It’s Only Natural [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

This is a photograph of diversity: thriving tomato plants, basil, rosemary, cilantro, parsley, peppers, and autumn clematis. Look closer and you will spot bees, caterpillars and garden spiders. The chipmunk trail runs directly behind the bench. It is a tale of interconnectivity. Biodiversity is nature’s secret of success. Symbiotic relationships make the garden flourish.

Monoculture, on the other hand, all but guarantees a system’s collapse. It is true in nature. It is true of us as well; as human beings have learned again and again when soiling the nest, we are not separate from nature. We are not above it all. We are one thin ozone away from annihilation.

The word “symbiotic” comes from the Greek word for “living together.” Our democratic experiment is a test of human cultural symbiosis. For those of us who value actual history over made-up dross, it is undeniable that innovation has always thrived at the crossroads of cultures and the USA is an intentional crossroads.

White supremacy has been an ugly thorn in our democratic saddle since the nation’s inception but thankfully, until now, has never held the reins of power. As we watch the ICE horror story of racial profiling – astonishingly permitted by the Supreme Court, the assault on DEI, the erasure of people of color from our history, the vilification of Democrats (the party of diversity), we are witness to the insane attempt to force a monoculture into existence. And, as the insane – and inane – attempt at whitewashing our very colorful nation progresses, we step ever closer to our system’s collapse.

White fragility is at the epicenter of white supremacy. It claims to be a master race but fundamentally fears looking at its face in the mirror. It flees criticism. It touts being atop a pyramid built upon the labor and innovation of everyone else. It purports to represent the average citizen while embracing the economics of oligarchy (neoliberalism) and the politics of division. It knows how to pillage and rape and rig the game but understands almost nothing of building true strength, power, community and unity. It doesn’t have the first idea of the reality of symbiosis; it swirls in the fantasy-strut of mythical cowboy independence.

It is not a mystery that our democratic garden is in danger of dying. Perhaps, if we survive this race to destruction, we will at last be able to look in the mirror, see-embrace-and-deal with our full history. We will insist on building our home on the truth. All of it. Perhaps we will rise from the ashes without the idiotic idea that any race is superior to any other and truly, fully embrace the beating heart of our democratic union: that all people are created equal, that all people are protected equally under the law, that it is our experiment in diversity that makes – and has made – this nation great all along.

Symbiosis. Diversity. The same relationships that make our garden thrive will make our nation thrive. It’s only natural.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE GARDEN BENCH

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Ours Is Yours [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Nothing brings people together in these un-United States like a natural disaster. When the forest fires rage, when the hurricanes destroy, people – at least for a few days – forget their politics, reconnect with their essence, transcend their religious doctrine, forget their biases, and reach a hand to anyone in need. Anyone. People run into fires to help other people. The only other catalyst with the power to temporarily unify us is an attack on our nation*. September 11, 2001 made us remember that we are one, a community. People ran into tall buildings without a second thought to help other people.

It’s called community.

It’s easy to use a word. It’s far more difficult to fulfill the meaning of a word. To live it. Community.

Communities divide and dissolve when the attacks come from within. Currently, we are witness to the attempted dissolution of our nation, the power of misinformation at transforming neighbors into enemies. The demonization of the “other”. To date, it seems to be working.

I wonder when the devastation of the blazing fascist fire – currently consuming democracy – sweeps across the land, from sea to shining sea, burning all in its path – if it will bring us back together or drive us to total destruction? Will we run into the fire to help or turn our backs and say, “Not my problem.” I suppose we must first see through the lies and recognize that there’s an arsonist in the White House delighting in watching our democracy-house burn.

We had to pick up a few things at Kohl’s. The tagline printed on the shopping bag stopped us in our tracks. “Your community is our community.” There couldn’t be a more potent message – a more powerful wish – for our rapidly disintegrating nation.

Yours is ours. Ours is yours. It’s called community.

“I’m keeping the bag where I can see it,” she said.

