Periodic learnings with interesting people. Periodic writings from Tenneson Woolf’s Human to Human Blog. Intimate conversations with self and other. Starting anywhere and following it everywhere.
I love feeling a big topic (Relational Leadership) and translating it to a few questions that can be used in participative process to create some connection and wisdom. The three questions I'm using a lot are: 1)What do you care about? 2) What might you uniquely be seeing? 3) How are you doing? (12 minutes)
Been thinking a bunch about this one. The subtle ways that too much of contemporary life is skewed to either / or, right / wrong, this / that. The binary is embedded in way too much, acting as a vicegrip on our brains and hearts. It's an age old issue, perhaps amplified by the digital revolution. I believe our times call for us to grow much more ability to embrace the complexity, the wholeness, the each of us in all of us. (16 minutes)
From some early morning reflection, stillness, and musing I found an updated guidance system. Eight principles or orientations. You could call them practices. From commitments to simplicity, to being in nature. From tending to physical body to fierce commitment to the inner work. From honesty with pain and challenge to the alchemical path that is joy. From giving and receiving gifts to giving and receiving grace. Perhaps these might you reclaim or add to the simplicity in your own guidance systems. (18 minutes)
One of the skills I most rely on as a facilitator, and as the human being that I am, is being able to ask good questions. I've learned a few goto reliances that connect people to an ecosystem of curiosity -- like the web that connects morning dew in the photo I took recently. Some of the reliance is attitude that infuses simple questions with added invitation. Some of it is the wording that makes it accessible to most everyone. All of it points to learning so as to be in connection and discovery with self, with teams, with circumstance. (12 minutes)
I love the connection with Kate. She thinks so well on her feet. She connects insights. She knows stuff. She's not afraid to lean to the not knowing. I start with a simple question -- What has your attention these days? We follow that through writing, parenting, CoVid, humaning, and a few other topics. I love her reference to "returning to something not remembered." Enjoy.
I loved the recent conversation I had with friend Bob Stilger, that then inspired my blog post of the same name, From Normal to Now. It's not "getting back to normal" that feels helpful or honest in these CoVid times. It's more learning to be in the "now" and seriously revising our psyche's relationship with "normal." (Program Note -- I mistakenly referenced Japan's triple disaster as 2013. It was 2011.)
For a while during this CoVid pandemic, I found myself oddly resisting, yet also turning toward, the idea of catastrophe. In the resistance, I guessed that there was something fruitful to give myself permission to explore. There is potency in going toward that which we fear or resist, right. Well, these 16 minutes are a version of that. It's six things that I feel I'm learning when I let myself into "end of the world" thinking.
Casey is one of my favorite people in the world. His energy and his honesty are very inviting. I met him through the United Church of Christ Next Generation Leadership Initiative, at which I've been faculty now for three years. Casey brings insight, wonder, compassion and so many other delicious slivers of aliveness in making space for people.
I’m a group process person, that comes from an orientation of living systems, and that has particular interest in how the humanity of things plays out in a world in which everything is connected to everything. I’ve been afraid with CoVid. Yup. Worried. Yup. Trying to offer clarity to those near me. Yup. Here’s some of that clarity, a few headlines, from my systems brain and heart as I try to follow things (9 minutes).
I love talking / listening with my friend and colleague Quanita (13 minutes). She brings insightful reflection and wonder to her becoming -- the deep, fun, and easy; the relationship with mentors and elders; the relationship that she sees with divine order. Enjoy.
