Author: Tenneson Woolf

Thomas McGuane is an American author, of Irish descent, who migrated his way from Massachusetts to Montana.

His quote below was shared with me by my friend and colleague, Myron Wingfield. Myron is Associate General Secretary for the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry in The United Methodist Church. Along with my partner Teresa Posakony, we’ve be in touch with one another  much these last two months. To host an event. To create and share documents that give the work traction.

What I love in this quote, and in the way that I know Myron, is that it is a call to refinement, to the most essential, and simple. It is a call to touch the center of one’s heart and to welcome meeting of others in that same place. I don’t hear it as stubborn or rigid. I hear it as a celebration of clarity.

“As you get older, you should get impatient with showing off in literature. It is easier to settle for blazing light than to find a language for the real. Whether you are a writer or a bird-dog trainer, life should winnow the superfluous language. The real thing should become plain. You should go straight to what you know best.”

Ah, it is good to have friends that can call out this quality, this winnowing together.

“People don’t know what to do when given an opportunity to be alive.”

It was friend and colleague, Kathleen Masters, that spoke these words recently. She and I have been in regular phone calls, mostly around a shared writing project. Our calls always include some level of check-in and check-out. It is in those times that we naturally reflect on what is holding our respective attention as we go about work, life, and rest.

Kathleen’s comment stunned me. It made me pause, be quiet, even just for a moment, as the words settled into me. I believe it stunned me because those words feels very true.

What does it mean to be alive? Big question, right? I know. I associate being alive with many qualities, including:

• being openly curious — naturally wanting to wonder, without fear or blame for wasting time
• being welcoming — wanting to be in relationship with others and to offer ourselves in relationship
• trusting — delighting in the complexity that sometimes defines so much of our lives, the new edges, the next essential evolutions
• seeing a bigger picture — actually several versions of a big picture, and being able to live and respect the inherent tensions of plurality
• being playful — taking off the masks of social professional norms that sometimes inhibit play
• wanting to experiment — it’s another version of play, an expansive way of working

I get it. This list is only partial. Much more could be said. Much of what I’ve written could be modified.

Here’s the kicker. All of the qualities I’ve listed feel natural. Inherent. What humans do, without training, even if only when younger. In fact, it is with training that many of these same qualities have been delegitimized in our matured lives.

Crazy, right? Why would we culturally do such a thing?

I believe, to continue a more deeply-rooted cultural obsession with speed, with efficiency, with separation, all of which are iconic values embedded in the western-world science of the last 200 years. We, mostly unintentionally I believe, thrive on doing the things, particularly in our work contexts, that strip life rather than give life. So much so, that when given the opportunity to be alive together, it feels foreign, and people don’t know what to do.

Yup, a bit stunning.

Yup, it feels like an important time as more of us — thank you Kathleen — welcome practices of being alive together.

Earlier today I was perusing a few of my old blog entries. I got curious, trying to remember when I started writing in this way. I learned it was the fall of 2006. I was happy to find that my first blog referenced my daughter Zoe, then 11, joining me for a planning meeting with colleagues. I suppose I’m happy because I’m just proud to be a Dad. In that instance, proud to be a Dad welcoming my daughter to some important work. And I’m missing her — Zoe is now 19 and completing a 3.5 month study abroad program. We will soon be catching up with each other face to face.

The second blog I wrote was about codes describing participative leadership, the body of perspectives and practices that so define my work and life. This blog referenced four layers that I  heard from a new friend, Finn Voltoff, that felt true then, just as they do now. Leadership Development (or stakeholder engagement, or community development) is code for Participatory Methods (Open Space Technology, World Cafe, Circle, etc.). These methods are code for Hosting Conversations that Matter (working on what matters and what we care about). This hosting is code for  living with consciousness, energy, and love. Finn had a way of speaking with complete simplicity. These learnings became more poignant later that fall. Finn died of a cancer. Abruptly.

Eight years later, I continue to appreciate simple narratives. They are the kind of things I like to speak at events and trainings, particularly at the beginning. I’m not talking now about the technical things. Nor the specific content or timing of an agenda. I’m talking about the stories and invitations that are simple enough to hold people through the entire event.

My friend Quanita Munday Roberson recently stirred my thinking on two of these narratives. One is from a Zen tradition that feels like total home to me. It is seven words. “Everything changes. Everything is connected. Pay attention.” Two, building on this Zen wisdom, are orientations of freedom that continue to ground me. “Pay attention to what has your attention. In anything is the everything.”