*I wrote this post before the Peep and Vice Peep, in a festival of embarrassment, ambushed Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House. Their blatant alignment with Putin is an attack on this nation and I am heartened to witness so many of us come together in support of Ukraine – which is to come together in support of our democracy and all that we value. Theirs is Ours. Ours is Theirs.

read Kerri’s blogpost about COMMUNITY

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Choose A Side [David’s blog on KS Friday]

“It’s snowing in our yard!” I exclaimed.

“It’s snowing in our neighbor’s yard, too,” she smiled. True. The snow loves all yards equally.

Barney-the-piano’s most recent photo shoot revealed that he has only one remaining fragment of a white key. The facade has mostly fallen revealing no difference at all in the make up of the white or black keys. Barney grows more beautiful with age and humility. He reveals his truth as he travels toward his source.

Our nation’s history has mostly been a tug-of-war between those who feel equality should be like snow, available to everyone – and those who feel equality is a privilege reserved for the elite few. Evidently, reconciling twelve generations of slavery with a founding ideal that “All men are created equal” requires some serious struggle and, one would hope, soul searching. It is our history. It is the tension in our present moment.

After writing my post yesterday I decided, as part of my survive-the-next-four-years-strategy, I would find some of the unsung bright lights in our nation’s history. Some guiding stars. Maybe they might help us make sense of our present moment. I happily bumped into Frances Wright. A feminist and “freethinker”. She came to the United States in 1818. She was an abolitionist, a believer in equal rights for all people. She spoke her mind. She wrote, “Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.”

A woman with the courage of her conviction. Just like the courage exhibited this week by Bishop Mariann Budde, speaking truth to power. Bright lights, both; connected across time by the side they chose in the tug-of-war.

As we witness the attempted strangling of DEI in the United States by those who reserve equality for the few, we are also witness to the abolishment of liberty for the many. There goes the baby with the bathwater!

In the example set by these two freethinkers, these powerful courageous women, I find hope. Our history is proof: the facade is slow to fall yet, with time and strong voices, freethinkers, it always does. And, when it falls, it reveals the layer beneath the thin white plastic: equality for all is the epicenter of the American dream: it is not the absence of difference, it is the celebration of difference in all its diverse beauty and flaws. Out of many, one.

And isn’t it the promise of our nation that we – all of us – every single one of us – enjoy the power to think freely. Isn’t it necessary to call out the injustices we see, pulling back on those who believe that equality is reserved for the privileged few?

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE KEY

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Connective Tissue [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

I literally watched the ice crystals blossom on the glass. I was Jack watching multiple bean stalks stretch and reach into the sky. They feathered and connected, the light behind them making the ice-miracle color-lush.

It brought fascia to mind. That is not as arbitrary a thought as it might as first seem. I am reading about fascia. Don’t ask me why. I won’t be able to answer. My reasons are not random, just hard to articulate.

Fascia is the connective tissue of the body. It not only wraps around muscle, organs, and bones, it also embraces every ligament, every joint, every nerve, every artery and vein, every cell of our bodies. Every thing. It is a paradoxical wonder: it is flexible but provides structure, it is soft and loose but provides support. It literally holds our bodies together. It gives us shape. Most amazing of all, it is continuous, a an unbroken tissue-web from the tippy-top of our heads to the farthest molecule of our big toe, from the outermost layer to the innermost core.

When fascia is stressed, it tightens. It grips. It holds down the fort.

It responds to sensory stimuli. It feels. Trauma, physical or psychological, can cause the fascia to lose flexibility; this loss is called “restrictions”. In other words, too much stress makes fascia grip and not let go. The restriction creates an energy eddy that solidifies. A hard spot. A place where toxins congregate.

The good news is that the eddy or restriction can be released – but never through force. Pressure only serves to make the grip tighter. Gentle oppositional touch, fascia yoga, will eventually send the message: you can let go now. Relax. Trust.

I remember watching Koyaanisqasti, the 1982 documentary composed of slow motion and time lapse footage, no spoken words, that explores our relationship with technology and nature. Koyaanisqasti is a Hopi word meaning “life out of balance.” I was awe-struck by the interconnectivity it revealed. We move as one whether we realize it or not. We are not separate from nature or the world in which we live. We are nature. Out of balance with ourselves.

