Author: Tenneson Woolf

In chaos, order. From simplicity reiterated, complex form arrises. In a living system, if you want it to be healthy, connect it to more of itself.

That one, and this, from Dave Pollard’s site.

• Always drawn to bigger picture. Here is one on sunspots, sunflares, and magnetic fields. http://bit.ly/vAcO5j
• Portable Principle from #AoCLNB: inquire about the whole. What is the system? Does it know itself as a system? What wants to happen?
• Portable Principle from #AoCLNB: recognizing emergence is a core capacity for collaborative leadership.
• Portable Principle from #AoCLNB: if you want a living system to be healthy, connect it to more of itself.
• Join Meg Wheatley in Salt Lake City, UT, 11/29 for a #WalkOutWalkOn conversation. Info and registration here: bit.ly/uFomIT
• Appreciating this invitation from Charles Eisenstein: “Not giving our gift in these times creates misery.”
• On wholeness from a friend: “There are times when I catch myself actually believing in a something separate from myself.”
• Reflections on the language of resonance, inspired by Bowen AoH last week and friend Simone Poutnik: bit.ly/sk8RTn
• Healthier Healthcare Systems – Join us here bit.ly/utVgwF to talk about issues like this nyti.ms/uJRAGJ. Thanks Marc Parnes.
• RT @iyeshe: The futility of control is written into the fabric of reality. bit.ly/vK6kjX
• RT @AmandaFenton: ‘Everything in moderation except laughter, sex, vegetables and fish. But not all at the same time.” Dr John TickellBeautiful poem, “Me and You,” on Dave Pollard’s site. In request to young writer, “your response to my generation?” bit.ly/uSPl8g
• RT @berkanainst: Help us share the stories of living the future now! Join our Sharing Our Learning campaign! bit.ly/psbGb4
• Favorite quote from the Experience Music Project in Seattle: Jerry Garcia — “Magic is what we do. Music is how we do it.”
• All Blacks are in the final vs France for World Rugby Cup. Exciting. bit.ly/5aZ7MI
• “Currency of the human heart” — lovely voice for what is happening in many places: bit.ly/ooJMCw
• Favorite new title of workshop: “We’ve Got to Stop Meeting This Way.” From Nancy Eagan, Martin Siesta.
• And Still I Rise — beautiful from Maya Angelou (and shared from Sarah Whitely): youtu.be/JqOqo50LSZ0!
• Consensus skills and consensus consciousness (or creation consciousness). On skills, from Tree Bressen: bit.ly/orlAwE
• RT @dfrieze: Why I believe #occupywallstreet can be a game changer. A @yesmagazine video. bit.ly/nIJVhr #neweconomy
• RT @berkanainst: Art of Hosting coming up in Bowen Island; Dieppe, New Brunswick; Pembroke, Ontario; and Ottawa bit.ly/oiJ5ZS

I woke yesterday with a dream in which I could see morphic fields expanding. Like stars in galaxies. The future we are called into, somehow feels like more. Like we are at a time when the DNA that unfolds in us has evolved.

We happen to live in a plane where these things play out in jobs, communities, teams, families, etc. I’ve always been drawn to the story under the story.

This poem ties together several key thoughts that have been with me over the years.

An offering that I hope supports all of us in the core work of shifting the narrative that guides us humans along.

New Story
Tenneson Woolf

It is said that the universe is expanding.
Billions on billions of stars and galaxies
further reaching out from a center.

I can see the spiraling, the clusters of order.
Phenomenal beauty at phenomenal scale.
Vastness living into vastness.

It is said that complexity is created from simplicity.
Simple pattern reiterated at scale,
expressed as fractal, to intricate whole.

I am learning to see pattern.
The unspoken and the spoken ones in strange attraction.
The way humans construct, knowingly or not, into structures.

I am aware that acorns become oaks.
Compelled into form,
unfolded from an inherent DNA.

