#quiet • Tenneson Woolf

I’ve been with great people the last ten days. In very powerful connection and learning. In a way that has been very life-giving, affirming, satisfying, and generative. I feel like my brain and heart have been finely enhanced to be able to see and feel more. It’s an open and awed feeling, a bit, perhaps, like realizing the library just doubled in size (and I have easy ability to read and access all of the extra).

I continue to learn that that’s what deliberate circle practice and circled way of being does. It enhances and amplifies us. I’m glad for that.

Today, however, points me to another fulfillment that also is quite affirming, satisfying, and generative. Today points me to a more introverted and quiet space. Or, to more internal, rather than the external. I continue to learn that there is great power and necessity to return to the still and quiet.

This morning, I wrote these words:

Still and Quiet

Though I appreciate
a certain high
that comes from juggling much,
or being efficient,
or accomplishment,
with many people,

I also need,
in well-placed moments,
and stretches,
to be with self,
still and quiet.

Yup, I suppose it is true that the moment one seeks emptiness, one misses it. I suppose it is true that it isn’t to be sought. Rather, emptiness is to be encountered, like this layered waterfall (near Sundance, UT from a recent hike) revealed after turn in the hiking path, visual caught up with sounds that began several trail bends before.

And then, perhaps, also, this emptiness is a practice, to cultivate. There is a todo in it. Emptiness a feeling to lead with, that life itself celebrates and can arrive within. What if…, nothing were known? What if there were only the space of listening life into being so as to be with it for a moment? What if that were what we cultivated more of?

This kind of emptiness, encountered or cultivated or both, is deep hunger in me. And deep hunch. And has everything to do with self. And team. And community.

Yesterday, before boarding a plane, I typed with thumbs an essence of this for me. It’s a desire. A freedom that changes freedom. For me. Others might have a different version or a different need to pursue that aligns with their gifts.

Yet this emptiness, is one that is in me, that centers it all.

There is nothing, but emptiness.
I seek this.

In that is found
flow with life itself.

In that is
everything.

The rest
are just ways
to draw us near.

Tag: #quiet

Still and Quiet

Emptiness — A Freedom That Changes Freedom