How Utterly Good [David’s blog on KS Friday]

I’ve been pondering something Horatio said during our call yesterday. “Circumstances change but that doesn’t change how you have to live.” he added, “You still have to live a good life.”

It is not a new concept. How many times have I said to groups, as if I knew what I was talking about, “You are not your circumstance.” In the school of hysterical irony, I am constantly catching myself teaching what I most need to learn. I heard in Horatio’s comment something often spoken but discerned for the first time: You still have to live a good life.

What does it mean to live a good life? What does it mean to me? To you?

In a broad sense we were discussing the many changes we’ve experienced over the past decade. Decades. Aging. Climate. Loss of loved ones. Pandemic. The politics/division of our times. Technology. A flurry of fast moving circumstance. What seemed so important a decade ago is now barely a shadow memory. Aptly, an illusion.

You still have to live a good life.

Horatio spoke of going into his studio. “Immersing in the tangible,” he said. Painty fingers. Music. Charcoal dust. The smell of coffee and conté crayons. Exiting the noise and inhabiting the now. That’s a good life. I recognize that place.

Inhabiting the now. Kerri and I walk the trail arm in arm until she spots the next photo-op. “Lookit!” she chimes, showing me her new image-capture. “Green on green,” spoken with the enthusiasm of a five year old. Our walks are immersions in the tangible. We’ve had so much rain lately, there is an explosion of green in our world. We walk slowly so we might see it. Sense it. The shapes are as extraordinary as the many shades of green.

Horatio’s comment struck an ancient chord in me.

Sitting in our stream in the mountains of Colorado, Kerri and I talked about the next phase of our lives. A intentional creation. “The Sweet Phase,” she called it. It is inaccurate to suggest that we will create The Sweet Phase as much as we will inhabit it. The tangible. The now. Just like entering the studio. We’ve already started. Our practice is to not get swept into the swirling drama of circumstance. “…that doesn’t change how you have to live.”

It’s a question of recognizing it. Regardless of the circumstance, how utterly good living life really is.

I Didn’t Know/This Part of the Journey © 1997, 2000, Kerri Sherwood

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about GREEN ON GREEN

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

A wedding brought us to the mountains and within reach of a trail sacred to us. It never fails. The hike meanders through aspen groves, opens onto meadows with vistas that take our breath away. And then we come to the stream. Our stream.

Stepping on rocks in the rushing water, fifty yards up stream there is an ancient log straddling the crystal clear glacier melt. It provides a perfect mid-stream seat and has become a place for quiet reflection and insight. Three times in our eleven years together we’ve stepped up the stream to the log, stepped out of time and into hushed conversations and whispered revelations. By the time we return to the trail the world is different, better. Or we are different and somehow better.

I’m not sure what to call the previous phase of our time together. I am excited to welcome The Sweet Phase.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SWEET PHASE

smack-dab © 2024 kerrianddavid.com

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