ritual passage | The Direction of Intention

See The Shape [on DR Thursday]

Posted on September 30, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

The Balinese would call this an auspicious day. They would never perform a funeral rite on a day that was not promising. This soul will come back in seven generations and requires a providential sending.

The Greeks placed coins on the eyes of their departed loved ones. Fare for safe passage over the river Styx.

Columbus’ son will give his eulogy. His son-in-law will guide the ritual. His granddaughter will sing for him. His daughter-in-law will play her compositions, prelude and postlude, and sing a special song for him. His coins are his family. They will pay his passage. Actually, that his family will perform every aspect of his service – his sending – is testament to his earth-passage, what he did during his time while walking on this planet.

Heart.

We laughed while driving across Kansas. The day was fraught with obstacles. Breakdowns and high winds. “Columbus is making this trip eventful,” I said. He was full of mischief.

“I can see that sparkle in his eye,” Kerri responded. Nothing was going to stop us from getting to his service. Nothing. Not even mischief.

I have often been asked, “What is the shape of your day?” A curious question to ask a visual artist. “Not flat nor two-dimensional,” I think but do not say. “Certainly organic. Not geometric. My days are rarely geometric.” I never know what lines-of-thought or surprise events actually close to give definition to my day until the end, when I stand back and look at the whole. That is true for all of us. No one knows the shape of their day at sunrise.

Today, the lines have closed so we gather to look at the shape of Columbus’ life.

Heart. Big heart.

read Kerri’s blog post about HEART LEAVES

Filed under: DR Thursday, Family, Love | Tagged: columbus, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, family, father, funeral, heart, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life review, life story, passage, rite, ritual, ritual passage, shape, story, studio melange | Leave a comment »

Mark The Passage [on KS Friday]

Posted on July 2, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Just after we met, we dug a small pond in the backyard. It was a party that Kerri called The Big Dig. People came with shovels. We drank mudslides. I met many of her friends and neighbors. We laughed. It took less than ten minutes with so many people to dig the hole. The liner went in and rocks placed around the edges. The pump was placed and the water rushed in. It was a marker in time. It was meant to be a marker, a ritual of passage into the new and the unknown.

She’d planned The Big Dig before we met. Originally, it had nothing to do with me. It was serendipity that I could be present for The Dig. Serendipity or design. Who knows.

The morning after the party, sipping coffee, we sat in lawn chairs on the muddy ground surrounding the now bubbling pond. Kerri used the “M” word, married, “When we are married…” She realized what she’d just said. She blushed and apologized and backpedaled. I was, at the very moment she used the “M” word, doing something I’d never done before: imagining myself married. To her. I was seeing it and, laughing at her anguished retreat, I confessed what I was seeing. We sat by the pond and stared at each other. A ritual passage into the new and unknown.

The pond has always been mine to care for. This marks its eighth year. We just replaced the liner. We had to put flagstone around the pond because DogDog was cutting a deep velodrome path around it, racing in excitement every time John and Michele let their Dachshunds out. Each day we walk to the pond to try and catch a glimpse of the frog-in-residence. This year we named the frog Magic.

Just a few days after The Big Dig, Kerri took me to the marina where the 4th of July celebrations are staged. Bands played. There was a carnival. Too much food. The dog jump is a big attraction (dogs running and leaping into a pool of water in a distance-leap competition). After dark we sat on a blanket and watched the fireworks. Sitting on that blanket, vibrant color exploding in the night sky, I imagined myself living in this town, so far from the west coast that had been my home most of my adult life. “Can I live here?” I asked myself. The answer was immediate: you can’t live anywhere else.

DogDog was born on the 4th of July, probably while we were watching the dog jump. We will celebrate his eighth birthday on Sunday with a rowdy race around the pond. His favorite thing. And then snacks. Also his favorite thing. And then a visit with Unka-John. His really, really favorite thing.

A step into the new and unknown. Ritual passages. You have no idea where they will take you or what the reality of the step over the threshold will bring. You cannot know. You can only step.

“This looks like fireworks,” she said, showing me the up-close-photo of the plant. “I love it,” she smiled.

“Me, too.”

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

read Kerri’s blog post about the FIREWORK PLANT

i didn’t know/this part of the journey ©️ 1998 kerri sherwood

Filed under: Family, KS Friday, Love, Uncategorized | Tagged: album - this part of the journey, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Dog-Dog, fireworks, i didn't know, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, marriage, passages, pond, ritual, ritual passage, solo piano, story, studio melange, The Big Dig, this part of the journey | Leave a comment »

Stand In Ambiguity [on KS Friday]

Posted on November 13, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

Liminality: the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete.

Here we are, just like you, standing in the in-between place. The liminal space. The previous way is all-but-gone. The new way has not yet arrived.

We did not know in January when she fell and broke both wrists that the fall would signal the beginning of a transition. Therapy was interrupted by a pandemic. Job loss. More job loss. Job reduction. A wet floor, a second fall on an already injured wrist. More disorientation, a step further into uncertainty. “Who will I be if I can’t play?” she asked. Her question has layers. “Who will I be if I can’t play like I used to?” “Who will I be if my hands are no longer the hands that I know?” She has artist’s hands. Musician hands. This is no small question.

Given a whirl of disappearing norms, we are doing well within the ambiguity.

2020 will serve as a marker for all of us. There was a way of life before the pandemic. There was a way of life before the liar-president. New ways will arise. Out of chaos, order. Right now, there is full-press-disorientation.

Our threshold seems to stretch in all directions, inner and outer. Personal and national. Professional and spiritual. The rite, we know, is not yet complete. The ritual wound is still open and hurting. Our only certainty is that we stand in this not-here-not-there place, filled with mostly unanswerable questions, letting go of what-has-been.

Nothing is ever black and white and that is more true now as we slowly turn to face a new way.