Hello Parker

💀👀📿

Winter Offering — Tillie loves to make natural mandalas wherever she goes. It’s like her signature.
It makes me wonder what things would look like if kids (and adults) were left to build the mandala of their lives within/as nature—instead of sifting through the crumbs of nature we leave in our cityscapes.
Even in the heart of downtown Dallas, she crafted a storyline of fairies and changing seasons to a setting sun, leaving her offering behind to bless the park.
I think this is our purpose, in some way, to find and sort and rearrange things around us to invoke beauty. For 99.9% of human history, our intention was this. In place ~as~ place.
Now it seems like we’re a snake, eating its own tail, trying to live our purpose of nurturing beauty into manifestation but left famished by the materials of mother culture, trying to build what we’re trying to remember.
That’s one of the magical things about having kids: they help you remember what it’s like to know and see all the beauty in the world.
To remember why we’re here in the first place.

A Willingness To Listen - There’s a lot to be gained for all of us, riding on the success of just a handful of us.
It shows a lot about a man when he’s willing to see and hear another point of view that possible contradicts everything he knows, and perhaps even more telling, everything his father and grandfather knew to be true.

From the dirt roads in South Texas, to unicorn tech startups and polar vortex in NYC, has been a ride or die since day one. Happy birthday big dawg. Here’s to many many more good times ahead brother.
Yer my bes frin 🤙

Craig the Crape Myrtle peaking for Winter Solstice.
Like clockwork to the day, he always comes into a whole new color on the summer and winter solstices, and spring and fall equinoxes.
The rhythm of the season is always present. I’m doing my best these days to embody them and internalize their lessons.
Thank you for the reminder, Craig. 🙏

Pic from a few weeks back rolling with Brother .
Even though I can’t train right now from a blown knee, I know the mat is still there, the brothers are still there, and the path is still unfolding as it should.
As Jocko always says, “Good.” — more time to study technique. More time to recover. More time with family. More time to prepare for these next chapters unfolding in life.
Here’s to the ones having to sit out a few rounds, and for those supporting us until we’re back.
Until then…
Oss - over out. ✌️

“Be brave enough to suck at something new(ish).” And here I am, humbled as a white belt, in a new discipline, but back on the path.

I spent a decade of my life obsessed. At that time, receiving my blue belt in Tae Kwon Do and Kempo was the most significant dedication I had ever had with anything in my life, and actually see it come to fruition.

But a tear, a shatter, and a move later, I had lost the will to train and the cadre to help me endure.

12 years later, I find myself back at home in a gi. Like a lover reunited, memories of all the good times and the bad come flooding back over me.

But as one of my favorite quotes goes:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”

So I’m thankful for the work I get to do here: forgetting my old ways, checking my ego, and becoming a student again.

See y’all out on the mat. 🙏✌️

🪞*Spider-Man Meme*🪞

Revival.
Something I’ve really been thinking about a lot lately.
Feeling grateful for spirit being revivified across so many of those I love and cherish. And thankful for the call within to rise above, so that I too can hold space and guide when called forth.
It’s a wild ride, this little life. And I couldn’t be more thankful for the cadre on this path.
07072023 | 103*F | Texas
📸:

"Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself."
― Publilius Syrus . .
Celebrating the ~other~ Freedom; Responsibility.
There will always be a million ways to criticize something, tear it down, or think yourself above it. And honestly, few things probably deserve it more today than American/Western culture.
And the best part? You're free to do that, for sure—part of your God-given rights or something like that.
But if God gave you the Freedom to act, it's only because the privilege to exist was granted with a promise to fulfill the responsibilities inherited in those freedoms.
For my non-religious friends, the laws of nature demand just the same; ignore them at your own/others' peril.
So today, as many of us sluggishly rolled out of bed into our social roles donned by mother culture, hungover from celebrations of divine rights and the global whiplash of manifest destiny, we owe it to ourselves and future generations to ask:

"How am I contributing to the very existence of the things that I critique?"

"How am I cowardly skirting the responsibilities that beset my very existence?"

"How can I best adopt the most and highest forms of responsibility to provide a life of meaning so extensive that it is a life worth pursuing and bearing, in order to experience the highest forms of freedom for myself and others?"
This practice is like a form of daily meditation for me. At first, I had to attune myself to recognize the internal dialogue and to spot the critiques from the praises. I had to practice noticing the form ~of the practice.~

Then, I came to assign these thoughts into categories;

🅰️ I AM "subjugating responsibility for XYZ."

~or~

🅱️ I am "allowing OTHERS to subjugate responsibility for XYZ."

I constantly try to balance this perspective and practice by repeating the Serenity Prayer; "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
(📲 CONTINUED IN COMMENTS)

Some moments from a touch down in Denver-town.

Camera: 7siii
Lens: Sony FE 2.8/24 G
Edit: /
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