#presence • Tenneson Woolf

August 28, 2018

This Place

I did something on a whim this morning. Didn’t follow the routine, good as it generally is — journal, meditate / breath, blog, exercise, shower, breakfast snack, start Pandora station Classical for Study, work.

I went for a walk. Down Lakeview Road (once upon a time before development the lake was a bit more viewable). Past the horse pastures in which each year a couple of new ones come along. To Pheasant Brook Park. The moon was still up and near full. The mountains were purplish in their wakened morning hue.

I brought my journal with me. In the park, I sat on a bench to breath, casually. A bit more deeply, as the mountains and something about being outside in the early morning, does in fact, inspire. And on that bench, I wrote two of last night’s dreams that I could catch.

My friend Ann Pelo reminds me in her book, The Goodness of Rain: Developing an Ecological Identity in Young Children, that it is important to walk the land. That’s Chapter 2, though it isn’t numbered. Ann is smart enough to challenge linearity. And, it’s in that chapter that Ann quotes Gary Snyder, American Pulitzer Winning Poet, Environmental Activist —

“Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul.”

My walking today was meditation. A different kind. Needed. Not sitting on my chair. Not with candle. My stillness was in movement. My light was the fading full moon and rising sun over Utah’s Wasatch Mountains.

I think I need some shake up. I don’t think I’m alone in this. Even from good habits that have become a bit stale and rigid. Practice is one thing, and the discipline it takes to establish practice as more that “a few times and then forget about it.” To get back to another kind of source. It’s likely “out there.” It’s likely also “in here.” My best teachers have always pointed me back to self and to simplicity.

I’m guessing that many of my posts in the next 30 days will simply be about place. Noticings of what is in front of me (isn’t this core for so many of us as needed skill and as hungered-for experience), with perhaps a bit of reflection, or perhaps, simply images.

This place.

June 5, 2018

Just Show Up

A friend reminds me that the job for many of us is to get ourselves into the room. Show up. Be part of the story. Or create the part of the story that is undeniably compelling and attractive.

It’s true in families. It’s true meetings. It’s true in working with teams. It’s true for taking the big journey of community together.

It’s a practice. We’re not always at our best. It’s a direction to move towards.

The above picture is the vase of flowers we are using for our center at The Art of Hosting that starts today. Beautiful, right.

I don’t know if these flowers have a choice to do anything other than show up, and be in the room.

Beauty always guides. Presence too.

February 28, 2018

Right Where You Are

I have learned that it’s often easier to look externally, with obsessive thoroughness, for what resides surprisingly internally.

It’s habit. It’s societal pattern. It’s seduction.

I’m talking about the myriad of “if only” statements that most of us make. They have a truthiness to them, yet are primarily distraction and distortion from an ever-giving inner world.

If only I could get this project finished.
If only I could move to that other apartment.
If only I had better people to work with.
If only they understood.

These are all satisfying. But often, they overlook unaddressed internal angst, that continues to generate seduction of the external, even when some of them are fulfilled. Around the corner is another corner — always.

I love how American Poet Mary Oliver writes of paying attention to where you are. Of how much is available in the internal focus. Just because. Or because of what it improves in the expression and accomplishment of the external.

I Have Decided

I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains,
somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully
in the cold and the silence.

It’s said that in such a place
certain revelations may be discovered.
That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt,
if not exactly understood.
Slowly, no doubt.
I’m not talking about a vacation.

Of course at the same time
I mean to stay exactly where I am.

Are you following me?

This passage reminds me of a premise that I actually believe, but sometimes lose track of.

In the anything is the everything.
In this moment, in this now, in these circumstances —
there is access to everything,
or perhaps the everything needed that can carry to the next moment.

Right where I am.

February 14, 2018

Patterning Encounter — Three Simple Rounds

In yesterday’s The Circle Way Online Class with Amanda Fenton, one of the contexts I shared with participants was when they went into small groups. They would have 25 minutes in groups of four or five. One person would host. One person would guardian. There were three “rounds” that we encouraged.

Check-in (How is it that you are arriving to this small group circle now?)
Main Question (Tell a story of when you have experienced The Circle Way components to be helpful — or challenging when missing.)
Check-out (What was one thing you appreciated from your small circle?)

These three steps are a deeply engrained pattern for those of us that practice circle. With of course, a few assumptions tucked beneath them. Yesterday we highlighted “center” — the third space in which we contribute our thinking, feeling, and wondering. It is from willingness to attend to center that emergence becomes more visible and flavored. Yesterday we also highlighted “talking piece” — the act of creating more deliberate and uninterrupted sharing and listening.

I spoke these three rounds as engrained and entrained, just as it is for some of us with our morning habits — brush teeth, shower, cup of coffee. I also spoke what I see as underlaying purpose of each, that contributes to animating awareness and connection through circle.

Check-in invokes presence. It is the shift from social space to the deliberate attending in circle. Or to shift even from one form of circle to another. In our class it was from the group of 14 to the groups of four or five. Even a “mini check-in” matters. It’s like re-stabilizing our psyches to a new configuration of humans gathered. Each configuration benefits from a weave to animate the wholeness of that particular group. Check-in is what helps us get to that.

Main Question is animated by story. Circle is not presentation. Nor is it one person at the front of the room. Nor is it dumping data. Many things can be shared, including core facts and strong opinions. But circle uniquely invites us to a different quality of interaction together. I’ve learned this is often because of inviting people to be in the spirit of sharing story that shows a bit of how they relate to the main question. Sharing experience, even a tiny bit, that relates to the main question. Sharing story is itself a learning strategy. And yes, story creates delight — even the challenging ones.

Check-out invokes witnessing. It creates just a bit of deliberateness to notice what just happened. It’s difference than just racing away. It’s like being deliberate to tidy the dishes before rushing out of the house. Check-out tends to more of the energy and more of the experience in the group. It’s powerful and important to hear an individual express what they experienced, sometimes even in just a word. It’s powerful and important to notice how that is shared, or unique, in the group. We so often live in contexts that skip over the witnessing and even momentary sense-making together. Check-out is what helps us benefit from these qualities together.

Patterns. Aren’t we all learning these. To make conscious or change the unconscious ones. To claim and give light structure to the new ones.

Patterns of encountering. Well, isn’t this at the heart of it all. Daring to lean into the possibility of the whole and what is uniquely created in the middle. Daring to create added life and awakeness in who we are and what we try to do or be together.