worship | The Direction of Intention

So We Might Endure [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on August 14, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

“An aspen root system is a massive, interconnected underground network that links entire groves into a single living organism. Individual trees (called ramets) act as above-ground shoots, sharing identical genetics, water, and nutrients across roots that can endure for thousands of years.” ~ National Forest Foundation

Our aspen tree, Breck, has just revealed a baby Breck, a tiny tender shoot reaching through the soil at the edge of our pond. We couldn’t be more thrilled.

Knowing how aspen trees propagate, we’ve been keeping a careful eye in the backyard. We didn’t want to inadvertently step on or accidentally mow any new additions. This delicate shoot makes an appearance at the time, in the same summer, that Breck has broken all records for growth in a single season. Our little aspen tree easily added three feet to its height and now we know that the underground growth is as healthy as the visible tree above ground.

Literal interconnection. Even though the aspen groves appear as individual trees, they “endure” thanks to their underground network, the reality of many individual expressions growing as a single living organism.

Are we really so different from an aspen grove?

I have read that in indigenous communities banishment is a punishment worse than death. They are closer to the realities of nature and are not so lost in abstraction. Survival is a function of interconnection, of community. To be made separate, to be rendered individual, is a death sentence.

Are we really so different from indigenous communities?

Here is my revelation of the past week. It is actually a simple thought that arose amidst all the religious fundamentalism currently run amok in the sad politics of the USA: Hate is selective. Love is all inclusive. The worship of a god of love is a very different thing than the worship of a god that selects.

Democracy is by definition inclusive. Autocracy is by definition selective.

My hope: the truth of our democratic interconnection overwhelms this sad chapter, this invasive weed – and banishes it; that our literal interconnection chokes out and summarily removes the fascist invader. And then the grove can return to the business of sharing nutrients across our roots so we might endure in health for thousands of years.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost about LITTLE BRECK

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Filed under: KS Friday, Metaphor, Possibility, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, community, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, endure, fascism, hate, health, interconnection, invasive, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, Network, story, studio melange, the melange, worship | Leave a comment »

As If [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on May 14, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

In a festival of irony, the moment we sat down to write about our peony, our harbinger of summer sun and the return of good weather, the sky darkened, the lightning flashed, the thunder clapped, and the rain is now dropping in buckets. The weather alert screeched with a warning for hail and possible tornadoes.

I delight in how readily my superstition-gene leaps out of the murky depths of my subconscious pond and concocts fabulous explanations about current circumstance. That is, as a human-being, a maker of stories – I am quite capable of connecting the rush of the sudden storm with our attempt to write about peonies. As if our attempt to write about peonies somehow invoked the storm!

This is not surprising. It is nothing new. My ancestors – and yours – created all manner of rituals in an attempt to appease the angry thunder-hurling god. To influence the powers of dark and light. To invite good fortune. To bring rain to crops. We have always personified nature and then imagined it is responsive to our behavior. Our behests. All around the globe, in many varied and culturally diverse forms, we do it in houses of worship to this day.

It might seem that I am making fun – and I am – but more than that, I am marveling at our genuine desire to be connected to “something bigger” and yet how rarely we recognize that we already are. We are as the peony, not separate from but a part of the pulse of life. We are of nature – not separate from it. My theory is that we have a hard time recognizing it because we imagine that we can control it. We use it to explain what we experience. We use it to justify our abuses to each other. Chosen people; Manifest Destiny and all of that ugly business. The personality we project upon it is at once beatific and horrific. We wonder why it blows our house away. We thank it for our good fortune.