I think of both of these narratives as fruitful awarenesses to try on. Like glasses, to see what we can see, or what has been obscured from view yet always there. Or like workout clothes, to notice what our bodies can do, or have instinctively known would be good to do.

Everything changes. People. Circumstances. Thinking. Relationships. Our bodies. Cell-regeneration research declares relatively short periods for cells to replace themselves. Three weeks for surface lung cells!  All without losing their function to keep us breathing while change happens. Flow is as real, or surprisingly more real, that constancy.

Everything is connected. Again, people, relationships, systems. I love the reference point of the Aspen forest. What we see as a collection of many trees is one system of mostly hidden root connections occasionally popping us as a tree. I believe we humans life is more like Aspen life than most of us would guess.

Pay attention. It’s a requirement. Assumptions of constancy, or stagnancy don’t require much attention. But change does. Movement does. Think of birds flocking. I’m aware that there are some simple rules that can create the complex behavior of flocking, but I imagine those birds live with a kind of keen, essential alertness.

Pay attention to what has your attention. Isn’t this a great freedom. When Quanita asked me to participate in a series of interviews that she is engaging, “Presentations of Learning,” I immediately gave myself the criteria of starting with what has my attention. I don’t need to work at it. It’s already there. It would be rare to feel nothing has my attention. It could be pain. It could be boredom. But something naturally has my attention.

In the anything is the everything. I know this great freedom through another friend. With this friend, we are periodically able to spend time together. A couple of days. Some is play. Some of that is work. Some of that is deep conversation. Some of it is being silly. It’s always been easy with this friend, I believe, because we both share this orientation of freedom. It’s great to have choice. I will always stand for this. However, when I let myself believe that in the anything is the everything, I don’t have to fret so much about being in the right thing. Connected. Like Aspens.

In her book Storycatcher, Christina Baldwin writes, “Life hangs on a narrative thread. This thread is a braid of stories that inform us about who we are, and where we come from, and where we might go. The thread is slender but strong: we trust it to hold us and allow us to swing over the edge of the known into the future we dream in words.”

Simple narratives. That can hold a group. That tell the truth, as well as we know it.

I admit that I don’t always know how dialogue processes land in a group. I want them to go well, of course. I want people to feel engaged. Both in relationship and in a kind of access to stories and information that they don’t have by themselves. I want there to be several ahas! It’s just hard to tell sometimes, when I am hosting the process and not able participating directly in the table conversations.

At a recent consultation that I co-hosted with my partner, Teresa Posakony, and Rev. Myron Wingfield, Associate General Secretary of the General Board of Higher Education for the United Methodist Church, I had this feeling. What was happening in the room? Were they learning? Were they getting beyond a “nice” interaction together? Could they relax themselves into a participative format together, trusting that it would help?

These post event reflections from President Lalleen Rector, President of Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary helped reality check this for me. I love the words, who they came from, and the context they set for ongoing patterns of dialogue. The first paragraphs of Lalleen’s reflections are below. The full post is here on The President’s Blog on the Garrett website.

I have just returned from a consultation in San Diego on theological education hosted by the United Methodist General Board of Higher Education and Ministry.  About 50 persons were invited representing an array of constituencies inside and outside United Methodism: bishops, faculty, pastors, GBHEM staff, deans and presidents of seminaries and divinity schools, leaders of other denominations and related institutions. 

Our meeting format was led by two consultants committed to a “living systems” approach in which much care was given to being present, to checking in about how we had arrived, to what we were being called and invited into, to the concerns we brought, to deep listening to ourselves and others, to an incredible trust in process, and to the power of dialogue that would move us to meaningfully consider action.  No doubt some wondered about whether or not such a process could eventuate into anything but more talk that goes nowhere.  To be honest, at this moment it is too soon to know what will come of our investment.  

It was a challenge to be present in the midst of the busyness that surrounds our lives and that feels so demanding.  However, I was committed to do so believing that conversation and dialogue are the basis upon which we begin to understand each other and at the heart of which lies something sacred.  Such dialogue at times requires courage and perseverance and it is easier to turn away from than to engage.  But perhaps it is the best hope we have for dealing with difference and for finding ways to truly collaborate toward a common good bigger than any of our personal or institutional agendas.  I left the consultation reminded of a conviction I experienced at 12, i.e., that the process of listening, really listening, and of being listened to has transformative impact and embodies what I can now name as an incarnation of God’s grace among us.

There is a power in open dialogue. I’m grateful to people like Lalleen, Myron, and others present at this consultation that hold steady in such a narrative that transforms who we are and what we do together.