My long lost pal Roger used to say that it is a trick of language that fools us into compartmentalizing our experiences. “When you hurt your toe, it’s not just your toe that is injured; your whole body is injured,” he’d say.

Every “thing” impacts every other “thing”. Separation is an illusion.

The second day. The fascia of the nation is stressed. Hard spots have formed. Our faith in the populace is strained. We tighten our grip. We isolate, circle the wagons and hold down the fort. It is early so we can do little more than shake our heads in disbelief. 77 million of us chose the path of hatred and gross indecency. We fracture. We necessarily emphasize separation, “I am not them.”

And yet, we…The whole body is injured.

Perhaps the fascia has some lessons to teach us about how we might deal with the trauma to our national body: the election of indecency, the elevation of a confederacy of dunces. It certainly provides clues for how we – those of us who did not vote for hatred – might regain a healthy equilibrium. Gentle touch. Send the message to one another, “I am here.” Not only are we more than opposition; we are the carriers of the spark of the ideal of democracy. We are the movement forward. Even though an abomination currently sits at the resolute desk, we are the connective tissue, the shape givers of our nation and of the future.

read Kerri’s blogpost about ICE

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

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

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No Comparison [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

“So as long as the mind is comparing, there is no love, and the mind is always judging, comparing, weighing, looking to find out where the weakness is. So where there is comparison, there is no love.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti, On Love and Loneliness

The snow was nested in the pine needles when the wind blew the bundle from the safety of the branch. Together, snow and fascicle landed far below on the well-worn path. I would not have seen it had she not suddenly knelt, pulled her glove from her hand with her teeth and braved the bitter wind to snap an up-close photograph.

Many days later, while choosing photographs for our next Melange, she asks, “Which do you like better?” She shows me the snow-and-pine-needle-embrace among many other photographs. I rarely have a coherent answer to the better-or-worse question. Her photos are always beautiful or curious or interesting – they are certainly moments-in-the-world that I would have missed had she not stopped to capture the image. While she gazes at the beauty on the trail I am generally lost in my thought. It is generally impossible for me to compare the worth of one photograph over another.

I am working on a painting and have given myself full permission to make a mess. It’s harder than you might imagine to turn off the inner-critic, the one who demands better work, the one that compares me with others. In comparison, I always lose.

I am employing a strategy to silence my inner voice of comparison: when the critic roars I pick up a rag or wide-tool incapable of nuance and I smear. I am afraid that I don’t know what I am doing – so I make certain that I don’t; I dive head-long into not knowing. In splodging paint, I guarantee that there can be no comparison to others or to any version of my past-artist-self.

“When you are comparing, you are really not looking at the sunset which is there, but you are looking at it in order to compare it with something else. So comparison prevents you from looking fully.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, On Love and Loneliness

In the moment she kneels on a bitter cold day to capture the embrace of snow and pine needles, there is no comparison. She is looking fully. What I see when she shows me the photograph is a moment of seeing, a moment of beauty recognized. Love realized. It’s the same reason I stand at an easel and wipe away my trepidation. To see, subject and object undifferentiated. For a moment, no comparison. One.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SNOW AND PINE NEEDLES

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Wound Together [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

In my mind it is a toss-up. Whether we are witnessing the collapse of our system or the reaffirmation of the system, doing exactly what it was designed to do.

We listened to an interview with Isabel Wilkerson. She said that through the lens of caste, this divisive time, maga and the election make perfect sense.

Perfect sense. Our system was designed and constructed along a distinct line of division, black and white. Initially, the division kept the indentured and the enslaved at each others’ throats so they didn’t turn their eyes and ire on the ruling class. The army protecting the elite was an ocean away. Division was – and is – protection. It’s the first chapter in the colonialist’s handbook. Divide the people. It’s discussed at length in our nation’s colonial legislative record.