In truth, we do influence Mother Nature and Father Sky, just not in the magical ways we imagine. Carbon emissions. Tapping mighty rivers dry before they reach the sea. Dumping our trash in the oceans. Fracking. It turns out that our behaviors are powerful and, perhaps, our destiny is in our hands. We need not pray to the gods for intervention and salvation, perhaps we need to be the gods of intervention that we desire to be, recognize and behave as if are not above it all, giver of names, but integral, intrinsic, no more or less essential than the peony.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE PEONY

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Filed under: Perspective, Possibility, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, behest, belonging, climate change, connection, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, gods, good fortune, intervention, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Manifest Destiny, meaning making, prayer, projection, ritual, salvation, stewardship, story, studio melange, the melange, worship | 1 Comment »

Scratch The Soil [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on October 19, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

For some reason this photograph reminds me of Andrew Wyeth’s great painting, Christina’s World. The landscapes are not remotely the same. His Christina pulls herself through dry grasses on the coast of Maine. Kerri’s photo is of a cornfield in Wisconsin. But there’s something similar about the spirit. Maybe it’s the starkness? I feel it in my belly, an inner quality to the outer image.

There is something willful about corn. In the cliff houses of the Anasazi, archeologists found corn. We take it for granted. Since we can purchase butter lettuce grown hydroponically we forget that there was a time when cultivating food was a new experience. A new relationship with the mystery. It’s the reason people worshipped the corn. It’s like an old joke: it’s not the corn, stupid, the worship was with the relationship to the mystery. It’s never about the form. It’s always about the relationship. A lesson we moderns have yet to learn. The joke continues to be on us.

It’s the same lesson that every artist learns and relearns. It’s not about the painting, the final image. Andrew Wyeth’s painting was not about Christina. It is his reach into the mystery. He must have touched something because his painting opens the mystery to us.

Standing before a blank canvas is like the Anasazi scratching open the soil, the wonder of the seed. The planting of the corn. The promise of nourishment.

read Kerri’s blogpost about CORN

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Metaphor | Tagged: anasazi, andrew wyeth, artistry, Christina's world, cliff houses, corn, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mystery, nourish, nourishment, relationship, spirit, story, studio melange, the melange, wonder, worship | 1 Comment »

Mourn The Loss [on KS Friday]

Posted on July 17, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

last i saw you copy

28 years ago, on this day, Kerri’s older brother, Wayne, died of lung cancer. If you want to know how she feels about it, you need only listen to LAST I SAW YOU. Grief made utterly beautiful in its yearning.

It is the gift of the artist to transform, to turn the darkest day, the breaking heart, into something bearable. It is the gift of the artist to communicate what cannot be captured in language, to transport us, in a safe way, into and through the hurt so we might touch the unfathomable depth of love. It is the gift of the artist to open new pathways and possibilities, to guide communities into and through impossible conversations. To point the way to a new story, a new perspective growing from an old and ancient root.

In my mind it is the greatest loss when an artist turns against their artistry. The entire world loses on the day an artists says, “Why bother.” There’s no money in it. The artist loses most of all because they’ve bitten the poison in the American apple. They wither and die. Not everything is or should operate like a business. Education is not nor ever should be a business. Worship is not a business. Healthcare is not nor ever should be a business. Run them that way and the priorities flip. The greater is lost in the lesser. When making money becomes more important than health or care or spirit or the expansion of minds, we lose our way. We send our kids back to school during a pandemic to open the economy. Sacrificial lambs. Throw them into a volcano to make it rain.

What we value in this nation is abhorrent.

And then there is Kerri. What a gift. What a loss. She read today that someone is now making silverware out of old CDs. “Look,” she said, showing me the article. “We have a basement filled with CDs! Maybe we should have gone into the silverware business!” Proving to herself once again that her gift is less than worthless. Worth less gift. No business.

Great! I thought but did not say. A world filled with forks but void of your music. No one to lead us through the dark, no way to reach the truly beautiful.

“My paintings,” I said, feigning alliance, “are destined for a thrift store.” I’ve given up the fight with her (though, by this post you can see that I am a liar).

I continue to paint with no illusion about “sales” or “showing” or the other necessities of “business.” It’s for me, now. Transformation of dark to light can be selfish, too. Personal. After all, for me, it’s always been a spiritual path. Business necessities pale in the comparison.

If you want to know what I [and Wayne] feel about Kerri turning her back on her artistry, you need only listen to LAST I SAW YOU. Listen for the strings. It will break your heart.