Author: Tenneson Woolf

I am a fan of the simple. I have made this clear many times before.

Simple, however, has nuance. At one level, “simple” is the essence. It is both attractive and important. The energetic heartbeat of a concept. The core purpose held by a group of people. From essence, clarity can cascade into clarity in so many other related places.

Simplicity is not reductionism. Let’s be clear with that. It is not convenience to then be imposed as single solution or absolute layer of meaning.

These days I’m revisiting some of my learnings on complexity over the last twenty years. One of those is the awareness that the history of western science over the last three centuries has been focussed on dissecting. Braking things into parts. Parts into subparts. Subparts into sub-subparts, and so on. It’s rather impressive.

The flawed premise, however, in this singular focus, has been that if we could get to the smallest unit of existence — an atom, a nucleus, a quark — we would then know the important governing principles for the whole, reassembled back together from its parts. At some level this feels true. Particularly for it’s fractal-like orientation. Simple conditions do create complex behavior (think of birds flocking). Yet, there is something seductively incorrect in this also.

Systems, in fact, take on properties of their own, that do not arise from the property of the part or of the individual. They arise from the engagement of the system. These properties have an emergent quality or a spontaneous self-organizing quality. Simplicity may be noticed in isolation. But it is different than the simplicity that comes from “parts” in relationship together.

When I revisit this kind of thinking on complex wholes, I’m reminded of a simple observation I had with my son many years ago, then three, who was of course learning to speak. Language acquisition remains a kind of miracle to me. At that stage of his life, our interaction often included me pointing at something and asking the question, “what is that?” He would respond. I would repeat the question with several different objects. One of those objects was an orange peel. I asked him what is was. “Peel-of-an-orange.” He said it like it was one word, not four words. He responded in a way that showed me he was seeing a kind of whole.

Just as it was for my son learning language, I feel that we as adult humans now are learning to see wholes. Relearning, I suppose. Not just individual chess pieces but the whole chess board, as chess masters do. To see the collective properties that are different from the properties of individual parts. It is a different kind of simple. It takes a different kind of instinct, that contradicts 300 years of habit, yet perhaps is as natural as a three year-old naming something new.

 

I have spent the last three days in the grasp of a flu and cold. Body aches. Chills. Fatigue. Coughing. Raw throat. Runny nose. Watery eyes. You get the picture. I’m glad this doesn’t happen often, but the last three days have been full on.

Today, hopefully, the turning point that I feel this morning will hold through the day. I will be released into relief. Not fully better. Just beyond the thickest and most fatiguing parts.

I learned a lot about the kind of sick person I am over the last three days.  Indulge me. One is that I’m the kind of sick person that appreciates being alone. I like to find a place to lay down, be completely quiet, and lick my wounds so to speak. If I were the USS Enterprise in a Star Trek episode, I just need to slow down to impulse power. Nothing near warp speeds that so regularly define my days.

So as not to sound only like a completely geeked Trekkie, I am coming to really value periods of slowing down. Not just as imposition from a flu, as the last three days have been — that is a different category — but as deliberate strategy for overall well-being. Emptying my mind. Letting go of todo lists. Not filling every available moment of time with something productive. I’m more productive when I’m less productive, if that makes sense.

Much of my thinking lately has been about presence, presence as core competency. With a friend that I’ve started writing with, we have asserted that presence is “the” core competency. In the 24/7 ever-on world in which most of us live and work, tenacity has trumped presence, rendering its need nearly invisible. He or she that gets the most done wins. I’ve long admired the nobility of such tenacity. It has a buzz to it, doest it. I find, these days, that that buzz, unchecked, is a trap. It is a kind of seduction. It can take many of us away from an essential grounding, an essential presence that I believe most humans want to feel, need to feel.

I’m hopeful in this day. Just for a relief. Just for a turning of the corner. And for the picture of presence-making that is more commonly grasping and grounding me.

 

Yesterday a friend sent me this poem. It is by American poet, Mary Oliver. She is one of my favorites, whom I know not in person, but very personally through her words.[br]

On Meditating, Sort Of
Mary Oliver (From Blue Horses)

Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished
if you entertain a certain strict posture.
Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree.
So why should I think I could ever be successful?

Some days I fall asleep, or land in that
even better place — half asleep — where the world,
spring, summer, autumn, winter —
flies through my mind in its
hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent.

So I just lie like that, while distance and time
reveal their true attitudes: they never
heard of me, and never will, or ever need to.