I am aware that humans too
tumble forward in form.
Recreating familiar pattern of consciousness.

Yet doesn’t it seem like much is changing, now, in this time?
That there is awakening and churning
from a place that feels like more.

I tell myself that consciousness itself is expanding,
vastness into vastness.
And that we humans are into a new scale.

I tell myself that from simple pattern,
our fundamental identity is iterating
into new species.

Familiar, yes.
Related, yes.
But very new.

Seeing wholes in what was parts.
Seeing the visible
in what was not visible.

I don’t know if the Oak is becoming something new.
But we are expanding. We are fractaling.
We are compelled forward into new form.

It is a new story.
Or an old one if you prefer.
It is invitation.

It was the poet Rilke that offered, “You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens.”

For the past several years, many of us have been paying attention to the future of healthcare. We’ve been able to work with some fantastic pioneers along the way. Innovative people with imagination. Real human beings that feel the pain of the system, yet hold to the hope of change. Courageous leaders of many ilks in the healthcare world that, despite feeling an isolation, a craziness, and fatigue, remain committed and daring enough to create the new.

January 11-13, 2012, together with Steve Ryman, Kathy Jourdain, and Marc Parnes, I am hosting a pioneering event that brings together health care leaders and participants from all walks of wellness professions — Healthier Healthcare Systems: Daring to Create What the Needed New Can Be.

Online registration is here.

I love the range of what we are calling in. The broad picture of daring to convene with others to change the pattern of the narrative. The closer-in picture of journeying in the interior of ourselves in relation to the big. Both require courage, the kind that comes alive in our company together.

Please join us in inviting pioneers to participate. It is a bold call to convene people to dare to create the new. In part because the outcomes aren’t known. The deliverables are of another quality than what many of us have been trained to expect. Yet, we can see that so many of us yearn for the new.

Please join us yourself. With your colleagues. Please pass the word with deliberateness. Our invitation is to look to the place within yourself that moves to the edge, to the trembling with awareness that it is our time. Our time to pioneer. Or as we’ve learned through our Berkana change model, our time to name the new work, to connect with each other, to nurture a new potential, to be with a network of friends and colleagues from which the trajectory can be shifted, and to illuminate what we learn. In consciousness. In the beginnings of whole-scale change.

We are inspired by work of dear friends and colleagues. Phil Cass and Tuesday Ryan Hart with Our Optimal Health in Ohio. Steve Ryman with Center for Human Development in Oregon. Tim Merry and friends with Public Health in Nova Scotia. Lauri Prest with Providence Care in Ontario. Marielle Pariseau with the Canadian Dental Association. Toke Moeller and friends working with Health and Community Services in Australia. Jerry Nagel working with healthcare leaders in Minnesota.

Some of those stories are featured in Berkana’s E-news for November. Check out stories, events, resources.

Thanks to Steve Ryman who crafted this email below. It speaks much of what we intend and dare to step into ourselves.

From a place of hope, possibility, and welcome to a journey that can only be taken together.

 

Friends,

I am excited to announce an event for healthcare leaders.  Tenneson Woolf, Kathy Jourdain, Dr. Marc Parnes and I will be hosting  Healthier Healthcare Systems gathering in Salt Lake City January 11-13, 2012. 

We are calling anyone interested in imagining together a different way of providing healthcare, one that involves health and caring, that honors the heart as well as the head, and one that recognizes the healing power of relationships and conversation.  What else might healthcare be if we brought a different consciousness and if we connected the courageous, innovative pioneers who are working in isolated parts of the system?  You all know the power of the Art of Hosting raise consciousness and to connect people and to support innovation.  We are excited to use the patterns and practices of Art of Hosting to tackle the challenges of healthcare at a systemic level and to develop a trans-local community of practice to sustain ongoing change.  As an added bonus, included in this training is an invitation to a year-long community of practicewith healthcare professionals and fellow participants, as well as two personal or team follow-up coaching sessions to support sustained learning and change.