thomas jefferson | The Direction of Intention

Or Will We? [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on March 19, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

And suddenly the winds arrive. The forecast warned us to expect powerful winds early this morning so I was taken aback when I opened the door to an eerie stillness. Dogga trotted outside into a world with nary a whisper of breeze. Three hours later, as we sat down to write, as if someone threw a magic switch, the first burst of wind rattled the windows. The trees moaned.

I was struck by this quote from Martin Prechtel:

“I knew that no worthy ritual was done for the experience of the ritual but was carried out to maintain a regular life of work and harvest, raising children and struggle.”

Rituals, like Easter or The Hajj or Diwali are appeals, acts of sacred orientation. They are acknowledgement of our smallness in the face of the vast mystery of this universe. They are meant to renew our connection to the immense, to life. Ultimately, they are the recognition that our actions, each and every day, no matter how small…matter; that we are active participants in the well-being, restoration and continuance of life. We are active creators of our relationship with the mystery.

Rituals are meant to affirm that we are not the overlords but are responsible for the care and feeding of “something bigger than myself.” We are a part of the whole. Nothing more.

Rituals are meant to remind us that we are not passive witnesses to the health of the community or the planet, but that we are stewards, active participants in our own and the community’s well-being: physically, mentally, spiritually. How we walk through life, how we treat each other, how we care for our environment, matters.

The aim is not the performance of the ritual. The aim is how the performance of the ritual intentionally orients us to daily life and to each other.

When the performance of the ritual becomes the point of the ritual it is a sure sign that the greater mythology is dying. Or already dead. And, mythology – a shared story – is the glue that holds a community together. Without it a community fractures.

Rituals need not be religious to be sacred. In the USA, our legal system and how it works is rooted in a ritual dedication to our national communal glue: the law. The Constitution is the sacred document at the center of our legal ritual and is built upon a sacred ideal: no man is above the law.

“In America, the rule of law is king...For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.” Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Historians will someday write of the collapse of our ritual of law. They will point to the Immunity decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, someone who swore an oath to protect our Constitution, yet somehow granted a president immunity from the rule of law. He put the whims of a man above the law. The center collapsed.

Today, we witness the dissolution of ours law. A judge ruled and was ignored by a White House that knows the executive branch is immune from law and can, therefore, be law-less.

Last week we saw that congress – our makers of law – had no will to uphold their sacred duty of checks-and-balance to the executive. They signed away their power and with it, our freedoms as protected by their adherence to the Constitution. They meet now for no other reason than to meet – having abdicated their function in the ritual of democracy, having lost their purpose, they now function without meaning. They forgot their role in the ritual renewal of democracy. They now merely pretend that their actions matter.

The ritual collapses. The glue dissolves. It remains to be seen if the people, the ordinary everyday people, the people who, in a democracy, are meant to hold the power, will come together and reclaim our ritual of law from tyranny. Or will we, like the congress and the courts, fear the new king, abdicate our responsibility, remain silent and watch our freedoms circle the drain?

read Kerri’s blog on FLAWED WEDNESDAY

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Filed under: Flawed Cartoon Wednesday, Identity | Tagged: artistry, balance, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, government, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kings, law, lawless, liberty, martin prechtel, mythology, ritual, Sacred, story, studio melange, The Constitution of The United States, the melange, thomas jefferson, Thomas Paine, tyranny | 1 Comment »

Ask A Useful Question [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on February 6, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Answers are reassuring, but when you’re really on to something useful, it will probably take the form of a question.” ~ David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art & Fear

We read in the morning news about the exodus of teachers from the classroom. One paragraph in the story made me choke on my coffee. “In addition to having to deal with low pay, high student-to-teacher ratios, poor working conditions, post-pandemic learning loss, school shootings and social or emotional issues with students, teachers across the nation are also grappling with culture wars over what they can and cannot teach in the classroom.” (Rene Marsh, CNN, February 3)

If you’re like me, that short paragraph inspires a host of useful questions. To cite a “spurious”quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” One of my useful questions: why are we so fearful of an educated citizenry? The collapse of our public schools and teaching as a valued profession is not an accident. It takes a dedicated effort to undermine something so completely.

