reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Tag Archives: hope


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what will happen? [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

“sometimes hope is a radical act, sometimes a quietly merciful response, sometimes a second wind, or just an increased awareness of goodness and beauty.” (anne lamott)

he burst back in the front door exclaiming, “you have to go see!!”

for good reason.

the day lilies had poked through the leaves and dried stalks and, in the middle of all that brown – tucked up against the old brick wall – there was green.

the brick wall holds the warmth of the southern sun. nestled in that garden, the day lilies – an ordinary plant with nothing froufrou about it – were encouraged and nurtured. and so, even in the cold temperatures and the occasional snow flurry, the day lilies responded. gleefully. and their rising out of the dirt, their bright green of newness, gave me – us – hope. spring is here.

it would seem that people are not much different. there is a spring for ordinary people – with nothing froufrou about them – who are encouraged and nurtured. there is hope.

this country – filled with ordinary folks – has generally prided itself – congratulated itself – on its stance on human rights, on altruism, on its generosity of safety net programs. the melting pot that is the populace has been supported by a democracy that upholds humane values of fairness, equity, legality, goodness, kindness.

but it appears now we have been congratulating ourselves on something that was ticking its way out of existence, being usurped by intense greed and corruption, shallow conscience and deep-seated hatred. this source of our national pride is disintegrating right in front of us – being poisoned and stifled and ripped to shreds – and now it seems demolition is seconds away.

and there is nothing that the sun, the warm bricks, the insulating dry leaves and brush can do.

what will happen to the day lilies?

“hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. you wait and watch and work. you don’t give up.” (anne lamott)

*****

WATERSHED © 2004 kerri sherwood

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by a thread. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

the connective tissue between us is sometimes like strong rope and sometimes like filmy silken thread. yet we are – one to the other – connected through bliss and storm, hot heat and bitter cold, mountaintop summits and chasmic challenges. though you may be peripheral in my every day story, we connect in the subplot of all our stories – the humanity of living – our interdependence, our shared earth.

we – together – in our shared mission seeking goodness – step into the next day. in our joining – together – we bring the best of each of us – the uniqueness of all our strengths, our gifts, our wisdom – and we buoy one another.

when the ice formed on the window in threads – more beautiful than i could have ever created – the feathery crystals latching onto the ice-strand – like tiny preschoolers holding the knots on a rope while walking in a safe-line – it reminded me, once again, of your presence. the threaded crystals remind me that we are not alone, that – together – we may find the beauty we know is there, the pause between the notes, the reinforcement, the ‘ands’ that we each desperately need.

the needlepoint of the universe – crocheted vapor – a talisman of hope.

“if everything around seems dark, look again, you may be the light.” (rumi)

we are the light in this darkness – together – particularly when we make together our intention. though feeling as if hanging on by a thread, i take comfort knowing you are hanging with me, with us.

*****

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relentlessly. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

they are on 24/7. we haven’t taken them off our old wrought iron railing because – well – we need the light.

today i read a tiny post about someone who had taken her christmas tree down and had lugged it outside, getting it ready to go to the drop-off where it will be picked up and recycled into mulch. she wrote that she was sad and that she told her husband – when he arrived home – that she already missed the lighted tree. the end of her bitty post revealed that the tree was back in the house – lighted. it warmed my heart.

we have taken down the holiday decorations. it was just a couple days ago and i already miss the glimmer. it’s all so joyous and – once put away into bins – feels plain. to be honest, i did keep one lighted lodgepole pine tree in the sitting room and i am contemplating bringing another back up. it won’t take much to convince him that they are necessary for a while, even though i was prepared with “they don’t reeeeally look like christmas trees….”

whatever it takes, i’m thinking. if we need more happy lights, then we should – by all means – put them up. anything to stay in the light, particularly right now. these darker winter months require much vitamin d and anything else that brings us beams of hopeful … and this one – this winter – well, there are particularly dark circumstances that will make us look for anything to try to even out the seesaw. if a couple fake lodgepole pines and a wrought iron railing with lights help, then so be it.

we spent saturday moseying about antique shoppes, one of our favorite things to do. i was looking for glimmer….things that might reflect light or hope or remind us to be “relentlessly present” (john pavlovitz).

each of the seconds that ticks by – even in this particular right now – cannot be held, cannot be relived. to lose them – those seconds – is to let the indecency win. to seek a balance – where we zero in on the stuff that is flashing by us and still attend to whatever we can do to further goodness in a not-good time – seems prudent. otherwise, every last bit of glimmer will be gone and the dark will usurp us. to be relentlessly present is to be mindful of breathing, i’m learning.

we found a cool candleholder – wrought iron and reflective silver – bargain-priced. it is now on the radiator where the happy-light-covered aspen log is, reflecting the light from those tiny bulbs.

we also found a wooden ampersand. we didn’t buy it – though also bargain-priced, there is the budget and all – but i think we may be going back for it (or find some other iteration of it).

something about having an “and” sign in the living room may remind us – relentlessly – about each other, about the fragile balance we need to hold, about this moment and the next and the next and-&-and.

