I’m learning. Just right. An important life story.
It’s an operating system. Personalized indeed. But not just for me.
It’s this.
I have to move with yes energy.
Yes to self.
Yes to circumstance.
Yes to life flowing.
Yes to learning of hard things.
Yes to acting, taking steps in the inherent mess, but also in the inherent beauty.
This is different than all the no energies.
Including many of my favorites.
This is different than moving with fear or to prevent fear.
This is different that moving with failure or to prevent failure.
At the core,
trusted belly and trusted people in my life
have been guiding.
Trust life to flow.
And flow with it.
Surprise and magic
then have a way of showing up and growing.
And laughing. And delighting.
Yes, learning.
A story to guide most of the other stories.
A story to enjoy and carry and live everywhere.
Sweetness of Companioning
It’s true that companioning has been top of my list of profound experience over the last year and a half. So much learned, of love, in new form. So much celebrated, of together, in both simple and profound ways. This moving of the heart — what delightful surrender. This weekend, cheese fondue. And kayak paddle. Cheers D.
Yup, so, just sayin’. Companioning matters on many layers. This weekend highlighted a particular kind that I’m glad to carry into this week.
This companioning,
what sweetness.
This going together,
what opening.
This creating together,
what wonder.
This life flowing,
what joy.
Hearing Stories, Hearing Life
My 19 year-old son recently gave me this book, “Dad, I Want to Hear Your Story.” It’s a guided journal. With questions about memories. Family. Important events. Struggles.
I’ve enjoying responding to these questions. Remembering a few things. Realizing there is much that I don’t remember also. I notice I keep the book close — can do a few pages here and there.
I loved the way my son gave it to me, unsure that I was getting the point. “And then give it back to me.” I assured him I would. And told him how much I love the idea.
There’s a principle that I often use in my group facilitations — I learned it from Christina Baldwin. “The shortest distance between two people is a story.”
We humans, we are meant to both share and listen to stories. It’s how we learn. Prompts that point us to that — in groups and in families, among friends and even a few foe — yah, that can do such good things.
Hosting Connection and Learning
What a treat to host a group last Friday and Saturday. What a treat to influence their journey and to create nuanced layers of community together.
It was the Annuitant Visitors Program for the United Church of Christ. Mostly retired pastors and their partners. It’s an impressive outreach that has at it’s core, love and community, witness and support, belonging and becoming.
The AVP was meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah this year for what is an every other year in person meeting. It’s my colleague Krista Betz that invited me to create with her, to help grow this gathering from one that delivers information (health plans, philanthropy, insurance needs, etc) to one that does that, AND, discovers meaning and purpose together.
I loved being part of the group. I loved their appreciation for the most simple of formats to connect together. So often this is the case in groups — they are hungry for a bit of purposed spaciousness together.
Cafe was one of those formats, asking questions about what retirees really want and then connecting that to program possibilities. It creates learning. It also creates wonder together. And it does it on behalf of people named — that’s the middle picture above. Yeah!
