Tenneson Woolf Poetry • Tenneson Woolf

February 8, 2023February 8, 2023

Living Beautifully

One of the narratives that I most appreciate from Fire & Water, the Rite of Passage program that Quanita Roberson and I created, is the narrative that invites wisdom and soulfulness. I appreciate it because it lifts up a fruitful way of being. Because it points to a reality of the human condition — that we are more than the narrowed stories and distortions of contemporary pattern. That we are meant to open our hearts and to welcome life and love to live with and through us.

This book above by Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully With Uncertainty and Change, remains one of the most helpful books I have encountered. It helps me to live with more wisdom and more soulfulness. It helps me to do so in many circumstances. It helps me to grow inner courage and practice that I can then invite with others — be that in friendships, in teams, in committees, in formal organizational leadership, and in everyday acts of common participatory leadership.

Pema’s energy (I know her through words and voice; not through meeting her personally) inspire me to find simple clarities that help navigate paths of uncertainty learning and of change learning. It isn’t resolved problems. Rather it is real-time principled continuances and clarity, including these words that I wrote in my journal this morning.

Have courage.
Act on it, even if in the smallest of ways.

Welcome blessing.
That which arises to move from one step to the next.
From one moment of being to another.

Live flow.
There is life that so adores each of us.

What a thing to be alive in these times. Living with what is sometimes the deep and painful churning, and then also with the sweet claiming.

Pema Chodron finishes Living Beautifully with this paragraph:

“May we all learn that pain is not the end of the journey, and neither is delight. We can hold them both — indeed hold it all — at the same time, remembering that everything in these quixotic, unpredictable, unsettled and unsettling, exhilarating and heart-stirring times is a doorway to awakening in a sacred world.”

May it be so. Fruitfully. And beautifully.

January 16, 2023January 16, 2023

Courage & Toleration

It is the 1800s German Philosopher and Poet, Friedrich Nietzsche, that I know to have spoken, “No artist tolerates reality.”

Indeed.

For, it seems to me, artistry challenges the edges or reality. It has the energy to expand, even if momentary. It has the invitation to shift lens through which to see and question reality. It invites the medium of feeling, a knowing through other means not restricted to cognition. Artistry, from someone else or from ourselves, invites wonder, so as to be in a life more fully.

Indeed.

Recently I wrote, in the form of poetry, an artistry that helps me to wonder.

It
takes
courage

to
live
a life

listening
to life
calling
and
inviting.

So here’s to the not forgotten courage, the surrender, and the artistry of living lives as we do, in jobs as we do, in communities as we do, and in moments of listening to artistry nudging our perceptions, and toleration, of what is the real that we give ourselves to.

January 12, 2023January 17, 2023

The Eyes of Trees

It’s a regular walk for me. And a rain-fed stream. And this tree that has me thinking owls. With delight.

I am grateful
for people doing their good in the world.

I am grateful
for people with passion.

I am grateful
for people with play.

I am grateful
for people exploring and leading with their being.

This life, my life, calls
for a wonderful intersectionality
and the eyes of trees that see it all.

January 2, 2023January 17, 2023

A Snowy Start to 2023

It’s a snow-covered morning where I live. I love the grey tones. I love the two-three inches of snow that rests quietly on the tree branches. It’s an inviting adornment to me. I’ll get my boots, winter coat, gloves, hat — and then walk the neighborhood. And welcome the continued snow to quiet me.

It’s a start to 2023 says the chronos voice of calendar. New starts — hard not to welcome the energy of a few of those. And it’s fun to do so. However, “new start” is also the “continuance” of many things — the kairos of it. Things that were helpful on a regular Monday in August, seven years ago, and that remain potent on this first Monday of January 2023.

My learning and living continues to grow a commitment to simple values and practices that bring life. And relationship with people and circumstance. That animate chosen story and way of being to both live the mystery and to love and contribute to the evolution.

A friend asked me (via text) yesterday, “Any resolutions?” I chuckled a bit and spat out a few — “Bake bread. Learn Spanish. Stretch my body for healthy flexibility. Those are all what I’m calling hobbies. Do great work. Grow my own ass. Live a kind and conscious life. Love the shit out of my kids, my friends, myself. Write two more poetry books. Listen, listen, listen. Lead with heart. Be with life. Welcome love.”

Playfulness is important to me. And purposeful. And life-giving. And it’s just me, who I seem to be in this body. I’m learning to love the old soul, young heart, playful spirit in me and in others.

And then there is the poetic that is important to me. That centers me in my nervous system, listening with the most aware heart I can, occasionally putting it to words.

Be patient.
Welcome life to flow.
With me; with others.
Commit to joy.
In me; in others.
Celebrate.

A snowy start is an invitation to welcome beauty being and beauty arising. Yeah, I’ll take that as a start and as a continuance, of life that I love.