Author: Tenneson Woolf

The same friend that sent me the quote from yesterday’s post also sent me the poem below. It is by Diane Ackerman, American essayist, poet, and naturalist.

Honoring life is a rather ongoing learning isn’t it. There’s the seemingly easier things — honoring the rising sun in the start of a day, the friend that does something nice for us during the day, the meal that we get to have together at the end of the day.

There’s also honoring the more challenging things — the sorrow from loss of loved one that bites in each quiet moment, the punishing exclusion created by someone’s bitterness or blame, the struggle of a group of people trying to wade through together what they can’t wade through alone, the simple annoyance of a fly buzzing round my head because I accidentally left the window open.

In the easy, honoring seems, well, easier to find. In the challenge, it often requires a stretch. In both the easy and the challenge, life, inside and outside of us, is unfolding. Not always, but often enough, grace appears in a way that let’s me glimpse this.

Enjoy this poem, a commitment to honoring life, called School Prayer.

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School Prayer

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
— wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell — on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

 

 

 

 

I returned home yesterday from what has been 12 consecutive days of work. Leading processes for engagement. Contributing to design. Being with colleagues that are now friends, and friends who are long-term colleagues. It has meant early mornings, waking often at 4:30 or 5:30. It has mean full working days going through until 8:30 or 9:30 often. I’m welcoming some rest.

I returned home to a newly arrived birthday card from a friend. On the cover was this phrase from 19th century Irish playwright and author, Oscar Wilde.

“The true mystery of the world is in the visible, not the invisible.”

Oh, how I am drawn to the invisible. This is a long time disposition for me. It comes from the premise and experience I know, that there is always more that is invisible and unknown than there is visible and known. It creates quite a call for the inner explorer, right.

What I love from this Oscar Wilde quote, is the reminder that even the known has mystery.

I would suggest this is at play explicitly in the last 12 days of work for me. The mystery that is in the visible of a UCC congregation meeting each other in more honest and real connection to identify strategic experiments. The mystery in the visible that is 12 participants at a pre-conference two-day workshop that explores together the focus of reclaiming the heart of humanity. The mystery in the invisible that is a cathedral parish dreaming together ways of being that help them create a parish profile.

No doubt, in each of these, there is the invisible. I will never deny this, and will always seek out it’s relevance. But how significant it is to momentarily let go of an assumption of objectiveness, often found in the visible, to pick up the subjectiveness in the visible.

That’s a birthday gift, this reminder of mystery, that gives me rest in the coming days.

This week I learned more about Compassion in Action. It was Reverend Bob Thompson who shared a great story of people everywhere picking up the practice of compassion. It arises from some simple, yet powerful questions — what would it take for us to be more kind together? It arrises from a desire to create large scale practice with the least amount of management necessary.

Earlier this month I also worked with a faith community and congregation just beginning to pick up the values of trust, listening, and kindness. TLK, comes from a exercise in which I invited them to name values that would most influence their community if practiced widely. Practiced without finish line. Practiced spontaneously, again without need for managing.

Both of these experiences are about creating culture. What a group of people are known for. The palpable, obvious stuff. “If nothing else, do this” kinds of practices. Compassion, trust, listening, kindness.

What I learn among these is that some people want to massage definitions extensively. I get that the purpose is clarity. Yet, it is overlooking the primary purpose that is named in this photo. The definition matters less — that is an endless inquiry, and sometimes debate of nuance and personal experience. What matters more is the inquiry that surrounds it. “What does compassion mean to you?” “In what way is kindness here now?”

It is the inquiry that creates the culture. The particular topic matters, but it is merely the gateway to the the community of people taking care of themselves, learning, growing, even in differences.

The Flow Game is a training that I first took in 2009. It was at Toke Moeller’s invitation, a man that I deeply respect for his simplicity and friendship. Toke is a person committed to flow, to being in relation to the energy of life.

The Flow Game is a board game that invokes the use of question and story to create clarity. It is a game that welcomes engagement with people, sometimes in silence, to add meaning. It is a game that invites attention to the symbolic energy of the four directions.

I got to host a short version of the Flow Game this week. I’m glad to say that I was reminded of all of these qualities, all of these potentials. I loved that way that the six of us drew cards and questions that invited reflection about our intention, and that each card was in some way drawn for all of us.

I’m looking forward to bring more of the Flow Game back to my work and offerings.