Author: Tenneson Woolf

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.

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!

Saturday morning I walked in downtown Salt Lake City. From one hotel where I was staying. To another, where I was working, hosting a particular conference segment for a group. I had a little extra time. So, my pace was more of a stroll.

The above sidewalk art exhibit is what I encountered. “You are here.” I love the pointing to the red bench. If you look closely, the black and white signs each name a polarity or a binary. “Believe / Doubt. Inside / Outside.” I love the collage of it.

And I love the wisdom. Humans live in all of these complex polarities. I find that so often my work in life and my life in work is building consciousness and clarity to use the binary when it’s useful. But also to reject the binary when it is silly and narrow.

We humans — I don’t feel we resolve the polarities. It’s not about reductionism to one team or the other. We learn to appreciate their complexity. And learn to remember that even in all of that, there is a here to be here in.

Yup. Thx Pema Chodron.

“What I have realized through practicing
is that practice isn’t about being the best horse
or the good horse
or the poor horse
or the worst horse.

It’s about finding our own true nature
and speaking from that,
acting from that.

Whatever our quality is,
that’s our wealth and our beauty;
that’s what other people respond to.”