Author: Tenneson Woolf

• Some of the hopeful shifts of 2010 from YES Magazine: http://bit.ly/hfUXQF
• Quite liking this post from Dave Pollard on essential abilities and practices for a relocalized world: http://bit.ly/eaVRhV
• Completely enjoyed this last night, Black Nativity at Seattle’s Moore Theatre. And friend in choir, Andy Himes: http://youtu.be/gKZ5qUS5gls
• Maria Scordiolus (Akladitsa), reflecting in our call yesterday: “The need for certainty squeezes out life and the fertility of uncertainty.”
• Celebrating the day of my Grandmother’s birth — Lena Ross. Enjoying her poetry.
• Solstice moon and eclipse from a hot tub last night – fantastic.

This morning Teresa Posakony and I were on a phone call with Maria Scordiolus and Sarah Whitely of Akladitsa Avatakia in Greece. They are dear friends. Colleagues. Companions. People to take soul journeys with. Our call was largely about checking in with each other. It was also about witnessing some of their journey in creating Akladitsa and coming into relationship with the land that holds them.

I’ve always loved Sarah and Maria for their commitment to “living wholeness.” They have a kind of clarity in their words and practices that feel essential in these times. They feed my soul deeply. A few of those values from their website are below that help me invite a deeper journey with the friends and colleagues I work with.

• Axladitsa is a home place, a farm and a place of learning, inquiry and retreat – rooted in a Living Wholeness resonance, pattern and practice
• The answers/solutions are here – it is just a matter of uncovering them
• Our diverse perspectives and continuous collective inquiry allows something greater than any one of us to emerge
• We all have something to learn & teach/offer each other
• Our greatest potential lies between us and within ourselves
• The field between ‘not knowing’ and ‘emergence’ is the place where creativity takes place
• We are all interconnected with the wider web of life
• Connecting with our individual passions and offering them with responsibility and consciousness create balance in the world – and a platform for our continued human evolution

Today would have been my Grandma, Lena Ross’ birthday. I think she would have been 92. She died a few years back. She was and is a huge source of connection and inspiration to me. One expression of this was her poetry. As I look through her poems today, smiling as I think of her, I find myself appreciating this one, “Miracles Because of You.”

 

MIRACLES

occur every day

I know
today I saw one

it was you
creating life anew
being reborn

congratulations on
your rebirthday

I am reborn too

BECAUSE OF YOU

Yes to appreciations of new life created, whether seemingly big lives, or small practices of creation within those big lives.

• RT @benjaminaaron: “If you read what you wrote last year and are not embarrassed by it, you are not making progress.”
• Robert Swan (from a Tim Merry email): “We’re not going to save the world by email. You really have to come over and say hello.”
• Quite a lovely and lengthy piece on organizing through emergence from good friend / colleague in Utah: http://bit.ly/gVipAZ
• RT @drz0: #CollegeTaughtMe: The aim of education should be to get people to shift from the surface to something substantive.
• From meeting, shared stories. From stories, dreams. From dreams, stuff that works. Ryman on Ctr 4 Parenting Excellence http://bit.ly/gxNouj
• Steve Ryman on leadership in health care amidst $ deficit: “We didn’t cut people. We asked for ideas. Some took a few weeks. Some months.”
• Steve Prather on urgency in health care: “The health care economy is not sustainable. It will collapse the larger economy unless we change.”
• Working health care – Midvale City last night with Steve Prather. Today creating programs with Steve and Steve Ryman.