The Crescent Moon Bear | The Direction of Intention

The Medicine We Seek [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on January 18, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

In the story of The Crescent Moon Bear, a young wife endures several trials on a journey to find medicine that might cure her ailing husband. In the end, the trials are the medicine. The trials teach her the path of healing. As we near the day of national disgrace, the inauguration of a despot, the Crescent Moon Bear story has been walking with me. Perhaps the trials we are about to face will be the medicine. Perhaps they will teach us or show us the path to heal what ails this nation.

This is what the story has already taught me: the young wife would not have kept walking, she would not have endured the hardship of her journey, had she not carried in her heart a greater purpose. A reason to endure. The healing of her beloved.

No one endures hardship without a heart-full of service to something greater than comfort, something more potent than personal gain. The red-hat-mob and oligarchs will learn this soon enough. Gluttony is vapid purpose, a flavorless reason for being.

Kerri just read to me a post by John Pavlovitz. The necessity of acknowledging – and being honest – about the dark despair we feel in this moment of national shame. I was struck by the common theme expressed in the many, many comments: people feeling alone, isolated in their disbelief and grief.

It occurred to me that those of us, discouraged by the election of hatred, fearful of what’s coming, will soon need to find one another in order to embark on a journey to discover a cure for the corrosive poison now coursing through the nation’s body. We need not walk this path alone. Our shared grief is a sure sign of our unity, our capacity to meet the coming trials with a greater – shared – sense of purpose.

Our hearts hurt. They should hurt. The despair we feel is natural, necessary, a compass to guide us as we embark together on this odyssey. We will, in our journey, if we come together and walk united, learn that we are the medicine we seek.

read Kerri’s blogpost about JUST KEEP WALKING

likesharejoinhandswalktogethersupportcommentgrieveunite…thankyou.

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Follow The Map [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on August 15, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

In the era when I was telling stories at conferences I liked to tell a particular tale of a woman on a quest. She didn’t know it but the many trials she faced on her journey gave her the exact knowledge she needed to confront her monster, complete her quest and return safely to her home. A field of shifting boulders. A dense impassable forest. A thicket of lost souls. She navigated all of them, learned from them, and returned home, changed by her experiences, wiser from her travails.

It’s most often the message in stories about quests. The journey changes us. We rarely understand the purpose or meaning of our passage until its conclusion. We only know we’ve changed after we arrive back from where we started. Then we can turn around and see.

Prior to the Brothers Grimm, there was no woodsman-savior in the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. A little girl sets out in life on a winding road to grandma’s house. It’s a metaphor. The little girl becomes an old woman. The wolf is metaphoric of time. The wolf “eats” all of us in the end. No woodsman can save us. No Hallmark ending is possible. What did Red experience on the way to grandma’s house?

It’s hard not to want to rush to the end. To know. There’s the fantastic story of the western businessman who wanted the Dalai Lama to tell him the secret of illumination so he could fast-track enlightenment, to achieve in a month-or-a-minute that which takes many lifetimes. Life lessons pay little attention to the demands of efficiency and effectiveness. Business, after all, is never just business.

Stages of development. Queen Anne’s lace. In its first year it is dedicated to sinking a taproot and developing a “rosette of basal leaves.” Creating a solid base. Only in the second year does it “send forth a flower stalk with blossoms.” It’s impossible to skip step one and arrive at blossoms. In truth, step one and step two are not really separate phases but are a single, gorgeous process of life’s renewal. I imagine that is what the Dalai Lama thought but did not say to the businessman.

In stories, the magic sword fails. Death knocks politely on the front door. The ogre stands in the path. The sphinx smiles and demands an answer. A young girl skips with Time along a winding road. A woman returns home, wiser from her experiences, changed by her journey.

Stories serve as universal maps, like taproots and basal leaves. They ground us. They can help us understand that the arrival we seek, the journey we take, is to ourselves. They can locate us on the winding road of life’s renewal.

read Kerri’s blogpost about QUEEN ANNE’S LACE

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Filed under: Awakening, Metaphor, Story, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, blossom, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Hallmark, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Little Red Riding Hood, metaphor, obstacles, possibilities, process, Queen Anne's Lace, story, studio melange, The Brothers Grimm, The Crescent Moon Bear, the melange, universal story | Leave a comment »

Remember This Vivid Moment [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on January 16, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

When we first met, we sat on the living room carpet staring into the fire, and talked the night away. The sound of the birds at dawn surprised us. I remember the coming light and sweet birdsong like it was yesterday.

A few days ago we sat on the living room carpet in the sun, and talked the afternoon away. Our quiet conversation reminded me of that very first night. Our topic in the winter sun: letting go of too-tightly-held-ideals. “Truth will out,” wrote Master Shakespeare in his Merchant of Venice. Our truth was out in quiet voices that brought affirmations of better days.

A story I once loved to tell was The Crescent Moon Bear. The heroine, a young wife, must go on a journey. She must leave all that she knows in pursuit of her purpose. Leaving all that you know is easier said than done. It doesn’t happen in a moment; it requires some sweet visitation of the past. “What was” as launching pad to “What will be.”

Before I left my studio in Seattle, I had to touch the walls, run my fingers along the sill. I knew I would never be back. Even in that moment, all I could remember was the goodness I experienced in that space. The refuge. The sanctuary. The creative fulfillment. The hard times I’d known there dissipated like mist.

What was. Krishnamurti wrote, “You can only be afraid of what you think you know.” I marvel that the hardships of my past soften into pastel remembrance, translated into useful lessons, while my future fears are as sharp as broken glass, monsters around the corner. Acute imagination.

I marvel that the generosities heaped upon my life are vivid and bring tears to my eyes just as they did the day that I first experienced them. Keen remembrances.

Sitting on the carpet, the low afternoon sun warming us, I realize that I will always remember this vivid moment. The day we opened our hands and let fly illusions. We both took a deep breath. New air rushed into the open space, Not knowing where we might now go or what we might now do, we sat in the waning light, surprised that the sun was setting so soon.

read Kerri’s blogpost about REMEMBERING