history.
What I learned then is more true now: belonging is not the issue. The issue is to what kind of society do we want to belong. It’s the relevant question – the only relevant question – we need to ask ourselves as we stand on this threshold, preparing the ritual parties and fireworks, as we decide where we will be and what we will do at midnight of the 31st, as we make resolutions that will carry us into the new year and into who we want to become.
Belonging is not passive. It is not a given but requires our participation and commitment to renewal of what we value.
To what kind of society do we want to belong? The answer to that question will determine the society that we will create. It is up to us to determine which unknown we will cross into, whether we will continue to fall out of belonging and further into the dark divide – or whether we will choose to fall into togetherness, as our rituals of renewal, when truly valued, have always aspired: out of many, one.
Posted on October 27, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative
There are few artists that she admires more than Phil Vassar. He is one of the great singer-songwriters of his genre. Last week he played at the Genesse just down the road so we moved a few mountains to be there. He’s recovering from a heart attack and a stroke so he also moved a few mountains to be there. I’ve never witnessed more simple gratitude pour from a performer – for being alive, for being able to sing and play, for sharing his gifts.
The lyric went straight to her heart and she cried: dreams can grow wild born inside an American child. She cried for her own wild dreams.
She cried for the crumbling dream called The United States of America. This song, American Child, in a moment became the anthem for all that we are losing, all that her father, a WWII vet, a prisoner of war, who fought against fascists, who carried the deep psychological scars from his service through the rest of his life…all so that his children and grandchildren might live in a country where dreams can grow wild.
She cried.
Democracy is, itself, a wild dream careening toward a cliff. The White House is literally being torn apart by a man-who-would-be-king. The congress has all but abdicated its responsibility; it’s literally left-the-building. The Supreme Court regularly rules against the Constitution, literally elevating one man above the law.
Those who believe in the dream of democracy hit the streets on the day we saw Phil Vassar. It was the biggest protest in the history of our young nation. Thom Hartmann wrote: “The No Kings Day protests last weekend were breathtaking…But here’s the hard truth: that energy, that passion, that righteousness means very little if it doesn’t translate into structure and leadership. Movements that fail to coalesce around leaders and build institutions typically die in the glare of their own moral light or fail to produce results.“
Wild dreams are the north star of action. The dreams of an artist become reality after hours and hours and years and years of practice and rehearsal. Specific action aimed at the manifestation of the dream; moving mountains.
“Democracy is not defended by hashtags. It’s defended by hands, millions of them, building, voting, organizing, and refusing to quit when the cameras are gone.” ~ Thom Hartmann
Phil Vassar suffered a heart attack. And then a stroke. He is moving mountains because he nearly lost his dream. He’s not sitting at home fretting. He’s playing concerts. He’s writing new songs. He’s breathing new air into his almost-lost-dream.
Posted on September 9, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative
Our saturday-morning-smack-dab-cartoon was about feeling wistful in the fall. We very intentionally prompted something non-political, non-news-of-the-day-ish, so we might give our hearts and minds a break from railing against the incessant assault on our democratic way of life. And then I read something that deeply upset me. Instead of writing about wistfulness, I wrote about our national incapacity of dealing with the truth.
And then, at the end of my post, I wrote an apology for once again shaking my metaphoric fists and railing at the lies.
And then, I erased my apology. I did not want to lie. In truth, I was not sorry for railing at the lies and misinformation and abuse of the public trust. I call myself an artist and the very epicenter of that role is to hold a mirror up to my community. Sometimes the image in the mirror is ugly.
We were walking on the Des Plaines river trail, just north of Chicago, when two fighter jets ripped across the sky just above the tree line. The earth shook. It was the same day that the authoritarian wanna-be, in a meme no less…, declared war on Chicago. I made the assumption that the fighter jets were an opening salvo, a demonstration of power by a weak little man meant to shake the populace.
“Can you believe it?” she asked.
Isn’t it sad that my first assumption was that the president of the united states sent war planes over the region to startle the populace? Isn’t it sad that, in these times, even though my assumption was wrong, it was not an outlandish proposition, not a sci-fi-speculation, but actually within the realm of possibility?
