Author: Tenneson Woolf

A big thanks to James Crews, Vermont based poet, writer and teacher. I so appreciate his description to open and hold the doors together. From simple things, such reaching and fulfilling things. Another, “Start Here” piece of wisdom.

Holding the Door

If you haven’t held the door open
for someone lately, try it today
at the dentist’s office, the bank,
or the gas station where some impulse
pulls your gaze upward to meet
the eyes of a stranger with a smile.

The small fire of that single gesture
will stay kindled in you for hours,
and soon you’ll be finding other doors
inside yourself, admitting the pleasure 
of sending a letter to a friend, creamy 
white envelope like an invitation, 
raising the hand of the little red flag
on the mailbox. Or pausing to hear
the mating calls of two barred owls
hooting to each other before dusk
in a neighbor’s yard while you stand 
on a gravel road sinking in the mud 
of early spring.

Suddenly, you notice 
doors everywhere in need of opening, 
and you know this is your new job, 
welcoming whomever, whatever
passes through.

A Tale of Two Cities
1859
Charles Dickens

It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,

it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,

it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,

it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us,
we had nothing before us…

It all goes together, doesn’t it. Then, in the mid 1800s when Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities. Now, in all that swirls with soft delight, and with all that spears with sharp edge. And likely in every era, if given permission and invitation to see it all.

These days, as I encounter such reality, I recognize I’m trying to cultivate a few qualities and orientations that help bring relationship to such bests that go with such worsts. And then practice too, to create more life-giving ways to be in all of it. I’m leaning into these three things with some vigor.

1. Discipline — It takes discipline to stay in the wholeness of such things. It takes discipline to not get sucked in to one side or the other of such polarity, of such denial. It takes discipline to cut through others in their polarities. It takes discipline to both see at 30,000 feet and to act on the ground.
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2. Maturity — Maturity is in the discipline. Discipline is in the maturity. Kids get to see narrowly. Kids get to default to black and white description. Adolescents don’t get to, but they still do. It takes mature courage and mature community to evolve toward more awareness and more honest questions together.
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3. Playfulness — Yes, this too. There is a certain playfulness, that keeps our nervous systems in cooperation. Playfulness within the absurdity. Playfulness within the seriousness. Playfulness as joy. Playfulness as commitment. Playfulness as invitation. Playfulness that can live in the worst and in the best.

I’m so glad that many of us are navigating such polarity. And finding wellness in what lives between and around the poles. It’s our job, perhaps our joy, to offer such honesty to what is hope, to what is despair, to what is the big picture, to what is in front of us right now. To such tales of the two (and more) cities within each of us.

On we go.

I loved the conversation I had recently with an aspiring musician and DJ. First, I love it that artistry lives in that conversation. Expression of art. Creation of art. Offering of art. Invitation of art. I relate to artistry in the way I work and in the way I live. It’s more, what…, life-giving to claim a meta story of joy / creation than it is to endure a meta story of burden / obligation. Even though both exist and inform. And, ok, yup — I do believe the most burdensome of tasks have art in them.

Part of the conversation was this clarifying advice — “you are a vibration.” Your being is a vibration. Your gifts are a vibration. Vibrations are felt with resonance. And they live in a world beyond the 3D, perhaps the 7D. Vibration is understood beyond the 3D world. Yet it is expressed in the 3D world.

Part of the conversation was identifying 3D practices. Some simple todos to get started. Some things to interrupt. Not end games on either of these. Rather, interruptions of things that aren’t in sync with that core vibration. And commitments of rigor to things that are of that core vibration.

In a world that so often demands and affirms productivity and strategy — the 3D — it can become so difficult to see and legitimize what makes perfect sense in the multi-D-beyond-3 world. Vibrations make perfect sense there. They give context to the journey, sense-making to the water.

Walt Whitman said it in a way that I love, in Song of the Open Road,
“You road I enter upon and look around,
I believe you are not all that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.”

There is much unseen. What if the unseen weren’t so strange? What if the unseens were waiting patiently for us to claim them? What if dancing with the unseens weren’t so difficult? What if the vibrational unseen had this way of cohering what we do in the day to day?

There is an artistry to living as humans together. Artistry of creation. Of expression. Of contribution. Each vibrationally potent.

We humans, we are vibrations.

I dig this book. For the title, Wanderful. Thx Nadia for steering me to it. And yes, for the spirit and words that invite a simple yet purposeful wonder.

I dig a question in this book, “How can we be purposely purposeless in a world where productivity rules?”

The author, David Pearl, goes on to ask, “Why are we so obsessed with straight lines when Nature teaches us to wiggle?”

“What’s exciting about being lost and how is that different from feeling lost?”

And more.

Oh, to wander — what sweet invitation. Yes, for the pleasing quality of the moment. Some freedom from so much hard-wired productivity.

And yes, yes, to come into more alignment, perhaps attunement, with life flowing. With intelligence flowing. With intuition flowering. With joy joying.

Flowing, flowering, joying. These are purposeful things. That go along with productive things. Let’s not forget, nor delude ourselves, to think such wandering practice isn’t utterly productive.