step | reverse threading

January 1, 2024
by kerrisherwood11 1 Comment

dance of the magic slate. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

“as the wind loves to call things to dance / may your gravity by lightened by grace.” (john o’donohue – to bless the space between us)

we swoop the plastic sheet from the proverbial magic slate, clearing the picture that was so clearly there, and we start the new year. all images of the year we have tugged along with us – each of the years we have scribbled and tugged along with us are erased – even though all the evidence is still there as impressions on the wax. the slate is ready for a new drawing. the stylus is at hand. the wind is blowing.

“it is a serious thing / just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.” (mary oliver)

we babystep into this new day, crawling toward life goals and intentions, aware of our rapidly beating hearts and the fearlessness we are trying to adopt as a mantra. we are gingerly. we are bold. we hold hands. we brush others away. we are independent. we are always interdependent. we are open to horizons we don’t recognize, yet our pinkies hold onto barely discernible wistfulness threads, like helium balloons tied to our wrists, weightless yet there.

“when you should have felt safe enough to fall toward love…” (john o-donohue – for someone awakening to the trauma of his or her past)

we lean toward the whispers that pull us forward, trying to shed that which has tethered us behind. we recoil less. we are brave. we revisit. we recount. we shuffle the next step and the next, eventually picking up our feet, courageously trusting our breath – that it will truly still be with us a few yards down the way, that this scrutiny and release will be stretching. that our daring will eventually invite us to dance, just like the wind.

“i went searching in a foreign land and found my way home.” (sue bender)

and the universe holds us under the sun and the moon and we – actually – have more than we need. and it is a new year. and – no matter where we are – in any river – we are home. we are ready to dance.

“you are not a drop in the ocean. / you are the entire ocean in a drop.” (rumi)

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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November 12, 2018
by kerrisherwood11 Leave a comment

sisu. [merely a thought monday]

sisu. perseverance. fortitude. stamina. courage. determination. my grandmother mama dear used this finnish term all the time and passed it down to my sweet momma beaky who passed it down to me. a philosophy of life, a mantra, “you gotta have sisu!” mama dear would say. if up against the odds, if forging upstream, my sweet momma would say, “you gotta have sisu!” and so it was without a second thought when it was time to name my own company, the independent recording label that has been sisu music productions for the last 23 years. i can’t think of a better name for all the challenges that have risen – and continue to rise – as an independent artist.

any moment of fear, of uncertainty, brings me to draw on that sisu…digging in my heels and standing firmly in it. it’s kind of a blind faith and has everything to do with that. in the face of adversity, of the scales tilted not-in-your-favor, you just keep on. in the face of fear…everyone has their thing…the thing that makes them afraid…the thing that makes them white-knuckled…you just keep on. sisu.

i was flying back from telluride to denver a couple days ago – in a smaller plane. there was a big strapping guy all dressed in camouflage who got on the plane before me. he told the flight attendant he had been out in the middle of nowhere hunting (successfully) elk and mule deer. he was a rough and tumble kind of guy and ended up seated just across the aisle from me. when the plane hit turbulence, particularly over the front range, his face turned red and he looked over at me with a deer-in-the-headlights look and said, “i hate this part!!” i started talking to him then, trying to ease his obvious fear, talking about the wind currents and the mountains…how i could see the airport…we are almost there…just a teeny bit further…wheels are going to touch down any minute…. he was gripping the lock on the little tray table and finally relaxed his grip and smiled. everyone has their thing.

we can loan others the sisu we carry with us. we can bank on the sisu we carry with us. i often credit being-from-new-york for times i have just forged-ahead-anyway, but my sisu roots go way further back than that.

sisu. i stood back from the edge of a deep deep canyon the other day, my beautiful daughter on another boulder a few hundred yards away. i looked at the sky, the sunset playing over red rock. thought about that very moment in time, this moment i was sharing with the part of my heart known as kirsten…this moment that wouldn’t be repeated. and i heard the voice in my head, “you gotta have sisu.” i stepped to the very edge of the canyon, stretched out my arms and laughed aloud.