As If [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on May 14, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

In a festival of irony, the moment we sat down to write about our peony, our harbinger of summer sun and the return of good weather, the sky darkened, the lightning flashed, the thunder clapped, and the rain is now dropping in buckets. The weather alert screeched with a warning for hail and possible tornadoes.

I delight in how readily my superstition-gene leaps out of the murky depths of my subconscious pond and concocts fabulous explanations about current circumstance. That is, as a human-being, a maker of stories – I am quite capable of connecting the rush of the sudden storm with our attempt to write about peonies. As if our attempt to write about peonies somehow invoked the storm!

This is not surprising. It is nothing new. My ancestors – and yours – created all manner of rituals in an attempt to appease the angry thunder-hurling god. To influence the powers of dark and light. To invite good fortune. To bring rain to crops. We have always personified nature and then imagined it is responsive to our behavior. Our behests. All around the globe, in many varied and culturally diverse forms, we do it in houses of worship to this day.

It might seem that I am making fun – and I am – but more than that, I am marveling at our genuine desire to be connected to “something bigger” and yet how rarely we recognize that we already are. We are as the peony, not separate from but a part of the pulse of life. We are of nature – not separate from it. My theory is that we have a hard time recognizing it because we imagine that we can control it. We use it to explain what we experience. We use it to justify our abuses to each other. Chosen people; Manifest Destiny and all of that ugly business. The personality we project upon it is at once beatific and horrific. We wonder why it blows our house away. We thank it for our good fortune.

In truth, we do influence Mother Nature and Father Sky, just not in the magical ways we imagine. Carbon emissions. Tapping mighty rivers dry before they reach the sea. Dumping our trash in the oceans. Fracking. It turns out that our behaviors are powerful and, perhaps, our destiny is in our hands. We need not pray to the gods for intervention and salvation, perhaps we need to be the gods of intervention that we desire to be, recognize and behave as if are not above it all, giver of names, but integral, intrinsic, no more or less essential than the peony.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE PEONY

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Tend The Pond [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on October 31, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

She called it The Big Dig. She always wanted a pond in her back yard so she threw a party, invited friends to bring shovels, and the pond was born. I flew in for The Big Dig since we’d only just met. Early in the day we went to a local landscaper and collected a trailer load of stone. Ted ran power from the garage to the dig site.

A mass of people arrived with shovels. Mudslides were served. People laughed. And, in less than 15 minutes the hole was dug, the liner installed, the pump secured, the stones placed and the hose was busy with the inaugural filling. We cheered when the pump was plugged in and the fountain began to bubble.

The Big Dig was a ceremonial so-long to the past and a hearty welcome to the future. It was the next day, sitting in the sun, that Kerri let the “m” word slip (marriage); she blushed and back-peddled so hard I fell out of my chair laughing. When I could breathe again I confessed that, at that very moment, I too, was thinking about the “m” word. It was the day after the Big Dig that I understood I was about to uproot my life from Seattle and move east.

Each spring when I clean the pond, repair it, and ready it for the summer, I revisit the ceremony. In fact, caring for the pond has become for me a ceremonial revisit to that line between past and future.

Each fall, when the pond begins to ice-over and I am forced to pull the pump, filters and fountain, tucking it in for the winter, I have a rush of quiet thanksgiving. A new life. A second chance.

A decade of seasons has rolled by since The Big Dig. There have been plenty of changes since that day. Dogga arrived and ran deep velodrome paths around the pond, forcing us to lay stone to prevent him from carving a full moat with his racing circles. We put up a fence. We’ve planted grasses. Breck-the-aspen tree found a forever spot and is entering her teenage years. The Covid epoch made us focus on our backyard. We made it our sanctuary.

And, at the heart of our peaceful place, a monument to the beginning of our story, a reminder of our good fortune, a refuge for the birds and chippies that we adore watching, bubbles the pond. Every day. A simple source of nourishment for our souls.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE POND

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Mark The Way [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on October 27, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

We are avid late-night-watchers of people hiking trails or climbing mountains. Some time ago it occurred to me that, even in the remote wilderness, there are known paths and helpful trail markers. The markers may be official park service trail signs or they might be cairns or sticks placed on the ground in the shape of an arrow. “Don’t be fooled,” the arrow signals, “The trail is this way.” People who came before helping the people who will come behind.

Most of the hikers and climbers also have help from satellites. They carry gps to illuminate the trail, provide elevation data, locate water sources, and weather information. It’s nothing less than remarkable the plethora of information available to someone strapping a pack on their back and stepping into an adventure. They are beholden to the people who came before who thought long and hard about ways to make the journey easier.

And, these same plugged in hikers pass it forward, mostly, through acts of courtesy toward people they will possibly never meet. They do their part to help the people who will come next. They cut brush from a trail. They re-stack the cairn stones. They pick up trash as they go. They reconstruct the arrow after the wind moved the pieces. They invent better markers, some from outer space.

I think we watch them because of the culture that has evolved on the trail or on the quest to scale the mountain. They give us a dose of hope for humankind. They know without doubt that they are stewards of the path and of those who walk the path. They live from a dedicated personal responsibility that is not in opposition to a group responsibility. They are their own and their brothers/sisters keeper.

There are trail angels that show up in unlikely locations with hot food. There are angels that leave water caches in the desert without which the traveler would not be able to reach their next destination. Their purpose is to make the passage easier for others because others have made the passage easier for them. It is not a difficult concept to grasp.

