Category: Tenneson Woolf Poetry

That’s the Oquirrh Mountain Range, as seen last weekend from my location in Salt Lake City. That’s Farnsworth Peak on the right, before the range drops off to The Great Salt Lake. That’s a lot of blue sky on a February morning in Utah.

For many years now I’ve been learning more deeply about such concepts as wander. And wonder. I’ve been learning more deeply about the nonlinear. And the unplanned. I’ve been learning about surprise. And delight. I’ve been learning about vibrant life available in the moment. The everything in the anything.

Yup. Pause. Big smile.

In my work with groups. I tend to point them to some of these capacities. I’m so often advocating and inviting a little more relationship with the mystery of it all. For the way that it opens new insights that change what we do and how we do it together.

Recently, such delights found way to a poem. At one level, it’s me truth-telling and claiming that part of myself that is drifter. It’s me coming to peace with that. And another level, it’s pronouncement or the very rounded life.

Enjoy.

For Drifters

I will always be a drifter.

I’ll start things, many things.
I’ll finish some things, but won’t finish many.

I’ll get excited.
Yet sometimes, my excitement will wane, seemingly inexplicably.

I’ll be brilliant.
Yet sometimes, I may seem a bit lost, or even insecure.

Know that it is my drifting
that so often brings me to my steadiness.

Though drifting isn’t for everybody,
I want to surrender regularly to it’s beauty.

I will alway be a drifter.

I love seeing these geese. On a recent walk. I love the stillness. I love the stillness it invites.

I’ve been thinking lately about how most people seek to be OK. Be that a physical safety. Or a spiritual imagination. Or anything that lives between. Be that within. Or with others. Or with life flowing.

Joy is such an important clue in all of that. I’m glad to be learning this. With others. In stillness.

So, a few words this morning. Reminders to myself.

Prioritize Joy.

It is most helpful guidance,
learned with those I love,
to love the joy that already is.

It is practice.

It is gateway
to so much more
that enlivens.

Prioritize Joy.

A bow.

Corner of a picture of my grandparents taken 40 years ago. A candle in a glass jar, one third of its 72 hours burned. Stones collected from a 2018 road trip with a best buddy. A potted houseplant vine. Post-it notes of names of people from a recent gathering. It’s all a kind of altar in my office. The simple of it is that I’m a person that values physical and symbolic artifacts.

I’ve been asking people lately, near and dear, and often — What is the simple story here, now? It’s a form of the question, “What is happening?” It’s a form of the question, “What matters now?”

I love the responses. There’s a little extra permission to get to the values. To get centered. To get simple. In the simple story, there is room created for the more nuanced stories that are still working themselves out.

It’s in all of that spirit that I wrote these guiding words this morning. Thinking of grandparents, stones, and people I admire.

Live a good day.
Live a good hour.
Live a good moment.

Opened
in heart.

Going well
within 
and with others.

For inspiration.