*****

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particularly now. [kerri’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab.]

we were on the phone and she said, “we all just need to check out a while.”

i couldn’t agree more.

it has been a lot. more than a lot. and it just continues on and on and on – this farcical nightmare of politics. there is nothing like watching an incoming administration poking fun at every single serious issue out there, lining its own pockets and the pockets of kakistocratic cronies, maniacally ranting and raging and seeking revenge, raising up the uppers and cruelly disempowering the middles and the lowers. it is utterly exhausting and disrespectful to the core of this nation.

but this is me…checking out.

so as we are tending to this holiday season, looking for gifts – the things people may need or wish for – and shopping, i know that there is one thing that we simply cannot buy – for ourselves or anyone else:

hope.

and so we’ll do our best to make people smile, to engage people, to let them know we are thinking about them and holding them close – particularly now, when so many others have disappointed us and them, particularly now, with the emotional whiplash we have felt as a result of the loss of positive possibility, particularly now, grieving the burial of any goodness from the top down, particularly now, overwhelmed by the stunned surprise we have felt watching those we care about wholeheartedly support this horror.

i know that we cannot buy hope. and i know that right now it seems far away, especially if we are actively paying attention to the intentional bullying and destruction of all we know as this democracy.

but that doesn’t stop us from yearning for it, from seeking it, from creating it. together.

we won’t check out on hope. particularly now.

*****

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wishes. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

i wanted to pluck it off where it had landed. floating milkweed snagged on dried brush. but it was too beautiful to pluck – this pure white fluff in the middle of much brown. so i left it there for others to see and carried away a few photographs.

fluffs like this always make me think of dandelion fluff – and childhood – and wishes sent on the wind. curiously, there is – somehow – still dandelion fluff out there, on the trail, in the middle of november.

maybe the universe – overseeing all fluffs and all other things – knows we need a vessel in which to put our wishes, a way to wish them, a little wind to carry them on.

a few years ago – for holiday gift giving – we purchased a few dozen sets of flying wish papers. we sent them out hoping that each recipient would feel excited by the idea of flying their written wishes into the air. the icing on the cake of these wish papers is the lift-off – after you have written your very own wish on the paper, it is lit and lifts off into the air, turning into the finest of ash.

flying wish papers and milkweed fluffs, dandelion seeds – they are all somewhat like prayer flags – expressing to the universe a heart-wish, a prayer…asking the universe for a chance…something we wish to achieve, maybe imploring…for peace, goodness, health, maybe something whimsical, maybe something serious.

maybe the point of wishing is to make us more attentive – maybe more courageous – about what is in our hearts. maybe the point of prayer flags is to make us more attentive – maybe more courageous – about what is in our souls. maybe it all connects us inward – to places that aren’t superficial, that do not slough off the amazingness of actually living.

the milkweed fluff captured me. i wished wishes for solid ground, for good purposes, for decency in this world. i wished wishes of regaining balance, of hope, of support for each other.

wishes – both simple and complex – gathered on the filaments of the milkweed fluff. it waited there, on the brush, to gather more wishes from more wishers. and, then, i imagine it flew off into the wind, possibility in the air.

and i carried wishes – that had somehow magically turned into intentions – home with me.

and the finest ash settled on the forest after we left.

*****

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trickle-down. [kerri’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab.]

you CAN feel it. there is hope in the air. there is light. there is possibility.

i – for one – am very, very, very tired of the darkness we have seen over the last decade. i am weary of the name-calling, the maga bastardizing of the honor of running for or being president, the hook-line-and-sinker of people who are in the trickle-down of mean-spiritedness, of incoherent narcissism, of a vector heading to autocracy.

i can feel the light and i am standing in it, proudly.

last saturday night i had an event that seemed in every way to be a heart event. for a half hour – in the wee hours of the night – i struggled with intense pain, wondering if there was a way that i could lessen it, wondering what to do. though i don’t necessarily feel 65, i know that i am 65 and so i was frightened.

