Too many people chase belonging with hope of finding wholeness.
We are learning that it is wholeness that we must seek first,
in and through ourselves,
from which belonging then naturally arises.
Too many circumstances in contemporary life
fill us with false promise,
vacated from needed wisdom.
In these days,
it is not more tools that we need; it is more connection.
It is not more information that we need; it is more wisdom.
This online series is about growing more wisdom, more wholeness, and more belonging
from the inside out.
We are learning that it is wholeness that we must seek first,
in and through ourselves,
from which belonging then naturally arises.
Too many circumstances in contemporary life
fill us with false promise,
vacated from needed wisdom.
In these days,
it is not more tools that we need; it is more connection.
It is not more information that we need; it is more wisdom.
This online series is about growing more wisdom, more wholeness, and more belonging
from the inside out.
“Where ritual is absent, the young ones are restless and violent, there are no real elders, and the grown ups are bewildered.”
Moalidoma Some, Dagara Medicine Elder
Initiation, planned or imposed, is what beckons people to maturity.
It beckons people to live with wisdom and soulfulness, from a deeply grown inner clarity,
contributing wholeness and presence to the times in which we live.
Tenneson Woolf, Quanita Roberson
A B O U T T H I S 4 - W E E K O N L I N E S E R I E S
The central focus of this Wisdom Series is Initiation.
Long ago common, initiations marked transitions from youth to adulthood. Initiations were deliberate forms of challenge and witness that grew capability to contribute and anchor individuals and community in purpose.
These days, initiations are largely lost in practice and purpose. Rather than planned and guided experiences, initiations are imposed through traumatic life experience that most often is building more trauma. As Dagara Medicine Elder, Malidoma Some says, "Where ritual is absent, the young ones are restless and violent, there are no real elders, and the grown ups are bewildered."
We continue to learn that so many people these days seek wisdom and soulfulness. Many don't have the words for it, but they have a deep yearning to alchemize -- to leave an old self behind that then makes room for a new self to come forward more aligned with deep purpose and calling.
The initiatory commitment pays keen attention to three important and connected phases of experience -- departure (from norms), journey (with new invitations and through challenges), and return (witness as changed being).
This series is not a training of easy steps that assure neat and tidy outcome. It is a communing of people readied by life circumstance to explore together, to welcome wisdom and sense-making through the lens of initiation.
This online series mixes teaching, sharing stories, asking questions, wondering and wandering to territories known and not known. There will whole group and small group interaction. This series mixes insights found in both words shared and silence welcomed.
This series is intended to invite and cultivate:
Week 1: Elders, Guides -- Initiation requires descent. Descents of the psyche, previously not experienced. Descents that can terrify and discombobulate. Elders and guides offer help so as not to prematurely turn from initiatory teachings.
Week 2: Surrender -- Letting go and departures are always heralded with challenges, ordeals, and new patterns. Surrender is the courage to be moved by the journey.
Week 3: Spirit Walk -- To welcome alchemy is to welcome relationship with the unseen. It includes being and doing that is spirit-aligned, requiring deep presence and commitment.
Week 4: Earth Walk -- Initiatory participation isn't meant to be merely etherial. There are steps, practices, communal invitations that are woven into day to day fabric of life.
We want to help people go deeper, more able to insert wisdom -- thought, heart, belly, spirit, and practice -- to the plethora of chaotic circumstance that riddle 21st century life.
Together we will find our way.
Long ago common, initiations marked transitions from youth to adulthood. Initiations were deliberate forms of challenge and witness that grew capability to contribute and anchor individuals and community in purpose.
These days, initiations are largely lost in practice and purpose. Rather than planned and guided experiences, initiations are imposed through traumatic life experience that most often is building more trauma. As Dagara Medicine Elder, Malidoma Some says, "Where ritual is absent, the young ones are restless and violent, there are no real elders, and the grown ups are bewildered."
We continue to learn that so many people these days seek wisdom and soulfulness. Many don't have the words for it, but they have a deep yearning to alchemize -- to leave an old self behind that then makes room for a new self to come forward more aligned with deep purpose and calling.
The initiatory commitment pays keen attention to three important and connected phases of experience -- departure (from norms), journey (with new invitations and through challenges), and return (witness as changed being).
This series is not a training of easy steps that assure neat and tidy outcome. It is a communing of people readied by life circumstance to explore together, to welcome wisdom and sense-making through the lens of initiation.
This online series mixes teaching, sharing stories, asking questions, wondering and wandering to territories known and not known. There will whole group and small group interaction. This series mixes insights found in both words shared and silence welcomed.
