Category: Tenneson Woolf Poetry

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.