#sensemaking • Tenneson Woolf

July 15, 2019

Alpine Loop Hike

Yesterday I drove with a friend up Provo Canyon, past Sundance, along the Alpine Loop. It’s a road that is only open in summer. It twists and turns. It is mean to be enjoyed slowly, 10 mph.

At the peek, near 8,000 feet. We left car behind to hike. Through Aspen forests, to meadows. All of it back-dropped by Wasatch Mountains that still have patches of significant snow, though the daytime temperatures now press 100 degrees fahrenheit.

Days like this change me. They change how I orient to all of it.

In Front of Me

What is in front of me,
holds enough,
to make sense,
of it all.

Yesterday I hiked with a friend.

July 9, 2019

Landslide

Rock icon Stevie Nicks of the band Fleetwood Mac wrote this song, Landslide, in 1975. I was 13. A boy in junior high school. I remember the song, liking the sound of it. I remember the band. I remember the album cover.

As it is with many of us aging, the music of our younger days takes on added meaning later in life. Sometimes as comfort. Sometimes as, “Oh, now I get it.” Sometimes as just plain fun.

Landslide is one of those songs for me. Now I listen to the digital music downloaded to my phone.

I love the lines, “Can the child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through he changin’ ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life. Mmm, I don’t know.”

Whatever the changes any of us face, there is often association to wonder of our individual and collective capability. And the becoming aware of how the moments of our stories, our lives, weave to broader arc.

It’s human to reflect. And to make sense. And to change. With and without others.

Glad for this bit of music now making more meaning.

Landslide.

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
‘Til the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
Mmm, I don’t know.

Oh, I don’t know.

Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m gettin’ older, too

Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m gettin’ older, too
I’m gettin’ older, too.

Ah, take my love, take it down
Oh, climb a mountain and turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down
And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down
Oh, the landslide will bring it down

May 23, 2019

People Who Ponder

I’m grateful for this photo taken by Betsy Sobiech at QT Cincinnati. I didn’t know she was taking it. It was last weekend, which feels like eons ago now. That’s what missing fantastic quality does. That’s me on the left. That’s Chris Smyth on the right. What’s funny is that as we walked, slowly, Chris commented about the contemplative posture. We laughed in that moment.

I think it really matters these days to have times of ponder. And people to ponder with. I’m glad for this with good humans. I’m uniquely glad for this with men. It is, simply, one of the things we lost when we lost initiatory practices. I’m grateful to be in a body of work that holds contemplativeness as central. That’s sense making. That’s witnessing. That’s sharing story. That’s leaning into rather than away from mystery. That’s leaning into rather than way from grief. All of that is code for something I think we humans are naturally oriented to do — to seek and contribute to an energetic of connection and learning. So that we can do a pile of good in our varied vocations and walks of life.

Quanita Roberson and I will host / do more of this in the near future in a 16 month learning cohort model. Fire and Water: A Leadership Journey and Rite of Passage begins virtually in August and face-to-face in October (registration remains open). It’s where we will, I hope, further instill in each other the deep ponder in community that leads to creating courage to face the troubles of our times. In the inner, and outer. In the now, and the long arc. In the individual, and the communal.

Yes, please join us. For the ponder. For the eons.