See Beyond [on DR Thursday]

Posted on September 29, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

I am amazed by nature. We learned in our visit to the botanical gardens that plants in tropical climates are a study in waterproofing. Waxy leaves prevent excess water from accumulating. Holes allow water and sunlight to pass through. It’s a masterclass in protection from algae. Adaptation, not resistance. Working with rather than fighting against.

My adult life has been a meditation on whole systems – which is quite simply a study of perception. It takes a human mind to separate the leaf from the branch from the trunk from the root. Separation and categorization is how we make sense of things. Analysis requires breaking-it-down. It’s easy to forget that those distinctions are in our minds and not in the world we observe. There is no separation of leaf from rain, not really. There is movement. Concert. Equilibrium.

Understanding requires reassembly.

To live creatively is to discover rather than invent. Thank goodness for the scientists teasing apart, deconstructing, uncovering, analyzing. I would not be alive today without their passionate pursuit.

And, while the scientist dissects, the artist reassembles. The reach for wholeness, the pull toward universal experience that cuts across division…I thank goodness each day for eyes that see beyond the separations, the capacity for utter delight and awe – standing in a garden – staring at a leaf made colander over eons of time.

read Kerri’s blogpost about HOLES IN LEAVES

eve, 48×48, acrylic on board

eve © 2006 david robinson

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Discover It [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on September 28, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

The mist from the falls danced with the sunlight. Waterfall aura. Waterfall halo. We stood in the bands of color and laughed. Full body color tickle.

And then, a hush of utter appreciation. We listened to the chamber music of rushing water over the edge of rock. It was so beautiful there was nothing to be done but to close our eyes. Drink it in. Mist on our faces.

And then, we continued upward. The trail was steep so our steps were slow.

Krishnamurti wrote that, “To find out what is truth there must be great love and a deep awareness of (hu)man’s relationship to all things – which means that one is not concerned for one’s progress and achievements.”

In his book, Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse wrote that for every truth there exists an opposite truth. We humans are largely resistant to grasping both sides of wholeness. We like to be right so we tend to “fix” our half-truth in white-knuckled abstractions. Lost in our minds and paging through our rulebook-for-living, we miss the fullness of our relationship to all that surrounds us.

Standing by the waterfall, slowly climbing the mountain, it was easy to love our relationship to all things. The trail brought quiet to our minds. Each step, moment to moment, a full vibrant discovery of truth.

read Kerri’s blogpost about WATERFALL HALO

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Look Up. Look Higher. [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 20, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.” ~ Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain

This will read like a blazing generality and I do not intend it to be so. Some of the best people I have known are readers of the book(s). They learned along the line to read their book(s) as metaphor instead of literally, as a history. There are, after all, many paths up the same mountain.

As for me, I was cured of religion when I was a boy but it’s taken a lifetime to understand what and why – and to find language to express what should (to me) be obvious to all.

It only takes a moment to lift your eyes from the book and look up – all the way up to the sky. The book is a human invention, as are the gods and the stories of the gods told in them. The sky, on the other hand, complete with stars and suns and universes beyond imagining, are not human inventions. The book lives in the human mind. That which the book is meant to illuminate is…wholeness…all around us. We are part of, not separate from. That’s it. It’s that simple. The game of separation and unity.

We are part of, not separate from. This word “Love” is unity, the absence of made-up-separations.

The book will have you believing that your body and its myriad of impulses are, like nature, in need of taming. Separation from yourself. The book will promote the notion of a chosen few, the singular path, a destiny that is manifest. Separation from other. Elevation for team-white. Moral authority for team-straight. It’s probably good to feel above others and certainly feels powerful to believe yourself keeper of the book’s rules. Isn’t it blatantly obvious that the rules were/are made by men to justify, as-the-voice-of-god, all manner of privilege and cruelty? Separation, separation, separation.

Here’s what I understood as a boy: any god that promotes separation in any form is very small, indeed, and probably not worth worshipping. At the very least it is a man-made god meant to make folks feel better about their obvious impermanence in an infinite universe.

There’s so much in this life worthy of our worship.

Whether or not we walk as one or decide to beat the hell out of each other for the color of our skin or the natural orientation of our sexuality has nothing to do with the vast universe outside of the book. We create the separations to justify our fear or to protect our property.

We are completely capable of love. We are completely capable of reaching across the unknown and living our short time on this earth in full support of the rich myriad of wonder and diversity expressed through us in this infinite possibility called life.

The book is an abstraction. The person standing before you is not.