An educated citizenry asks good questions of its leaders. An educated citizenry would not be so easily duped by entertainment-posing-as-news. An educated citizenry would not fear its history or its future.

When we rounded the corner in the Milwaukee airport and saw the meditation room, it was like a magnet. It pulled me inside. An intentional place of peace! A quiet space for reflection. How rare in a place dedicated to hustle and bustle.

I was struck by the quote from the Talmud and carried it with me for days. To create peace, to experience peace, truth and justice must be not only be valued by the community, they must be lived by the community. Truth must be shared. Removing books from classrooms, gagging teachers from teaching the fullness of our history, does not change our history a whit. It does, however, soil our future, perpetuate the race to the bottom, and intentionally obfuscates truth. It creates discord by ignoring injustice.

As the Talmud quote instructs, in such a world, where truth is not valued, there can be no justice and, in the absence of justice, there is no capacity for peace.

Sustaining ourselves, surviving as a free people. Teachers are the stewards of our core values; theirs is a sacred obligation. And, the teachers are walking out of the schools. Here’s a useful question: Who could blame them?

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE MEDITATION ROOM

Filed under: Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, CNN, Critical Race Theory, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, educated citizenry, education, free people, history, justice, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, meditation room, Milwaukee airport, peace, Rene Marsh, story, studio melange, the melange, The Talmud, thomas jefferson, truth | 1 Comment »

Choose Your Way [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 3, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ~ Viktor Frankel

I always feel a bit disappointed in myself after writing a post like the post I wrote yesterday. It was a near-rant, an ugly system becoming more ugly as it fights to protect its ugliness.

It’s been a battle all of my life, wrestling with what to do or say when my desire to focus on the life-giving runs headlong into the harsh realities of the life-denying. To shine a light on the life-denying is sometimes the most life affirming thing to do, it just doesn’t feel very good. “Look at the ugly. No, really look.” Last night, I listened to a conversation – in all seriousness – about the collapse of our democracy. It’s been a minor fascination of mine to witness how self-destructive people and organizations – and nations – will become before they admit that they need to change. Before they turn and say, “I’ve been lying to myself and to you.” Sometimes they destroy themselves rather than turn and face their truth. That was the crux of the conversation. It seems more and more likely that we’ll set ourselves on fire before we embrace the truth of our dysfunction.

One of Kerri and my greatest losses during the time of pandemic was our weekly ritual dinners with 20. Thursday night we’d cook at his condo. Sunday night we’d cook at our house. We’d cook for each other. Sometimes we’d cook with each other. Always we’d drink wine, laugh, and reaffirm what is most important about life. Each other.

Post-vaccination, after a long year of isolation, we recently, gratefully, returned to our ritual. We cook. We talk about our days. We laugh. 20 and I tease Kerri. She feigns indignance and loves every moment. We talk about art. We share the curiosities that have crossed our paths and screens. Sometimes we talk about the nation’s self-immolation but only briefly as we very quickly realize that it pulls us from what is really important. Each other.

Tonight is dinner with 20. We can’t wait and are making our menu, designing our day around what will be the most important thing to happen all day. Time with each other.

As a nation, “We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” ~Thomas Jefferson, in a letter discussing slavery.

How a question is framed determines the answers/paths-forward one sees or does not see. It could be said of our national trauma that we’ve framed our dilemma with justice pitted squarely against self-preservation, or, to be clear, self-preservation will be at the cost of justice-for-all. It’s too bad. As the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy, self-preservation will always negate a reach toward justice. You’d think that we’d someday recognize that the wolf we have by the ears is of our own creation and that justice-for-all is the only path to self-preservation, national self-actualization. You’d think that it might occur to us, rather than do the same old thing in the same old way, to ask a different question.

If I had a magic wand I’d ding the noggin of this nation with the one strength we share, the one thing that 20 and Kerri and I know without doubt, the only real path to laughter and support and all the other good things we can offer: time with each other. A good meal made with heaps of love. A ritual born of a simple desire to each week make the world a bit better for each other.

read kerri’s blog post about DINNER WITH 20