Of course I wake up finally
thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,
made out of earth and water,
my own thoughts, my own fingerprints —
all that glorious, temporary stuff.[br]

The first “detail” of this poem that I immediately related to was the reference to time. “Time has never heard of me, never will, or even need to.” As personal as I, and I believe many others, make it — “time is not on my side,” “time is a master,” “time is unforgiving” — and, as commoditized as I make it — “I don’t have enough of it” — time is simply a human creation. A construct. A handy system of measurement. Not the general quality of seasonal time. Not the kairos version of time beyond time. These are the kinds of time that I want to give my true devotion. Where I would like to change my relationship to time is in the obsession of ticking seconds, compressed minutes, and of cramming in the most possible to a limited window. It’s revered, I know. And I admit, there is a buzz to having some capacity to do it. Yet something feels deeply amiss in this for me.  It is no different that over-stuffing a suitcase. Sometime it is essential, but let’s face it, sometimes good things must stay behind. Just thinking it doesn’t create an expandable zipper compartment.

These days, in this place of life, I want to feel a deliberate relationship with spaciousness. Just because. And, well, because it is such an attractive alternative to the imposition and rather punishing personification of time.

The second detail of this poem is related to this. For me it is about “being” meditation, not “doing” meditation. I know, all being is practice, right. I accept this. After a certain amount of practice, it seems, however, that the practice shifts from “doing something from external guidance to being something from deep internal sourcing.”  “Becoming” might even be more accurate. Becoming meditation. Becoming spaciousness.

I suspect “becoming” has a whole lot to do with entering into a wholeness of belonging. With what? The universe, sort of. The divine, sort of. The vast inner world of compassionate perception, sort of. But these are musings for another day and another tree.

Over the last ten years I’ve been asked many times to define the purpose of The Art of Hosting. Each time I’ve responded, I’ve been aware there are many layers to the question and any response I might offer.

Below are four of those layers, all of which I suspect will be present and poignant when we gather in February for the Art of Hosting, Bowen Island. Our hosting team of Chris Corrigan, Caitlin Frost, Teresa Posakony, Amanda Fenton and myself all bring significant experience and genuine inquiry to contribute to these layers.

1. Better Skills, Better Meetings — This is what many people want. It is as basic to organizational health as regular exercise is to personal health. The Art of Hosting, and the general framing of participative leadership, offers a set of tools, methodologies, perspectives, and practices to help improve meetings. Committee meetings. Staff meetings. Or repeated meetings that are engagement strategies for long term community involvement. Our intent at The Art of Hosting is to help all participants leave as improved practitioners able to host better and more meaningful meetings.
2. Leaning in to Longings — Most of us have hopes and dreams about what our organizations can be. About what we want to be in them. Most of us are not satisfied in simply “getting by” or “enduring.” Most of us want to actively lean in to our longings, individual and collectively, on behalf of a deliberate and desirable future together. I believe because we are daring, and caring, enough to do so. And because we know that real longings, spoken genuinely, and heard with curiosity, reset and recenter the clarity of our endeavors.
3. Create a Narrative Arc to Hold Us Into the Future — For change to happen, or be sustained, most of us need a story. An overarching narrative that reminds us of a purpose. Sometimes it is the story of us as individuals. Sometimes it is the story of our teams. Sometimes it is the national or global story of a world that requires us to evolve with it. It was Christina Baldwin in her book Storycatcher that spoke, “Life hangs on a narrative thread. This thread is a braid of stories that inform us about who we are, and where we come from, and where we might go. The thread is slender but strong: we trust it to hold us and allow us to swing over the edge of the known into the future….”
4. Practice Presence as Core Competency — “Core competency” is language most commonly used in a business setting. Yet its meaning is widely known. An ability that is essential, a skill that is at the crux, a muscular memory central to accomplishing purpose. Like flour is to bread. Like kneading is to preparing it. Core competencies are very utilitarian. They help us get things done. They are things, or steps, that we wouldn’t, or couldn’t, live without. A premise I hold for the Art of Hosting is that presence is “the” core competency that is called for in these times. In professional life. In communal life. In the often fast paced, hyper-connected, ever-changing world, presence, perhaps more now that ever, is most needed.

The Art of Hosting, Bowen Island is one of the events I most look forward to during the year. The location is outstanding, nestled in forest. I trust our team, all of us, as friends and colleagues, who understand much about layers. I trust us to get to the needed layers that make lasting and significant difference for those who come.

Welcome.