we went to the ER to make sure this was not an emergency and, gratefully, the tests all came out fine. the mystery will be one for my personal physician and i to solve. but there is a learning – as always – here.

there is way too much darkness. in the middle of saturday night, while laying in bed thinking about life itself, i knew that the lesson presenting itself – the wisdom repeating itself – was none too small.

we have one opportunity to live this life. we can either live it ugly or live it with as much goodness as we can muster. we can greet each dawn with hope and light and generous possibility or we can perpetuate the dark of night, starless and with evil in our hearts.

i can feel it – this new hope surging through our nation. i can feel the energy, the light, a wide-open future full of wonder and blessed by simply breathing.

this trickle-down – of freedom and good intention – is contagious. the joy of the harris/walz campaign – the humanity of the harris/walz campaign – the spirit of the harris/walz campaign is washing over us.

and for that – and for sunday morning and each morning since – i am grateful.

*****

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DeeNCee Lullabaloo. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

it would be an understatement to say we were excited to see a frog in our pond again. we’d been waiting and then gave up. it’s a tiny pond – and it has attracted a frog for many years save a couple – but it has been an extraordinarily hot summer and we thought it possible that we would never see one in our backyard watering hole this year.

and yet, there it was. we cheered and, later, before we turned on the last night of the democratic national convention, toasted his existence.

we named him DeeNCee Lullabaloo – after both the DNC and the lull in which we have dedicated ourselves. DeeNCee, for short, though his whole name is ridiculously fun to say aloud.

way back when, it was helen who told us what it meant to have a frog – “fully rely on God,” she said, encouraging us to trust in hope and what was to come. since that first frog, life has been a real mash-up of stuff that has happened. but every frog that has turned up – each spring or summer or early fall – has been another sign of hope, another small miracle. for each one we have been grateful and a little bit astounded.

DeeNCee showed up on thursday, the same day that kamala harris accepted the democratic nomination to run for president.

the convention had been unbelievably exciting to that point…speakers and performers and politicians all stoking the flame of hope, the sprinkles of joy everywhere, light – a part of our future.

until a mere few weeks ago, it all looked rather bleak, a country destined to fall under the leadership of those who aren’t truly concerned about e pluribus unum, those who want complete and utter power and control, those who do not deserve such a honorable task as to lead this nation.

and then…then…hope, light and joy burst forward and suddenly there is a chance for our gay son to marry, our daughter to continue to be in charge of her own body, our great-nieces and great-nephews to enjoy racial equality, our younger neighbors to benefit from affordable, sustaining healthcare, our older neighbors to enjoy retirement and healthcare through social security, medicare and their choice of medicare supplemental plans. the list of possibilities is lengthy and the GOP – which is self-destructing – tries to misrepresent what is possible, tries to evade real questions about project 2025 and agenda 47 intentions, tries to bully their way in their desire to push the populace into a dark cave.

but we are alive and we are voiced and we have energy and stamina and longevity.

DeeNCee Lullabaloo showed up at the right time – to help celebrate the convention and its promise and to remind us to be in the lull, a place of peace and hope, a place of light and joy, a place where we might soak in the wisdom of a higher power – whatever we choose to call that deity.

in our tiny pond DeeNCee will sunbathe and eat bugs, swim and hop – thrive – in freedom.

and in our country, we humans will also thrive – all of us in freedom.

*****

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only forward. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

it’s time.

time to speak up. time to own what you have pondered, researched, debated, lost sleep over. time to honestly consider the choice and its true ramifications. time to think beyond yourself and reflect upon the legacy you are choosing. time to weigh in on the qualifications, the integrity, the character of the candidates. time to deliberate good and evil. time.

we have not remained silent. we have spoken and written and cartooned. we will continue to do so. because it is – indeed – time to take action.

our precious votes will not be squandered on a candidate whose sole focus is himself. they will not be spent on a man who lacks basic humanness, whose criminal and monstrous behaviors demonstrate his ambitions. they will not support a party that has eaten itself alive, that has become pistol-focused on autocracy, on mean-spiritedness, that would have the audacity to use name-calling and underhanded bitter tirades to represent itself. they will not be cast for a ticket that quashes the freedom of women and LGBTQ, that deliberately builds up the rich and ignores those in need, that slashes equality for race, gender, religion, orientation, that has intentional plans for undermining the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of all in this country, all entering this country. these precious and important votes of ours will not buy into the repugnance of maga and its hideous scheme for the future. no.

