General Learning • Tenneson Woolf

October 4, 2016

Ode to Curiosity

It has long been a mantra that I’ve carried with me — be present, be curious. Four words to reground me in my efforts — work, community, family, relationships. And who doesn’t need a bit of regrounding in the ultra-stimulated world that many of us know so well. ” Four words that act like a road-map for being a good human being.

This Nic Askew film that features Seth Godin is a well-spent four minutes and seventeen seconds. Seth Godin is a popular American author, writing often about the post industrial revolution. I really love this endorsement of curiosity — the invocation to explore, ask questions, wonder, and wander.

Thanks Christina Baldwin for sharing this with me.

Enjoy.

October 3, 2016

Rise Up Rooted Like Trees

What I like in this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, the beloved Bohemian-Austrian poet of the late 1800s and early 1900s, is the invocation to trust a deep center, one that is already there. I don’t read it as advice to not reach beyond, to dream, or to wonder. It’s just a solid reminder to cultivate and know what lays within and beneath, to give real attention to the descent (in a society that often gives sole preference to the ascent).

Thanks to friend and colleague Sara Rosenau for sharing this with me recently.
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Rise Up Rooted Like Trees

How surely gravity’s law,

strong as an ocean current,

takes hold of even the smallest thing

and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing—

each stone, blossom, child—

is held in place.

Only we, in our arrogance,

push out beyond what we each belong to

for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered

to earth’s intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again

to learn from the things,

because they are in God’s heart;

they have never left [God].

This is what the things can teach us:

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before he can fly.

September 29, 2016

Concessions Aren’t As Glorious As Victories

Shimon Peres died this week. He was 93. He was an Israeli statesman, having served twice as prime minister, and a plethora of other influential positions.

One of the news broadcasts that I saw announcing his death was from ten years ago, an interview with CBC News. It was mostly accolades and appreciations. I imagine the man’s life was complex, a mix of being revered and reviled that comes naturally with such position.

In the interview Peres said something that immediately caught my attention. He spoke it slowly, genuinely. “Concessions are not so glorious as victories. But without compromise, you can’t have peace.” I know, good, right. And I know, really spoken in the context of Palestinian / Israeli peace negotiations.

But, so much of contemporary society continues to fixate on victory. Winning. Getting one’s way. Dominating. Controlling. The deeper shadow includes bullying. In the general psyche, it’s not so sexy to not get your way. Yes, American presidential politics comes to mind — lots of bad behavior from what I would call unchecked ego and systemic delusion. But I see this in many places (including, at times, in myself). In teams. In project leadership. In complex situations that begin to run amuck. In community organizations.

Sometimes, to state the obvious, winning is losing. Sometimes it takes hearing it, eulogized in a way, from a recently passed elder states person to recognize how much it is in play in all of us.

September 28, 2016

Bigger Group; More Reliance on Spirit

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I like a lot of the things about this photo, taken last week at the start of the United Church of Christ, Central Pacific Conference (CPC) Annual Meeting that I got to cohost. I like its cleanness — ready for people that would soon start arriving. I like its center, arranged by colleague and friend Kelly Ryan — multi-layered with cloth, bowls, and candles. I like the rim that is a double circle — this one was arranged for 140 people. Yes, it impacted people. When you arrive used to a podium, round dinner tables for eight, and a stack of papers, a clean circle like this makes you rethink what is about to happen.

One of the dynamics that I like to challenge in participative leadership is how to work with large groups. Some hold a few premises underneath — that you can’t do meaningful participative leadership with large groups. The group is too big. It’s too complicated to have so many small tables. You can’t harvest with such a large group. There are too many voices to hear. These are all good, honest concerns. However, I find myself unwilling to accept the premises. I’m too stubborn probably. I’d like to think stubbornly imaginative, enough to explore other ways. And my direct experience in working with large groups (up to 1,500 — but more commonly with 150-200) points to the opposite.

What I’ve learned, and felt reconfirmed last week with CPC, is that in large groups there is more dependence on spirit — feeling what is happening, rather than literal observation of everything. There is more dependence on sensing (even welcoming) the invisible among people than on the capturing of every word. Here’s the kicker by the way — this is true in all groups; it’s just more obvious in larger groups.

The larger the group means more reliance on feeling the room. With a faith community, it can be easier to do this. They are typically quite accustomed to welcoming the invisible in and among us. But the point, in and out of faith communities, is that, as leaders, we are restoring an ability to see and feel the whole of what is happening in the group. Engaging together. Improving our skill so notice what is emerging. It means that when you have a good partner conversation, though you don’t know what is said in all the other partner conversations, you can imagine that they had a similar quality to what you just had with your partner.

Possible to work with big groups, intimately, and participatively? Absolutely — and because of people like those at the CPC Annual Meeting last week in Pendleton, OR, I don’t even need to say it stubbornly.