Human to Human • Tenneson Woolf

February 14, 2018

Patterning Encounter — Three Simple Rounds

In yesterday’s The Circle Way Online Class with Amanda Fenton, one of the contexts I shared with participants was when they went into small groups. They would have 25 minutes in groups of four or five. One person would host. One person would guardian. There were three “rounds” that we encouraged.

Check-in (How is it that you are arriving to this small group circle now?)
Main Question (Tell a story of when you have experienced The Circle Way components to be helpful — or challenging when missing.)
Check-out (What was one thing you appreciated from your small circle?)

These three steps are a deeply engrained pattern for those of us that practice circle. With of course, a few assumptions tucked beneath them. Yesterday we highlighted “center” — the third space in which we contribute our thinking, feeling, and wondering. It is from willingness to attend to center that emergence becomes more visible and flavored. Yesterday we also highlighted “talking piece” — the act of creating more deliberate and uninterrupted sharing and listening.

I spoke these three rounds as engrained and entrained, just as it is for some of us with our morning habits — brush teeth, shower, cup of coffee. I also spoke what I see as underlaying purpose of each, that contributes to animating awareness and connection through circle.

Check-in invokes presence. It is the shift from social space to the deliberate attending in circle. Or to shift even from one form of circle to another. In our class it was from the group of 14 to the groups of four or five. Even a “mini check-in” matters. It’s like re-stabilizing our psyches to a new configuration of humans gathered. Each configuration benefits from a weave to animate the wholeness of that particular group. Check-in is what helps us get to that.

Main Question is animated by story. Circle is not presentation. Nor is it one person at the front of the room. Nor is it dumping data. Many things can be shared, including core facts and strong opinions. But circle uniquely invites us to a different quality of interaction together. I’ve learned this is often because of inviting people to be in the spirit of sharing story that shows a bit of how they relate to the main question. Sharing experience, even a tiny bit, that relates to the main question. Sharing story is itself a learning strategy. And yes, story creates delight — even the challenging ones.

Check-out invokes witnessing. It creates just a bit of deliberateness to notice what just happened. It’s difference than just racing away. It’s like being deliberate to tidy the dishes before rushing out of the house. Check-out tends to more of the energy and more of the experience in the group. It’s powerful and important to hear an individual express what they experienced, sometimes even in just a word. It’s powerful and important to notice how that is shared, or unique, in the group. We so often live in contexts that skip over the witnessing and even momentary sense-making together. Check-out is what helps us benefit from these qualities together.

Patterns. Aren’t we all learning these. To make conscious or change the unconscious ones. To claim and give light structure to the new ones.

Patterns of encountering. Well, isn’t this at the heart of it all. Daring to lean into the possibility of the whole and what is uniquely created in the middle. Daring to create added life and awakeness in who we are and what we try to do or be together.

February 13, 2018

The Circle Way 4 Week Online Class Starts Today

I’m teaching this online class with Amanda Fenton, who is delightful. She doesn’t just do circle. She practices it. She lives it. I learn much from and with her.

Twenty-eight participants will gather for the first class today, offered twice. We capped registration at 14 per class to encourage a kind of intimacy and knowing each other. Delicious people, each who have expressed in writing some of what they care about. Schools. Meetings at work. Situations of conflict and mediation. Family. Community. First Nations. Healthcare. Government. Social work. Libraries. And more. It’s a big list. It’s an important part of the invitation to encourage real purpose and meaning. Today that will shift to voice and video together.

Nine countries in which these participants are living — USA, Canada, India, Australia, Austria, Wales, Bermuda, New Zealand, Spain.

What is exciting and attractive to me that is that each of us comes with a baseline assumption, or hope, that connection matters. We all want meaning and purpose in our gatherings. We are all looking for a simplicity to help that happen more regularly.

I hope, and intend, that together, we all find within us and among us the added witnessing and courage that helps us to be, practice, and live in the best ways in these many environments that we care about.

Ready, go.

February 12, 2018

When Running On Empty Is Just Right

When it comes to watching the needle on your gas tank compressed against an upper-cased “E” and no fill-up station within sight, most of us find that to be a rather stressful kind of running on empty. Having been there a few times, I’m glad car makers, or at least car makers for the Honda Accord that I drive, have been generous about the reserve tank that invisibly remains even when the empty icon is at it’s brightest orange.

Though there are other connotations for empty that are rather stress-inducing, there are some that are just right. Like the kind of orange and the kind of empty in this photo that I took on the weekend, just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico. I loved the color of this sunset, seen from walking with my friend Charles and his dog Kai on a path bordering a nearby farm. I loved the spaciousness of a bit of time with a friend in which doing less was absolutely doing more.

I experienced a reminder of another kind of empty last week in working with friends and colleagues in the United Church of Christ. There were five of us gathered to connect face to face for a day of planning. Some of it was for organizing further the Ignite Leadership Initiative that we are all stewarding. That means designing meeting formats, imagining exercises, and holding ourselves to the deeper purpose of “the thing behind the thing.” As my friend Erin spoke, “It can be a revolutionary act just to slow down.” Just-right empty.

Or there is the empty of preparing for the online class that I’m cohosting with Amanda Fenton, starting this week. It’s a four week class that meets for two hours each Tuesday. There’s a lot that we want to put in to those classes. And to be clear, a lot of good stuff that are absolute inclusions for us. But there is also an emptiness that is important in that class and in that design. Emptying is being willing to stand for a deeply centered purpose and selecting just a few stories that help hold the class in good learning and right-pacing together rather than cramming in even too many good things.

Or there’s the kind of empty that many people seek and experience in meditation. I so value the 10-20 minutes in my early mornings when I practice a slow and long breath of detachment that seems to create extra room in my heart and soul, as if I’d just moved into a bigger home with a much wider sofa. That empty of meditation stabilizes and recontexts a whole lot of full or even over-flowing on most given days.

So here’s to the empty that is just right. Whether stumbled into in a moment. Or deliberately practiced as personal soul growing. Or remembered as an access point into the good work of a team in planning. Or just walking among fields plowed but yet to be planted, near cottonwood trees basking beneath New Mexico’s utterly compelling skies.

February 1, 2018

On Communities of Belonging and The Circle Way

Kristie McLean is a friend through The Circle Way. She travels. She photographs. She writes poetry. She presences herself and invites it with others. Exquisitely.

Kristie writes of some of her travels in Ethiopia and the circles of belonging that she encourages. It’s moving. And excerpt of her witnessing is below. Read her full article here.

Circle is not about fixing. Neither is international aid work. I’m a firm believer that both require deep listening, tools to instill personal resilience and a sense of shared care for everyone present. There’s a sacred recipe needed: an honoring of “what is” and gentle inquiry into “what can be.” Often, we really do know our own best solution. Or we can glimpse it through the eyes of those illuminated on the perimeter.

Here’s to this clarity and conviction, and deep, poetic seeing in all of us.

Thanks Kristie.