Love is love. Love is not separation or division or privilege or a skin color or gender or sexual orientation. Love has nothing to do with how much money you have or do not have. Separations are the province of small people inventing small gods for very small reasons – so they can feel good about being separate and small.

Love is love.

read Kerri’s blogpost about PRIDE

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Gaze At The Seam (on KS Friday)

Posted on March 25, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

Some things are hard to grasp. When that’s the case, it’s a good time to look at the sky. You’ll not find many explanations up there but gazing at the seam between us and the infinite-universe can, in moments of clenched fists, bring some perspective. As Kerri says, “It just keeps rolling.” No problem can remain large when measured against the seam, that fragile ozone layer that makes breathing and every current dilemma possible.

Sometimes when I look at the sky I wonder how many people across the ages have engaged in seam-gazing.

I imagine, one day in Kansas, 1932, as his fields turned to dust, a farmer looked to the sky. All his appeals for rain exhausted.

I can’t imagine how many women looked to the sky over the 100 years of protests and parades before being afforded the right to vote.

Can you imagine how many African-Americans looked to the sky as slaves in a nation that boasted to the world about its freedom and equality?

I look to the sky every time another state in the union passes legislation prohibiting discussions about our history, so fearful are we of critical race theory and the equality that we profess.

I find nothing in the seam that explains anything, but the clouds remind me that it just keeps rolling and, since I believe we tend toward wholeness, I catch a whiff of hope in all the blue and moving puffy white.

Someday, somewhere down the historic road, someone will look to the sky, in a post-nonsense era, and will, perhaps, imagine me staring back. To them, from their perspective, my unanswerable questions will have found resolve. They will have questions of their own, no doubt, but won’t it be nice to have a new set of questions to thrust at the seam?

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SKY

Little By Little (©2022 Kerri Sherwood featuring Dogga)

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Move Toward Wholeness [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on November 9, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

When I look at the bowl of green tomatoes, each plucked from the vine before we pulled the plants from their pots, still moving toward red ripeness, I think of Joe. He was fond of saying, “Life moves in the direction of wholeness.” It’s important to note that his fond phrase included nothing about outcomes. Joe was particular and knew that life is movement and not arrival.

I am revisiting the word ‘rehearsal’ these days only this version of rehearsal is not on the stage with creative minds. It is over Zoom with decidedly analytical minds. Actors in rehearsal halls move through a process of exploration that leads to specific choices. The goal, if there is one, is to embody a state of moving presence within a story. The analytic mind comes with a template overlay that is placed atop the experience before it actually occurs. The language reveals all: content items. Telemetry. The mathematics of movement. Rehearsal is predicated on precision.

As I’ve probably written ad nauseam, these minds are not in opposition. They are complimentary. Freedom of artistic expression comes from years of study of technique. The path to mastery winds through repetition and constraint. Saying more with less comes after a lifetime of saying less with more. The creative mind is one step closer to the senses. The analytic mind applies language, gives voice, to the experience.

Many years ago I participated in a workshop with an actor/director of Noh Theatre. The process was strict, exacting. The movements precise. There was no room for error. We, the participants in the workshop, knew we’d never achieve proficiency since it takes years and years of rehearsal to perform even the simplest of symbolic gestures. No one sings opera in a day. We did our best and failed and failed and failed. That was the point. That is always the point. Each failure is actually an exercise of muscle memory. The body learns. The mind is impatient. Rehearsal is rarely about the mind, despite what the mind insists. At the end of the day, our workshop leader gave a short demonstration of his art form. His ease of movement, born from years of repetition within constraint, was breathtaking. He was free.

Many years later I was helping John in his wood shop. He was a master wood worker. I watched him look over his lumber, preparing to build a cabinet. He ran his hand over the wood, feeling his way into his project. “Ah,” he said, laying his hand on a piece of cherry wood. “This is it.” John was like the Noh actor.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “it just feels right.” Then he smiled and added, “Plus, I’ve built a lot of crap.”

Life, moving toward wholeness.

read Kerri’s blog post about TOMATOES

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Seek The Old Gods [on KS Friday]

Posted on May 14, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’m thinking a lot about gods and goddesses these day. No, it’s not a weird fixation. It’s a project, a story that involves the old gods and the new. The elemental and the angry. The unified and the divided. We make ourselves in the images of the god[s] we embrace. It’s a story about reaching back to the old gods, to a time before the worship of the great divide.