A culture of support. It’s why, at the end of each day, we check in with the people on the trail.

you hold me/this part of the journey © 1997/2000 kerri sherwood

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read Kerri’s blog about TRAIL LEAVES

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From A Distance [DR Thursday]

Posted on April 19, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

The first photograph of our planet Earth was taken by the crew of  Apollo 17 in 1972. The Blue Marble. Living. Vibrant. Moving. Alive. Fragile. Uncontrollable. Spiritual. Our home. Sometimes I think that the plethora of seemingly insurmountable issues that plague our discourse (our lives), divide our nations, and choke our news feeds are only possible because this photograph is forgotten. Or denied. We are the first humans in the history of humans to (literally) have this global perspective which makes us the first humans in the history of humans to ignore what we know. It’s all connected. We are all connected. It’s impossible to see from the ground but oh, so easy to see from space.

from a distance TOTE BAG copy

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Roger once told me that, in his opinion, denial was perhaps the single most powerful force driving the human condition. Today I’d make an argument for hubris. Or, perhaps one needs to be fully steeped in denial to be so full of hubris. The very notion that we story ourselves as stewards of Earth seems misguided, arrogant – especially given our capacity to step out into space and look back at our home, our selves.  As P-Tom recently said, nowadays we measure the trash field in the ocean in units of countries (3 Frances). Stewards would, I hope, do a better job. More humble stewards might at least recognize what is apparent in the photograph: it’s all connected. We participate, we do not own.

This week marks the 48th Earth Day and what I find remarkable is the first Earth Day was celebrated a full two years before the first photograph of Earth.  I find that oddly hopeful. Perhaps we don’t need a global perspective to entertain the notion that our actions have impact.

from a distance FRAMED PRINT copyIt’s funny. I’ve coached many, many people – all searching for meaning and the desire to know that their lives and actions matter. They fear that they lack impact.  The advice I never gave (a good coach does not advise): leave the city lights so you might see the stars. Recognize what you are seeing. Recognize how small you are and how glorious it is merely to be alive. Instead of trying to distinguish your self above all others, maybe take a look at the Blue Marble and realize just how connected you already are. You are immediate, impermanent. Perhaps in that recognition you will also realize your meaning.

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FROM A DISTANCE reminder/merchandise:

from a distance LEGGINGS copy

kerri’s design from my painting

from a distance MUG copy

kerri designs all of our studio melange products!

from a distance SQ PILLOW copyfrom a distance FLOOR PILLOW copy

read kerri’s blog blog post about FROM A DISTANCE

melange button jpeg copy

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earth interrupted V: from a distance ©️ 2018 david robinson & kerri sherwood

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Protect Our Diversity

Posted on February 10, 2017 by davidrobinsoncreative

Many years ago, sitting in a Starbucks, my brother told me that I should be careful because not everyone wanted the diversity I was promoting. His warning struck me as odd. At the time I was partners in a business that facilitated diversity training and change dynamics. I was traveling to many places in this nation, north, south, east, west, and places in the middle, to work with people in corporations and schools and communities who’d come up against the startling reality that all people do not share the same reality, that equality is an ideal not yet realized, that we are a nation defined by our other-ness.

When I was in school I was taught that the USA was a melting pot, a hot crucible into which people of many backgrounds, creeds, and colors were transformed into something stronger. I was taught that we were a nation of immigrants. It is printed on our currency: e pluribus unum. Out of the many, one. Why, then, would I need to be careful? Diversity was not something I was promoting, it was (and is) our circumstance. It was an identity I was helping people navigate in their workplaces and communities.

I read somewhere that the real challenge of the American Experiment is that we have to reinvent ourselves everyday. Because we are not (and never have been) able to share a common ethnic-religious-origin story, we must strive everyday to create a shared story. We create our story. We were, at our inception, an experiment in other-ness. To insist that we were meant to be singular – white and Christian – is a concoction. Our shared story begins with the single common thread that runs through most of our ancestral paths: we came from some other place seeking freedom in one form or another: religious freedom, freedom from persecution, the freedom to pursue opportunities. What binds us, the single story-blanket under which we can all crawl, is our diversity. Out of the many, one.

There is and always has been a tension in our story creation. Each new wave of others is resisted and often persecuted by the previous wave. When, in a nation of diverse backgrounds, in a country made strong by its multiplicity, does one actually become an American? And, what does an American look like? And, how far are we from living the ideal of all being created equally? With liberty and justice for all? It’s a moving target at best. It is a worthy ideal and worth the struggle.

The Experiment, like all experiments, has had some miserable failures. It has taken some giant strides forward. It is riddled with paradoxes and often runs into a hard wall of hypocrisy. We’ve torn ourselves in half and pasted ourselves back together. We’ve had our share of hate-mongers and xenophobes. We have one now. And, we always transcend them because we do not run on fear or anger but on promise and opportunity. The conservative impulse is always at odds with the progressive desire. It provides the heat for the crucible. It provides the tension for creativity and growth.

The greatest centers of innovation and entrepreneurship in the history of humankind have all been crossroads, places where many cultures cross paths and come together. Difference is a great opener of eyes and minds. We are an intentional crossroads, a meeting place by design. Our make-up of differences might be the single reason why we have grown as a nation of invention, advancement, and possibility.

In one aspect my brother was right: I should be careful, we should be careful to protect and keep the ideal in the center. It is worth marching for, it is worth challenging the fear-mongering and stepping in the way of a leader who plays on anger to create division. We should be careful to honor and steward The Experiment forward to the next generation of diverse Americans.

 

 

 

Filed under: Identity, Perspective, The Direction of Intention, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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