General Learning • Tenneson Woolf

February 15, 2017

Keeping Still

Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet and diplomat of the 20th century. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He wrote of many topics in his lifetime. I’ve learned, often in green ink, as a symbol of desire and hope.

I like this, below, on stillness because it is one of the things I most seek. Stillness, whether in self, with others, or as society, is largely overlooked in a culture that has grown to revere movement and action in such a way that the movement and action of stillness, the subtle, the delicately nuanced, has become, sadly, invisible.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

February 14, 2017

Time and Time Again

I woke up this morning not wanting to look at my clock. Not wanting to jump into my 6:00 routine. Not wanting to jump into the myriad of thoughts that so quickly accompany the beginning of a busy day. I showered. I sad quietly. Lights off. I paid attention to the daylight arriving rather than my ever-ready iPhone. I drummed a bit. Sat some more. Fed my dog. And then wrote these words.

Time and Time Again

Time and time again
I wish I could be outside of time.
I forget how refreshing it is
to be free of cramming
accomplishment
or obligation
or muting an insecurity
into five minute increments.

It’s impressive to do so, I suppose.
It’s also oppressive.
When did this moving train that is time
become runaway?
Oh yah, I guess I have a little to do with that.

Sometimes, some times,
I give myself permission
to be outside of time.
I know it’s a perceptual trick
but it has tremendous value
and feels really cool.
I don’t look at the clocks.
I don’t look at my phone.

When I do this,
outside of time,
I remember, only then,
how much I needed it,
and wonder, again,
how could I ever have forgotten this.
Like quiet, spring sun
warming and relaxing every cell in my face.

I crave challenging myself
into not just five minutes of this
and not just a morning,
but a day, or a week —
to return to what I know inside of me as
a different clock (the paradigm is pervasive isn’t it)
and rhythm.

To be fair, my tether to being outside of time,
often, is to set an alarm.
I have a commitment at 9:00.
Setting an alarm for 8:45 is important.
Yet it is very different — this one time alarm,
and me not tracking when it will ring —
than checking my watch, phone,
my computer or microwave oven
to reassure me of not misusing time.

I am for being on time.
Definitely.
Good system.

I am not for having the timeless part of me
enslaved and confined.
I am not for this in any of us.
Chronos, yes respect it.
Kairos, equally so.
Practice it.
And periodically insist upon it.

I don’t want my life, our lives, to become
a production line in which
the parts keep coming incessantly
and I fear them overflowing onto the floor
if I turn away for even a moment
to feel the sun.

Time and time again
I yearn to be timeless.
To take off my clothes and adornments,
that dress up the cultural pattern
of speed and efficiency.
I yearn to return to a more naked state of being
the watch put aside
the calendar tucked away
the forethought and planning suspended
to instead, hear the sparrow’s chirp
outside my window
that goes largely unheard because
I’m so committed to time.

Time and time again,
I hunger to remember timeless.
It too, is who I am,
and who we are.

February 13, 2017

Human to Human

It was almost two years ago that I renamed this blog. It went from “Blog” to “Human to Human.” The content that I’ve always shared is connected to participative leadership. That’s the field that I work in. Facilitation and meeting design, strategic imagining from a participative leadership framework. The short version of that is about being smarter together. Or more centered together. Or more clear together. Or more imaginative together. The “together” part is consistent. It comes from my years learning with and from Margaret Wheatley — “Who we are together is different and more that who we are alone.”

I began publishing pretty much daily, Monday through Thursday (compared to the sporadic weekly I’d been doing). My friend Charles LaFond inspired my writing a lot then. He’s a priest with the Episcopal Church. He’s outstanding at telling a story. And from the story, really nailing the main point. He is as thoughtful a human being as there is. Best guess is that I’ve posted about 350 pieces since then. Some on projects. Some on ideas I’ve developed with colleagues. Some on family, because I learn a ton in that context. Some with poetry to inspire, or just because. Some on just human wondering. “Human” is a significantly bigger category to me that “Leadership.” And it is just where my interest lays. The subtle and nuanced qualities of being human are deeply relevant to me in the arena that is our “jobs.”

I chose the name Human to Human (H2H) because I’ve wanted to emphasize that leadership is very personal. It’s definitely about knowing stuff. It’s definitely about being able to see a bigger picture. There’s sometimes a blurry line between those that manage and those that lead. The part that has always been more compelling to me has been the deeply human stuff. Being able to reflect on what it’s like to be you, or on the process of projecting inner perception to an external world. Being able to explore more fully the unknowns and uncertainties of what it means to do things together and what that has to do with a society evolving.

Just being better humans. It is the most honest summary statement I can name. Or at least to provide some overarching direction to working together. It’s far from “just being nice” together. It has everything to do with deep listening to self, each other, and to what arises between us. The process of writing, 350 ish times, has been a deeply satisfying practice to clarify voice, thought, and the connection of leadership to good old human being. Thanks for coming along. I’m grateful.

February 9, 2017

Round World Strategy

I so enjoyed one of my colleagues yesterday speaking to “Round World Strategies.” There were eight of us meeting via Zoom (yes, it looked like a Brady Bunch window). It was an important time to clarify essential bits of information for them to present to their board to propose a 9 month learning leadership cohort for United Church of Christ clergy and lay leaders. There’s lots of good details about timing, location, the invitation, the kind of people we are looking for, format, etc. But what we needed was a story. Round world was it.

When we think that the world is flat, it changes our thinking, right. I imagine those living in that time of world view. “Careful not to go to far — you’ll surely fall off of the edge into an abyss.” The perception of edge taught us to be careful about how far we might venture. Can you imagine sailing into a horizon, falling asleep on that boat, not knowing if you would fall over the edge in the middle of the night? Or trekking out onto the flat plains imagining that there was some point of drop off where it all ended. Brave, right. The discovery of a round world changed that. Amazingly so.

My colleague was naming the significance of a difference in a simple narrative that could hold the distinction. For them, it is about how to change church so as not to drop off of an edge into an abyss or decline into irrelevance. It is a world view layer of shift that is needed, and that is needed by those in power and with resources. The eight of us were not dreaming up just another event. Not a place filler. Not more flat world strategies. Not something to do because we all have oodles of time and don’t know what to do with ourselves. This is about changing the way church is done. And the way that people access spirit within, among, and divine. This is about enough intention and focus such that we might just have us looking back in 10 or 20 years to the time when it all shifted.

That layer of shift requires a story. Round world. Fingers crossed that they can invite the board into that story with honesty, simplicity, and spirt. It would be quite a journey together, trepid and courageous friends together.