Author: Tenneson Woolf

I just completed an utterly delightful phone conversation with Glen Lauder in New Zealand. To be with Glen is to feel an invitation to be completely authentic. A beautiful ease of feminine and masculine. A gorgeous blend of funny, angry, serious. I received many gifts in this call with this friend.

Glen told me a story of working recently in Australia. He was preparing for the work, which included some planning with 10 people. Glen has a coach that challenged him to not show up as a pleaser. Gifted pleaser, but none the less pleaser. Rather, to honor the integrity of spirit.

I so relate to this story. I have a pleaser that feels I must know much, or move a meeting along, or be fast and efficient, or be profound even at times. I recognize in me that as I am doing so, I’m not actually doing the work that I think I need to do. And for that matter, the work that people are asking me to do, which is more rooted in this integrity of spirit. It is the difference between scripting and letting spirit speak it through me, using whatever tools, resources, stories, and relationships I may have.

Together, Glen and I found an alternative description for our work. To find the soul of the work. I’m quite liking how this sounds. Whether working in community, in corporation, in family, in relationship, or in self, how would it be to find the soul of the work? This is such a strong issue for me. I have worked in so many contexts where I felt like I didn’t have the ability to help find the soul, the center. Or I didn’t have the courage. Or the confidence. I know how lousy that feels. How time-filling. How hollow. And how I have felt shame that I haven’t been able to hold myself in it or hold others in it. I also sense that some, maybe many would reject such framing. And some might just come fully awake.

Glen shared a bit more. With this kind of clarity, the question he was asking is how he would find people to work with. I relate to this again. I fear a rejection for not being concrete enough. I can think of little now that is more concrete and more effective than finding and helping people to see the sould of the work. We laughed together. Our conversation was infact a manifestation of the very question we were asking. Immediately in front of us is each other.

Thank you Glen, for an invitation to imagine 2009 in a very inspiring way.

Yesterday Chris Corrigan and I, and previously with Teresa Posakony, were working through a proposal for what to do with the net income remaining from a project. This builds on another conversation on finances, here, held several months ago with other colleagues.

The question that Chris, Teresa, and I were asking was something like: “What is the most inspired way we can think about gifting some of our resources?”

Most of the context of this questions is from open-enrollment Art of Hosting conferences, at which most typically, income is created from participant registration fees only. Typically, there is no backing to assure hosts are paid a set fee. Our gifting has been of four forms:

– ear-marking it for a future event or Art of Hosting, particularly in the same region
– giving it to a particular community, again, particularly in the same region
– scholarship support for people who are in diverse and interesting work that otherwise would not be able to participate
– scholarship for people who are ready to seed / co-create the work in to their local community or region

I like these little insights, each of which can be held as practices / commitments:

– money is for moving energy (Thus, a good question for working with it could be, “Where do we want to move energy too? What might we want to animate? Support? Nurture? Or what energy do we sense needs to be moved?”)
– make decisions of sharing from the same field in which the work was offered. Make it from the same spirit in which we just collaborated / created / worked together. (Thus, a good reminder check, “Is this decision of the same resonance as the field that we just worked in?”)
– let’s talk about it. Just commit to listening together for the wisdom of the group.

All of this said, I love the way that many of us are deliberate in this gifting culture. It’s just a lovely way of working with one another. And it seems to energetically seed wherever it lands with a warm sense of community right from the start.

I was given a book of poems about ten years ago, written by James Kavanaugh. The book is called, “There are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves.” It includes poems that immediately spoke to me then and continue to speak to me now. “My Easy God is Gone” brings out a unique appreciation for me of innocence. “To Begin to Live the Rest of My Life” is another beautiful expression of what can feel like crazy decisions in my life that are actually impossible to not make, as committment to life. The poems and others by him are well worth reading.

I also love the dedication in this book. It reminds me of the dog in my life that make me laugh and feel loved. It reminds me of the ever-burning sense I have that there is much happening in life, at all times. How much I value this inquiry.

“To

A cat named Ralph who makes me laugh and feel loved
And a tired old man who makes me cry and feel helpless.

But especially to those

Who can hear the honking of geese above the sound of traffic
Who can hear the weeping of boys above the sound of the mortars
Who refuse to take life as it is — because it wasn’t always.”

Yesterday Chris Corrigan and I, and previously with Teresa Posakony, were working through a proposal for what to do with the net income remaining from a project. This builds on another conversation on finances here, held several months ago with other colleagues.

The question that Chris, Teresa, and I were asking was something like: “What is the most inspired way we can think about gifting some of our resources?”

Most of the context of this questions is from open-enrollment Art of Hosting conferences, at which most typically, income is created from participant registration fees only. Typically, there is no backing to assure hosts are paid a set fee. Our gifting has been of four forms:

– ear-marking it for a future event or Art of Hosting, particularly in the same region

– giving it to a particular community, again, particularly in the same region

– scholarship support for people who are in diverse and interesting work that otherwise would not be able to participate

– scholarship for people who are ready to seed / co-create the work in to their local community or region

I like these little insights, each of which can be held as practices / commitments:

– money is for moving energy (Thus, a good question for working with it could be, “Where do we want to move energy too? What might we want to animate? Support? Nurture? Or what energy do we sense needs to be moved?”)

– make decisions of sharing from the same field in which the work was offered. Make it from the same spirit in which we just collaborated / created / worked together. (Thus, a good reminder check, “Is this decision of the same resonance as the field that we just worked in?”)

– let’s talk about it. Just commit to listening together for the wisdom of the group.

All of this said, I love the way that many of us are deliberate in this gifting culture. It’s just a lovely way of working with one another. And it seems to energetically seed wherever it lands with a warm sense of community right from the start.