And so, here we are again. The system is doing what it was designed to do. Amplifying the divide, keeping we-the-masses distracted by focusing our ire on each other instead of the burgeoning oligarchy currently salivating to exploit us and our cheap labor.

Systems are living things and will fight to the death when threatened. As Isabel Wilkerson suggested, this is the system reasserting itself. Unity threatens it.

It’s ironic, isn’t it? A true paradox. This caste divide works like dna strands, fibers wound and bound together by their opposition. The force that binds us is division. We are a fractal of disunity.

The strands:

The maga right spits the word “woke” but to date has failed completely to define what that means.

The progressive left spits the word, “ignorant” and has no doubt what that means. I am guilty of wielding this word.

The “woke” believe in equality and unity.

The maga right is hyper-protected against “woke” notions of equality and unity because their media has steeped their minds in the bogey-man-word, “socialism.” I am certain, just like the word “woke”, they have no idea what socialism means or how it is as distinct from equality as lived in a democratic society. I am also certain they don’t want to know what the word means.

It’s “woke” to know what words mean. It’s un-woke to obey without question.

The woke want to know. The un-woke do not care to know. The woke want to dissolve the caste system. The un-woke do not. The woke see societal gain in unity and equality. The un-woke see personal loss of privilege and power. Woke and un-woke wound together by the gravity of their division.

The flashpoints in our history – like the Civil War or the Civil Rights movement – happen when the people, the indentured and enslaved, begin to question the falseness of the division, when they dare to turn their eyes away from each other and turn their unified eyes toward the ruling caste, and begin asking questions. The flashpoints occur when we-the-people step toward the promise of a more perfect union.

The flashpoints are aptly named. Civil (adjective): relating to ordinary citizens and their concerns…Civil War. Civil Rights. Ordinary citizens attempting to challenge the gravity of their false-division. I wonder what historians will name our current flashpoint?

Systems are living things and will fight to the death when threatened.

Is the fascism fast approaching the death of the system? Or, is it the caste system, threatened by the actual promises of democracy, liberty and justice for all, reasserting itself? Or both?

The path toward the promise of our democracy begins with curiosity and questioning, an openness to ideas and others. It requires a populace dedicated to learning rather than book-banning and indoctrination. It facilitates opening eyes rather than closing hearts.

I look forward to the day that the un-woke awaken and see how completely they are being exploited, suppressed and taken for a fascist ride. Maybe then we can unite, turn our eyes and focus our ire where it belongs and, once and for all, turn the page on this hateful colonist’s game.

read Kerri’s blogpost about FIBERS

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A Moral Center [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

I was grateful for the meme. It gave me simple language, a shorthand, for something I was wrestling to articulate: We are not having a difference of opinion. We are having a difference of morality.

I wonder that it took a meme to open my eyes. This in not about information bubbles or dueling points-of-view or fact-checked-information.

We are on the eve of an election. This election is unlike any other in our lives. The choice before us eclipses policy differences. On the ballot is democracy or not-democracy. A constitutional republic or an autocracy.

The maga-candidate sows division, darkness and grievance. He is a pathological liar. He is obsessed with retribution. He vows to use the military to silence “the enemy within”. He promises to arrest his opponents. Last week he suggested a firing squad for Liz Cheney. In a multicultural nation, a nation of immigrants, he promises mass deportations.

This is not empty rhetoric. As we’ve learned from his overthrow of Roe, he will do what he says. He has a Heritage Foundation plan called Project 2025 to dismantle our democracy. He disavowed it when public knowledge of his embrace of this extreme fascist blueprint hurt his chances for election. It is his milksop pattern: by pretending he has no knowledge he abdicates responsibility for his words and actions. It is a damning statement of his lack of character. It is a characteristic of an authoritarian narcissist.

What is also a damning statement of character is to vote for such a man. To turn a blind eye to all that he has said, all that he has done, all the lies that he has told, is a statement of our character.

Presidential historian Jon Meacham recently reminded us that within the spirit of the Constitution lives the character of our leaders – and also the character of the led. Our national character. “Out of many, one” is more than a quaint Latin phrase printed on our currency.