Many of her recent photographs capture fading flowers. I am drawn to them. The brittle shapes. The muting colors. Life energy pulling away from the blossom and retreating to the root to rest and re-energize. It produces a different kind of beauty.
It is this waning beauty, this retreat into the root that has always evoked my wistfulness. I realized that this autumn I will probably not feel my usual wistfulness. The yearning of fall is made delicious because of the promise of spring emerging from dark winter. Wistfulness is letting go to open space for renewal. I realized, watching the fighter jets, aghast that a president would resort to such a childish meme to declare his ugliest of intentions, to turn the military on its citizens, that I do not know if our democratic nation will be here in the spring.
There is no space for wistfulness. There is no time for apologies. There is no longer any doubt that a fascist dark winter is descending. We are fools to think that it will lead to a democratic spring.
Since I asked a question in our most recent smack-dab, I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind: “What actions – beyond awareness-raising – will effectively save our democracy…?”
If you are like me, you are sick-to-death of reading posts from our elected democratic leaders decrying the latest moral-offense and breach of the Constitution of the republican administration. It’s become something of a game to read the first comment which inevitably is something like, “I know this already! So what are you doing about it?”
The operative word is “do”. The question for our elected leaders should not absolve us of responsibility and would better read, “What are we doing about it?”
We are aware. What are we doing?
Raising awareness is not action. It’s a step toward action but is not itself a useful action. Crying, “The house is on fire!” is necessary but if it doesn’t prompt a call to the fire department it is useless.
When I asked the question on my saturday-morning-smack-dab post I did not have a clear set of answers. I know the first action-set has to protect our elections since the current occupant of the white house has been manufacturing crises since day one so he might circumvent congress. His authoritarian power grab is nearly complete. All that remains is to rig or stop our next election. His party is already erecting voting barriers to women and people of color.
I want to be inundated with posts from democratic leaders detailing potent action rather than shared-awareness-alarms.
I do not have answers. I have ideas. Lots of ideas. I’d welcome conversations about doing that arrive at specific actions aimed at specific targets. I’d cheer if our democratic leaders went on offense rather than perpetually playing defense, reacting and responding. Stop telling me the house is on fire. I already know. Take the ball back. What’s in the playbook?
The morning glories are out. They line sections of the trail. They have a very short blooming season and so have come to represent transience. They caught my attention as we walked and I pondered my question about effective action. Because the morning glory grows in complex environments, the flower has also come to represent the overcoming of adversity and renewal. Our democracy need not be fleeting.
I realized the morning glory is the perfect symbol for my meditation/question. Don’t take this – our democracy – for granted. It will die. Renewal is our job. We live in a time that our job requires immediate action, targeted action meant to overcome authoritarian/republican adversity.
The house is on fire. We already know it. We can stand by and tell each other about the heat of the flames or we can get busy working together to douse the flame.
Alone on the trail we heard a loud pop and then a crack – and then the tree fell. We felt the thud through the soles of our feet.
There was no wind. There was no apparent cause for it to fall. We were, somehow, witness to its final moment as “tree”.
If a tree falls in the woods and someone is around to hear it, it definitely makes a sound. If not? For some reason, in that majestic moment, the quotidian philosophical question popped into my mind and it bothered me. Is human observation really the only validation for existence? Philosopher George Berkeley wrote, “To be is to be perceived.” George didn’t mean perceived by squirrels or hawks or any other critter in the woods at that moment who also heard the sound and felt the fall of the old tree. For humans, philosophers, preachers and politicians alike, human perception is the requirement granting something so grand, something so profound, as existence. How many birds nested in this grand old tree during the course of its life span? How many plants will feed on its fibers now that it has joined the earth?
Hubris is our Achilles Heel.
On our drive to the trail we were rerouted. The road was shutdown in both directions. There was a terrible crash. A car was cleaved, barely recognizable. Certainly there were witnesses to this loud final moment of a human-being pass into non-being. I’m grateful I was not one of them. I do not need to have seen or heard the crash to know that it happened.
Perhaps that is why the question bothered me: “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” In a single day, in the space of an hour, I was witness to a tree falling in the woods and aware of a human life ending. I heard the tree so I have no need to imagine what happened. I saw the car, the evidence of the end of human life. I can only imagine.