instead, our votes – this opportunity, this responsibility, to participate in the future of the united states of america – will be cast with the honor and respect and diligence due them. they will be educated, considered, based on researched fact, leaning into joy and hope for future generations, looking toward light instead of bleak darkness.

there is no choice here. there is only one worthy candidate.

and though i would – with absolute certainty in my mind and heart – vote AGAINST maga, i, instead, will vote FOR the democratic ticket. i will vote FOR kamala harris and tim walz . i will vote for kindness and the community of this country. i will vote for democracy.

and i will take action each day to help the future of this country for us, for our daughter and son and their partners, for our friends and extended family regardless of their votes, for our town, our state, this nation and the world.

the choice is obvious. i am not going back to the stifling, suffocating, unconscionable ugliness of what we have seen – what we see – from maga.

i am going forward. only forward.

*****

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obvious. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

“i go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” (john burroughs)

to draw a paddle through silky water, to listen to the call and response of the loons, to feel the breeze off the lake and to catch the first and last glimmers of sun rising and dropping through the trees…it is completely unremarkable to say this is soothing, that these moments are healing. it is unremarkable because it is obvious, because these are so remarkable – each – and because our senses rise to these offers of peacefulness, to these opportunities for rejuvenation…every time.

we have viewed each night of the democratic national convention. the joy, the energy, the hope – they are palpable. to say that our nation needs all this is an unremarkable statement, because – of course – it is obvious. we need joy. we need energy. we need hope. we need this kind of light. we need to be soothed and healed. and we need our sense put in order.

it should be unremarkable to have – to own – this kind of hope and light and joy in this country. it should be a given. this is supposed to be the fruitful land of opportunity, a place of freedoms, a nation where – with goodness our north star – we may be who we are. and, when our senses are put in order, we remember this…each and every one of us.

when we are in chaos, when there are those wreaking ugly havoc, when division and mean-spiritedness are being stoked, when soothing and healing is far from the minds of those who wish to be leaders, it is a time we must rejuvenate our country. we must move forward, not back. we must seek the best in each other, aspire for unity, clutch onto fervent hope with all we’ve got, put our faces to the sun and get sensical.

because it should be obvious in these united states of america that democracy and freedom are the only choice, that kindness and loving one another is the way of life, that equality and acceptance and inclusion are undeterred, that sense – real sense – is in order. and that – in all its brilliant remarkableness – pointing out that those are fundamental to these united states of america is completely unremarkable. because it is obvious. because it is the way.

we drew the paddles of the canoe through the glassy water, exploring the crannies and coves of the lake. to say we were soothed, healed – even momentarily – from worries pummeling our minds, that we were able to return to our senses would be an unremarkable statement. obviously we were.

living in this country – as a place where peace and freedom and forward movement and opportunity and goodness toward each other abounds – should be as obvious.

please vote with your senses and sense in order. let us promise a soothing, healing, joyful, intelligent, abundant future to all who come behind us.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this K.S. FRIDAY

JOY https://youtu.be/W2dYzgiepI0?si=Tg1qfsRWBHBmu2cz

(copyright 2005 kerri sherwood)

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to be a tree. [kerri’s blog on d.r. thursday]

this is the year.

breck is strong, its trunk is solid, it’s rooted and feels grounded as it grows not only taller, but seems to have more and more branches filled with more and more beautiful aspen leaves.

this is the year. breck is a tree.

in the last years of saplinghood, our tiny aspen has had more than its share of challenges. from its beginnings in a pot we carried from city market in breckenridge to its ability to withstand the seasons in a big clay pot on our deck to being planted in a dark corner feathery fern garden where it suffocatingly couldn’t fully see the sun to transplanting to a different garden out back, the curving of its trunk as the west winds buffeted its more fragile spirit, its fight to resiliently stand tall, its skinny jack-in-the-beanstalk growth last year, odd leafing and an infestation of aphids, ants and wasps. and now, there it is – right there, out back – proudly standing tall, loved through it all. rooted, grounded, healthy.

i would draw the parallel between me and breck and our last few years were it not to be that i’d like to linger more in now, look more toward next. the challenges have been plentiful, the sun minimal, the wind battering, the growth sporadic.

but i would also draw the parallel between me and breck – once you get some real roots under you, once you transplant out of the dark corner garden, once you feel the sun and can breathe in fresh air, once you fight to stay centered, once you steadfastly feel grounded in who you are, once you resiliently stand tall growing and leafing, loved through it all, you are far more likely to be a tree.

this is the year.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

WAITING AND KNOWING mixed media 48″ x 48″

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