retribution | The Direction of Intention

Drop Into The Moment [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on December 30, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

In the summer months the deer trails are difficult to spot. In the winter, the opposite is true. With the absence of foliage and a clean canvas of snow, while the deer remain elusive, their well-traveled pathways are easy to see.

In mythology, deer are often messengers or guides. They call us to kindness, presence and remind us to trust our instincts. I especially appreciate the call to presence since it is there that kindness and the purity of instinct can be found.

Retribution is about past grievance. Fear is a monster born of an imagined future. Both retribution and fear would have us turn our backs on the present moment. They would have us ignore the deer because they cannot survive in the present moment. The present is, after all, the only place that is actually real, substantial. It is in the realm-of-the-real that kindness abounds; it is the only place that the quiet voice of intuition can be heard.

It never fails. When we see a deer on the trail our laundry list of woes immediately evaporates. The deer calls us into the present. We stop all movement just as the deer has stopped. It models presence for us. We drop into the moment with it. We feel. We listen. We meet its eyes. It senses us and we sense it. There is no past grievance or future fear. There is nothing more important to do or a place more compelling to be. Time suspends. We fill ourselves with the awe of the relationship-of-the-moment.

And then, just as quickly, the deer leaps and is gone. It releases us. We reenter time. Refreshed. Giddy. Light of spirit. Reminded once again of the power of living in the present.

In the presence of the deer we are no longer lost in our minds. That is its message to us, its encouragement for how to best live our lives.

In the summer months we convince ourselves that they are rare, hard to spot. In the winter months, we are reminded by their tracks that, although we may not see them, these guides are all around us. Their message to us is always available. Always.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE DEER

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An Evolutionary Line [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on November 28, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Whenever men take the law into their own hands, the loser is the law. And when the law loses, freedom languishes.” Robert Kennedy (clearly not Jr.)

This handle is well worn. It comes from a time before electricity relieved muscle and hands of much of their day-to-day duties. As artists from-another-era, we are drawn to things worn smooth by human hands. I love my brushes precisely because they are well-worn; they fit my hand because my hand, unique in all the world, has worn-its-way into the handles. My brushes carry the record of my life’s work.

Because of a play that I’m writing I’ve been reading and rereading The Oresteia, a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus. “The trilogy explores the transition from personal vengeance to a more civilized, legal system of justice.” (A-I) The cycle of plays is a celebration of human evolution, progressing from the chaos of revenge and retribution to a society with a system of laws that maintain order. Aeschylus wrote the Oresteia because a society based on law was a relatively new idea, an evolutionary line drawn in the sand marking the transition from animal to human nature, from impulse-driven to rationality guided by complex moral systems. The law is the foundation stone of democracy and of our freedoms.

Currently, we are witnessing an all-out assault on the law. From a justice department driven by the retribution-fantasy of a single man to a Supreme Court undermining the Constitution it is sworn to protect, those in power would rather us devolve, step back across the line into animal revenge. They are literally taking the law into their own hands. Their revenge-imperative threatens our moral order. Our freedoms are in peril.

This is not the first time our foundation stone has been under assault, it is not the first time a privileged few deluded themselves into believing that they-and-they-alone ought to rule. The path to autocracy always begins by undermining the law, by twisting it, weaponizing it to serve the opposite of its intention.

Our system of laws is like that well-worn handle. It is our heritage, our inheritance. It fits in our hands because our hands have left our imprint upon the law and the law has left its imprint on us. We’ve worked for it, fought for it, died for it. It’s why we take to the streets. It’s why we boycott businesses that bow to authoritarianism. It’s why we run from our homes to blow whistles and record the abuses of ICE. It gives me hope.

In the final play of the cycle, the goddess Athena – yes, a goddess – establishes law and order, a legal system – better than bloody revenge – to resolve conflicts. Her new system ends a dark curse that reached back generations, a curse that had been plaguing humanity. With her system of laws and courts, her invention of a jury by peers, she opened the door for humanity to progress from primitive retribution to civil society. She laid the foundation stone for a new idea – democracy – to replace the animal-revenge-mentality perpetuated by autocrats and kings.