We took a walk along a trail just behind our airbnb. We were only in the mountains for a short time, long enough to have dinner and a day with our daughter and her beau. On the trail we turned and gasped. The mountain towered above all things. It reached to the sky. So majestic in its presence, it did not look real. “Now, there’s an old god,” I whispered to no one. It challenges one to know it, to climb it and participate in the beauty and the ascent – with no opinion at all about who might deem themselves chosen or not. It does not discern nor divide. It reminds. You are this. Climb and breathe the fresh air.

Kerri saw hypericum berries [“You say hypernicum, I say hypericum, let’s call the whole thing off…”] in the grocery store. “These would look lovely on our table!” she exclaimed. They came back to the airbnb with us and found themselves placed in a fine Ball jar sitting in a prime spot on the table. She was right. Lovely. We did a bit of research and discovered that 1) no one can agree on the spelling of the berry [or they’re two different things but we could not discern the difference], and 2) it is often used as a winter wedding flower. Winter’s daisy. Red on green giving its color and presence at unions. “Another old god!” I declared to no one. Elemental. Till death do us part where we will once again unite.

She wrote a note of gratitude and placed the corner beneath the Ball jar that held the hypericum. “Our host will love these!” she said. Gratitude adorned with beauty. We hated to leave but had run out of time. We had to hit the road. We stood at the door and breathed deeply of the mountain air. More gratitude. The blue sky ringing against the red rock of the western slope. Old gods everywhere.

“We’ll be back soon,” I said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t leave,” she whispered.

“But oh if we call the whole thing off then we must part,
And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.”

You say hypernicum. I say hypericum. Winter wedding. Both/And. Gratitude and mountains. Old gods. Old gods everywhere.

read Kerri’s blog post about HYPERICUM

kerri’s albums are available on iTunes

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Welcome The New Day [on KS Friday]

Posted on December 25, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

Strip the religiosity out of the word ‘Alleluia’ and you’re left with its essence: a sunrise. Pure and simple.

Last year – a decade ago – Kerri needed a song for her cantata. She noodled for a few minutes. There was a phrase. A line of music. The next day she said, “What about this?” She played and sang. Magic. I took out my phone and recorded it. “Someday,” I tell her, “someday we’ll record it in a studio.”

She sings of our broken lives, our shattered hearts. Strip the religiosity from it and her song is about tension seeking resolution. Natural order. Basic physics. Broken lives and shattered hearts seek wholeness. Sunrise. A new day. Pure and simple.

Joy does not have to complicated. No symphonic soundtrack necessary. No fireworks required. Yesterday, after spending a few moments with her son in Chicago, we drove the back roads home. It was dark. Gently snowing. She was heart-warm after having received the single item on her wish list. A few moments. No more. No less. Joy, like the first quiet rays breaking over the horizon, announcing a new day.

Years ago, decades ago, standing in the self-made-wreckage of my life, I sent a change of address card to friends so they’d know where I was. An arrow pointing to the earth. “I’m here,” it read.

We’re here. A new day. Pure and simple. Alleluia.

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes

read Kerri’s blog post about YOU’RE HERE

Rest Now and other prints available at society6.com

you’re here ©️ 2019 kerri sherwood

rest now ©️ 2016 david robinson

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Shift [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on August 10, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

shift key framed copy

Shift is not an insignificant key. In a nanosecond it can take you from lower case to upper. It can throw your backslash into question. The simple finality of a period can be pitched into a statement of worth: greater or lesser.

Doesn’t it feel like a malevolent pinky just hit the universal shift key in our world? Of this we can be sure: it’s a new sentence and there’s no going back to what we once knew as “normal.”

In spiritual circles, shift is what happens when our otherwise cloudy consciousness becomes crystal clear. In circles of learning and growth, shift is what happens to our perspective when what was previously unknown becomes readily apparent. The penny drops and we can never again not-know what we now comprehend.

Perhaps the omnipotent pinky pushing our shift key is not malevolent. Perhaps it was long past time that we took stock of the gap between our rhetoric and our actions, our professed history and the full accounting? Perhaps we needed a boost from our lower case value-set to actually approach our upper case potentials.

In the great stories, as in life, there is a paradox associated with profound shifts. They come, not through pursuit or seeking, they come when the protagonist stops looking, surrenders and stands still. The shift always comes with the realization that what is sought has been readily available all along. The belief in separation creates the necessity to seek. The commitment to division creates the necessity to fight for dominance.

