Author: Tenneson Woolf

I appreciate these words, caught and offered by Maureen Parker, a friend, colleague who works with Ottawa Family Services. Maureen was a participant in an event in November that I co-hosted, Developing Partnerships in the Workplace. Deeply insightful in her listening.

Partnership Possibilities

Re-activating a pattern of learning and partnership
WE create a context where purpose and presence
Show up joyfully, to co-cook and simmer
A stirring and emerging field

Letting go of silo machines of productivity
To engage with people
WE re-humanize  work and
Make fantastic our collaboration

Dancing the vertical-horizontal shift
WE build bridges and tame our tempers
Transforming the ripple of unhappiness
Into powerful soul connections

And re-membering these life affirming ways
WE wake up, to nourish gentle processes
Which invite wise action

Removing masks, we see creativity shining through
Aware of what is already here, bubbling to the surface
WE invite ourselves into our work, authentically
‘Being into’ that which moves and dances

Emergent joy in storytelling, we connect
And invite a ground swelling shift toward each other
All jazzed up, WE are now ready to protect
The language of what is working

One of the things I continue to learn is kindness. Offering. Receiving. As practice. As invitation. With my teenagers. With my former spouse. With myself. Practice kindness — it is a kind of mantra for myself and many.

I appreciate this poem from American / Palestinian poet Naomi Shihab Nye. With thanks to Teresa for sending it.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and send you out in the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

• “RT @NoeticOrg: ” “If the world is to change for the better it must start with a change in human consciousness,…” http://bit.ly/tvvmHl
• RT @chriscorrigan: explanation of the Higgs Boson RT @BoingBoing: 3 Things the Higgs Boson can teach you about physics dlvr.it/10c4DT
• Great people. RT @kati_thompson: Cool stories of alumni doing great #sustainability work in latest #msls newsletter: bit.ly/uTOMRK

This is an outstanding interview by Steven Colbert of astrophysicist Neil deGrassi Tyson that took place in early 2010. Steven Colbert is witty, funny, and intelligent. He also asks very important and challenging questions about the nature of science, physics, knowledge and how it relates to human beings at this time. Neil deGrassi Tyson is apt with metaphor, anecdote, and the framework of science.

There is a lot to like in this 90 minute video. For me, I appreciated this particular piece. Colbert asks deGrassi Tyson, “What is beautiful about science?” deGrassi Tyson gives an example for him, “Energy = mass x speed of light squared (can’t find a way to superscript for the moment).” “Why is that beautiful to you?” asks Colbert. “It is simple yet accounts for hugely complex things.”

This is a great description of the hunger I tend to feel for simplicity in the patterns of organizing human beings. An example of that simplicity is in the principles for healthy and resilient community that I use often — these too account for hugely complex behaviors in systems.

deGrassi goes on to describe more of the beauty — “This beauty, will drive you to poetry.” Let us hope.

Thanks Meg Wheatley and Nicco Pesci for referring me to this one.