Horatio wrote a beautiful poem about the death of a salmon after its struggle to return to its place of origin. It’s a poem about the impossibility of life and the cycle of constant renewal. The poem offers we-the-perceivers some rare perspective on the end of life.
I wondered how I could read the days news about starvation in Gaza, brutal raids and deportations without due process…and simply turn the page. That, too, must be uniquely human. To perceive and then tune out. To look the other way, to pretend not to perceive when human beings enact horror upon other human beings. It requires a dedicated lack of imagination.
We are not above it all.
“To be is to be perceived.” Perhaps. It begs an all important follow-up question: In my fleeting moment of human perception, who – or how – do I choose to be?
Posted on February 15, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative
I’m writing a few days ahead because we have a week of travel. As you read this we will be on a flight home, full of stories, new memories, refreshed spirits brimming with gratitude.
Just as we are excited about the adventure ahead we know there will be a moment in our travels when our focus shifts and we will turn our attention toward home. It’s one of the great gifts of travel: renewed appreciation for the known, coming home with new eyes that see the sweet comfort of routine. No doubt, the gratitude we are feeling at this very moment runs through the great gift of new experiences, brimming with utter appreciation for stepping back onto our well-worn path.
Posted on December 24, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative
The holiday around our house is like a daily treasure hunt. I never see her do it, I never catch her in the act, but each day, a bauble or bulb or ornament shows up on a windowsill or in a flower pot or hanging from a shelf in the kitchen. A little bit of light found in an unlikely place.
Today is the eve of Christ mass. It is also the eve of Hanukkhah. It is the eves-eve of Kwanzaa. A birth, the rededication of a temple of belief, a celebration of culture. Symbols and rituals of hope and renewal, showing up everywhere. A little bit of light popping up in kitchens and family rooms, places where people gather when they are seeking light and love.
A few years ago she wrote a song in what seemed to me only a minute or two. She needed another piece for a cantata she was rehearsing and couldn’t find anything that she liked. It’s called “You’re Here”. It exists only in the roughest of recordings. I caught it on my iPhone. This morning, while searching for another piece of music, we came across it and, as is true every time I hear it, I was saddened that this little bit of light is not known far and wide. A song of brokenness healed. A sunrise. A wish of hope.
I’ve posted it before – probably this time last year. But this morning, given the brokenness of our nation, the dedicated us-and-them-ness, the splintering of family, pundits and politicians fueling-rage-for-gain…I found it much more relevant now than when she wrote it.
If it is not of your faith tradition, you only need listen beneath the words to find the purity of her intention. A little bit of light found in an unlikely place.
“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.
Benison was my word-of-the-day. It was a new word to me and it means a blessing or benediction (to bestow a blessing). I especially appreciated this word-of-the-day since I’ve lately been listening for the word “blessing”. It’s become something of a study or a game. I laughed when the word popped into my inbox. “Good timing!” I chirped.
I rarely go a day without hearing someone, somewhere, utter the word “blessing”. On the street, in the grocery store, neighbors chatting over the fence, in a bar, passing people on the trail…I’ve decided it’s a blanket word, generic, used to include many experiences. “What a blessing!”
I was considering adding it to my list of over-used and no longer meaningful words, like paradigm or story except that lately I’m of the opinion that this whole life, the entire ride with all of it’s ups and downs and confusions and clarities, is a blessing. A benison. A gift. Every single moment.
It flies in the face of common sense since I was given to understand that blessings are unique, something special. If every single moment is a blessing, then what’s the point of elevating this moment over that moment? Of course, I realized that I was (again) missing the point. The whole ride is a blessing. We mostly don’t realize it. We are mostly unconscious of it. Our awareness is some-other-place making lists or worrying worries so we mis-understand it. The word “blessing” is a descriptor of something unique and precious: those rare moments we actually grasp the enormity of being alive. Full stop and, as Lydia reminded me, breathe in the awe.
These days I think Kerri and I are practicing seeing our blessings. We are cultivating our capacity to notice. We note with delight the first buds of spring. We savor tastes. We love on the Dogga. So, when the Red Admiral butterfly landed on the Adirondack chair on a sunny early spring afternoon, “a symbol of spiritual awakening, transformation and renewal” we simultaneously said, “What a blessing!”
The Direction of Intention 