Brimming [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

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.

read Kerri’s blogpost about NEW EYES

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See The Pattern [on Two Artists Tuesday]

“To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives.” ~ Oliver Sacks

Entrepreneur Ash Bhoopathy said, “The more you see, the more you see patterns.” It’s true. Take some time and sit on a busy street corner and watch. If your eyes are open, you’ll notice that you are surrounded by patterns. Not only the bricks in the buildings but the patterns of travel. The space between a red light and green light. The beeping of the crosswalk. The suits and ties. The paths walked by busy commuters.

“Comfort” and “home” are defined by patterns. What do you do to get comfortable? How do you signal the end your busy workday? Is it the same as you did yesterday?

Expectations are patterns, too.

Study “story” long enough and you’ll discover, as Kurt Vonnegut did, that there are patterns beneath every plot. We tell ourselves the same storyline over and over. Hallmark has its story pattern defined to the minute. It’s the secret to their appeal: the comfort of knowing the pattern. The comfort of asking, not “What” will happen, but “How” will it happen.

It’s a great paradox. The more you see, the more you see pattern. Yes. Yet, in order to see, often it’s necessary to disturb your patterns. That’s the beauty of patterns. When you are inside them, living a day of your life, you rarely see your patterns. It’s the reason Julia Cameron built artists dates into her Artist’s Way. Do something different. Break your routine. Challenge your expectation. Get out of your pattern rut. Only then will you be capable of seeing the pattern.

If you desire to change anything about your world, about this world, the change you seek will ultimately be a change in pattern. It’s a good practice to begin seeing them.

read Kerri’s blogpost about PATTERN

[the pattern image is the mat at our backdoor]

Choose To See Them [on Merely A Thought Monday]

wondrous things copy

I love my morning ritual. Babycat bumps my legs, guides me to his bowl. DogDog springs from his crate for a brief pet before bounding outside to clear his zone of squirrels. It is the same everyday. It is always new and different. Both/and.

Something happens when the expectation flips, when the wondrous is sought not in the monumental but in the small, day-to-day experiences. I know it reads like a cliche’ but it is no less true. My morning ritual, your commute, the day’s chore, in truth, is never the same. Each day is new even when we brand it with ‘routine.’

The wondrous sparkles in the routine as well as the profound. Doing the dishes today is not the same as doing them yesterday. It seems obvious. This day of life is not the same as yesterday. Another cliche’ with a truthful center: ‘sameness’ is a lens, an expectation worn on the eyes of the mind. It dulls life before life happens. It is the expectation of tedium. Why expect tedium? Why cultivate apathy? The marvelous, the wondrous becomes visible everywhere when we remove the same-old-same-old lens, the been-there-done-that expectation.

Wondrous things are everywhere. All we need do is choose to see them.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about WONDROUS THINGS

 

art sale december 2018 copy

sale ends december 20

 

 

aspen silver bull website box copy