Author: Tenneson Woolf

Kathleen Masters is one of the people in the world that I am so enjoying right now. She is with Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church. She does a lot of inspiring work with church and community workers.

The context today for a phone call was to begin a regular rhythm of convening some of her colleagues to explore what they are learning as they convene groups of people and community together. To share stories and questions that increase capacity for all of us in participative leadership frameworks, practices, principles, and methodologies.

One thread of today’s call was about speaking the unspoken. How healthy this can be. How useful and sweet it is to invite voice for the things that we only whisper. Or the things we feel we can’t say. Or the things that we as humans beings are afraid to say. It is a pretty big category.

My experience is that by inviting this kind of voice in a well-hosted process, much is released. In relief of not needing to hold or protect the unspoken anymore. And in inviting through that release some of the thriving qualities that have been longing to brought forth — that way that many humans just want to be together.

One of the models that I use for most of my facilitating is what I have learned with friends in the Art of Hosting community of practitioners. Though many will speak of the Art of Hosting as a thing, as a brand, or as a program, I think of it as a pattern for helping a group of people to be smart and real with each other. The pattern is anchored in three simultaneous places of attention: 1) learning — the ongoing process of paying attention, sharing stories, and asking questions with each other, 2) relationship building — another ongoing process of feeding a quality of friendship, trust, and love that can enable a group to see more than any individual in the group can, and 3) getting to work on projects and programs — working with clarity and depth of insight on the projects that we have been asked, or even told to do.

Looking forward to more with this beautiful community of faith, church, and community leaders.

Last week 9 of us gathered for our monthly Participative Leadership Practitioners Circle. It was a reconvening after taking the summer off. It was opportunity to welcome my good friend and colleague Roq Gareau to share some of his experience, particularly on working with stories and symbols, from the mythic to the personal, as navigation systems for working with complexity. Another way of saying that is, “Working With What Is In Front of You to Make Things Better.”

First, a check-in that included invitation to share a bit of story about what people experience as complex in their lives.

Second, the telling of the story of “Half Boy” (see further here from Michael Meade, author and men’s movement leader). From the telling of the story, Roq invited each person to pick one thread, or one symbol that stands out to them from the story.

Third, we chronologically reordered how we were sitting based on the threads and symbols that we each chose from the story. Then we spoke to why that symbol caught our attention and how that connects to the earlier checkin we spoke on complexity. It was a reweaving of the story from each of the individual lenses.

Fourth, some continued exploring and a check-out of appreciation and learning.

I experienced it as powerful learning. Helpful process. To me, the skill of noticing the symbols that hold our attention are the ones that create the most helpful learning. It is a question I often ask of people — what has your attention now? This can be asked of a meeting, a project, a dream, a mythic story. The symbol catches what we are projecting and how we are creating meaning and narrative. Thus, attention to the symbol can offer rich, rich learning.

It is my experience that working in this way creates a helpful and needed alternative to working with more analytical and linear ways of thinking. And that people quite like it.

A couple of stirring quotes for me from a stirring post from Dave Pollard’s, How To Save The World. I met Dave a few years ago. He is extremely thoughtful. Has much to say. One could journey far in the thoughts stirred and practices suggested in his blog posts alone.

For today, I find myself appreciating these quotes for the alternatives of reality that are available.

A human being is part of the whole, which we call the ‘Universe’: a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its astonishing beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation, and the foundation for inner peace.”

~ Albert Einstein

A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words. This may sound easy, but it isn’t. A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time – and whenever we do it, we are not poets. If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed. And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world — unless you’re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

~ e.e. cummings

• http://yfrog.com/oethmuxj  Just plain fun at Art of Humans Being in Essex.
• http://yfrog.com/obnspsaj  Learning principles for systems of exchange at Art of Humans Being. Thru alternative currency play.
• http://yfrog.com/kgsm9fuj  Summer Essex beauty. The pond near the main entrance. Lilly pads. Frogs croaking. Great retreat center.
• http://yfrog.com/h4v0ihfj  the Susan McHenry porch on Green St near Pidgeon Cove Harbor. Great hospitality.
• http://yfrog.com/h2h23rrj  A day of design on new economy that integrates AoH, Women Moving the Edge, and School for Collective Leadership.
• Hot as I arrive in Boston for The Art of Humans Being: Exploring the New Economy. Friend Judy Wallace picking me up in a bit.
• A place I have sooo loved. Biwa Lake on the south shore. This photo from a morning jog. http://yfrog.com/nyu0yptj 
• Running a 5K this morning in Orem. My second of the summer. This one honors veterans. And stretches me a bit!
• Great days reconnecting with my kids. Planting tomatoes with Elijah. Cooking with Isaac. Helping Zoe choose a dance costume.