A character check: compare the maga-candidate’s daily mantra, “I have no knowledge” with the sign Harry S. Truman proudly displayed on the resolute desk: The buck stops here.

A vote for the maga-candidate is literally a vote to suspend the Constitution (his words). It is a vote to suspend our national character. It is a vote absent of a moral center.

We choose our leaders as a reflection of ourselves. It is why this election is unlike any other in our lives. The image the maga-candidate reflects back to us is at best repugnant. It is empty of character. It is the opposite of our nation’s identity.

If you see yourself in this man, a misogynist, xenophobe, racist, filled with rage and retribution…we are having something much more profound, much more serious than a difference of opinion.

We have a difference of morality.

Decency matters. Conduct matters. Language matters. Character matters. Principles matter. Intentions matter. Discerning the difference between right and wrong, between good and bad behavior, matters.

It’s the spirit living in our Constitution. It’s the character our leaders ought to reflect back to us because it’s the character we should demand from our leaders.

And so we vote.

Democracy or not-democracy.

Will we live and act from a moral center, striving to fulfill the promise of a more perfect union, or will we throw it away and spiral into a fascist void?

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE ELECTION OF OUR LIVES

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Strive To Be One [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

“Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” ~ James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.

Sometimes I pause and reread the previous few weeks of my blogposts. My first thought after my latest read was, “Good God! I’m bipolar!” I’ve learned not to listen to my first thoughts. They are not nearly as considered or considerate as the thoughts that follow. I am lately writing about love.

Love. This is the rest of James Baldwin’s quote: “I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”

Love takes off the masks. The masks we fear we cannot live without. The masks we can no longer live within. It is a tug-of-war. It is vulnerable to be seen. Yet, to grow, old identities, like suits of armor, must be discarded. To grow up it is necessary to show up, to step-out-there.

Jonathan once told us that a tree must split its bark in order to grow. Snakes shed their skin. And people open their hearts and learn what it is to love.

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” ~ James Baldwin

I found some measure of comfort about my nation (and my latest writing) in James Baldwin’s guiding words. Perhaps we are in a struggle to remove an old and ugly mask, still in place. Racial division. Misogyny. We fear what we will see if we drop this patriarchal mask. Yet, our love of country is requiring us to grow. To take a hard look at who we are and where we’ve come from. To shed the mask we can no longer live within. We are bigger in heart and spirit than our original colonial notion. The mask of divide-and-conquer is suffocating to the world’s greatest democracy, a nation of immigrants come together under the banner e pluribus unum, out of many, one.

Love makes us dare to grow up. Love makes us strive to be one.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HEARTS

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Open [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

“Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.” ~ John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

Divemaster Terry’s teaching was based on a simple principle: get neutral. In neutrality, there is no struggle. There is no fear. There is surrender to the movement of the ocean. The water cradles the diver.

The point? In the absence of struggle and fear, in the surrender to the natural movement of “something bigger,” only then is it possible to see. Only then is full awareness available beyond the control-story. Only then is it possible to experience the grace in the dive. To become.

Divemaster Terry was an artist. All the world was his studio. Every moment was his canvas. He was teaching me the essential lesson in artistry: surrender to the greater movement of the ocean. Flow with it rather than fight it. To fight the ocean is folly. And dangerous.

I thought of him as we harvested our peppers. We’ve never grown peppers before so this was new territory. Anything in the garden is relatively new territory. We do not know what we are doing. Our gardening is the equivalent of listening. She was giddy when she harvested the first peppers.

I recognized it. It was the same giddiness I felt the first time I understood – and lived – Terry’s lesson, “get neutral”. My eyes opened. My heart opened. I was inside the miracle, moving as the ocean, seeing without the obstruction of a story.

She plucked the first vibrant red pepper. For a moment she held the whole living earth in her hands. Eyes open. Heart wide open. No separation.

“Take time to see the quiet miracles that seek no attention” ~ John O’Donohue

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE PEPPERS

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