Shift words like “unity” or “common” or “harmony” or “accord” or “wholeness” or “integrity” arise when the seeking and fighting and pursuing cease. They show up when we stand still, when we stop looking for them. They become options when we realize that they have been available all along.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about SHIFT

Kerri is still in the Facebook penalty box so if you enjoy reading her thoughts please consider subscribing to her blog. I do – even though I get to read what she writes before she publishes. As her greatest fan it is always a pleasure to read the before-publish AND after-publish versions.

 

 

prayerflags pastel website box copy

 

 

color & contemplation copy

an oldie but goodie: contemplation

 

contemplation ©️ 2004 david robinson

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Become Whole [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on March 31, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

barney spring 2020 copy

When Barney came to live in our backyard, he’d been long forgotten in the dank dark basement boiler room. His soundboard was shot. He was headed for the junkyard when Kerri intervened and asked if Barney might come live out his days with us. It has been five years since Barney arrived in the junk man’s pick up truck. He has aged beautifully.

The first day in his new home Barney spoke when Kerri played his keys. He let go of his voice one key at a time. Within a week he was silent, no longer what he once was but not yet sure of what he was becoming.

We adorned him with flowers in pots for a few summer seasons. Certainly, he was content to support the flowers – like a crossword puzzle, it was something to do – but it never rose to the level of purpose. We realized he was doing it for us so when the third season arrived we let go our desire to give him meaning. He heaved a sigh at our revelation, and, at last, purpose-free, he enjoyed the sun for no other reason than it felt good. That season, wild geraniums grew around his baseboard and embraced him, the chipmunks used him as their hiding spot. The little critters made him laugh as they stood on his blistering lid and taunted the rowdy dog.

Initially, we tried to slow his inevitable peel, slathering him with marine oil, but his skin wrinkled and bubbled anyway. The white veneer of his keys was the first to go. We realized that Barney was becoming another kind of beautiful. He was, as Rilke wrote, living his way into the answer to all of his questions.

Jen and Brad suggested in our stay-at-home-seclusion that we exchange images of spring. I stepped onto the back deck and recorded the birds singing. And then I saw the wild geraniums were showing up and gathering around Barney. He was absolutely gorgeous in the morning light, sculptural and at peace. I’d just read something Thomas Merton wrote and it perfectly described Barney on this early spring morning: There is in all visible things…a hidden wholeness.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about BARNEY IN SPRING

 

Barney copy

 

heart rock website box copy

 

 

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Touch The Chair [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on March 16, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

healing copy

I am reading books slowly these days. Meditating on words. Sometimes it takes me months to read what I used to blow through in a few days. I am often pleasantly surprised and taken aback by how the words I read on this morning – words written months or years ago – line up exactly with the events of my day. All the time I catch myself thinking, “How did they know I needed to hear that today?”

“There was an altar upon which we could place a photo of someone who had died. Kim chose to put a picture of his “old” self; I found one of him rowing his peapod looking so happy, so strong. Beautiful. We both grieve the loss of that Kim while getting to know and love this new one.” ~ Judy Friesem, Summoned By A Stroke.

Grieve the loss. This is the fourth time in my life that world circumstance/events have drawn a hard line between ‘what was’ and ‘who-knows-what-will-become.’ What was normal and true last week will never again be the same. Social distancing. Pandemic. Disruption is scary and confusing.

I’ve many times heard the story of immigrants, preparing to leave their homes forever for some distant and unknown shore, just before leaving, circle the rooms, touching walls, running their fingers along the arm of a well-loved chair. One last look. This is who I was. Who will I become? It is necessary to mourn what is known before making space for the unknown.

In the midst of spinning change, hanging on too long to the way things-ought-to-be or used-to-be is destructive. More than once I’ve stood with a group in full denial of their new circumstance insisting that “This is the way we’ve always done it!”  Perhaps. What is comfortable today was at one time new and uncomfortable. Someday, what is now new and uncomfortable will be a well worn path. The first step: one last look. This is who we were.

“No person is a finished thing, regardless of how frozen or paralysed their self image might be. Each one of us is in a state of perennial formation. Carried within the flow of time, you are coming to be who you are in every new emergent moment.” ~John O’Donohue, Beauty

Imagination lives in the midst of “It happened to me.” One of our greatest super-powers is the capacity to imagine ourselves different, more expansive. It is what we call dreaming. We “see” ourselves” writing the book or scaling the mountain or being a better parent or working at the soup kitchen or losing the weight or…becoming the more perfect union.

Imagination requires leaving. Leaving requires imagination.

“Fate has a way of handing us what we need in order to become whole…” ~ Judy Friesem, Summoned By A Stroke

 

read Kerri’s blog post about HEALING

 

moon website box copy

 

 

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