This series is intended to invite and cultivate:
- connecting, learning, and awakening
- dwelling in what stirs the human heart
- integrating what we experience in both outer world and inner psyche
- encouraging us to greater intimacy that connects this moment with the longer arcs of our lives
Week 1: Elders, Guides -- Initiation requires descent. Descents of the psyche, previously not experienced. Descents that can terrify and discombobulate. Elders and guides offer help so as not to prematurely turn from initiatory teachings.
Week 2: Surrender -- Letting go and departures are always heralded with challenges, ordeals, and new patterns. Surrender is the courage to be moved by the journey.
Week 3: Spirit Walk -- To welcome alchemy is to welcome relationship with the unseen. It includes being and doing that is spirit-aligned, requiring deep presence and commitment.
Week 4: Earth Walk -- Initiatory participation isn't meant to be merely etherial. There are steps, practices, communal invitations that are woven into day to day fabric of life.
We want to help people go deeper, more able to insert wisdom -- thought, heart, belly, spirit, and practice -- to the plethora of chaotic circumstance that riddle 21st century life.
Together we will find our way.
"And then the ancestors said,
'Maybe your problem is that this world is more real to you
than the spirit world.'"
Quanita Roberson
"There are no greater advocates for inner work and self-healing in facilitation than Quanita and Tenneson.
Dr Myriam Hadnes
Host of the "workshops work podcast",
Founder of the NeverDoneBefore"
W H O S H O U L D A T T E N D
Seekers, searchers, people in comfort, people in discomfort.
We welcome people from all walks of life, all professions.
Managers, facilitators, team leaders, consultants, coaches, entrepreneurs.
Educators, artists, poets, musicians, faith community leaders, and government.
Community organizers, social change activists.
We welcome the older and the youngers, and people working with the olders and those working with the youngers.
We welcome men, women, the in-betweens, and the undecideds.
All people seeking a substantially better wisdom of heart, mind, and belly.
We welcome people from all walks of life, all professions.
Managers, facilitators, team leaders, consultants, coaches, entrepreneurs.
Educators, artists, poets, musicians, faith community leaders, and government.
Community organizers, social change activists.
We welcome the older and the youngers, and people working with the olders and those working with the youngers.
We welcome men, women, the in-betweens, and the undecideds.
All people seeking a substantially better wisdom of heart, mind, and belly.
D E T A I L S & C O S T
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"To wake -- perhaps this is the most important process of our times."
Tenneson Woolf
"Thanks for leading me into the deep with confidence and trust in the process.
F&W made this trip possible in ways I can't fully name yet."
Juliet Barrett
Fire & Water Participant
Tenneson Woolf
"Thanks for leading me into the deep with confidence and trust in the process.
F&W made this trip possible in ways I can't fully name yet."
Juliet Barrett
Fire & Water Participant
M E E T Q U A N I T A , T E N N E S O N
Together, Quanita and Tenneson have over 40 years of combined experience
in the fields of leadership, community, dialogue, and change.
But their most unique orientation, perhaps,
is what they bring to encourage depth of inquiry and honesty of practice.
Both believe that the times we dwell in require this depth, and in fact, mourn an absence of wisdom.
Their individual and shared work is rooted in a deep friendship, love of learning, growing in community,
and a belief that there is always more unseen than seen that wants to be discovered.
Both believe that people are hungry for simple, needed ways to be more wise in times such as these.
in the fields of leadership, community, dialogue, and change.
But their most unique orientation, perhaps,
is what they bring to encourage depth of inquiry and honesty of practice.
Both believe that the times we dwell in require this depth, and in fact, mourn an absence of wisdom.
Their individual and shared work is rooted in a deep friendship, love of learning, growing in community,
and a belief that there is always more unseen than seen that wants to be discovered.
Both believe that people are hungry for simple, needed ways to be more wise in times such as these.
Quanita Roberson
www.nzuzu.com Cincinnati, OH I love circle. Circle is a place where we can not only remember that we belong to each other but that we are each other. It has birthed me into this world. I remember. First in my grandfather’s church, standing in the center as the elders laid their hands on me in prayer, guiding me to circle as a communication line to spirit. Next, in my Montessori preschool class, teaching me circle as a tool for learning. Then through my spiritual teacher in ritual, practicing circle as access to the ancestors. And finally, through The Circle Way, connecting me to circle as a structural framework for community. I am a facilitator dedicated to addressing embedded trauma. I am a spiritual teacher, speaker, author, life coach, and a storyteller. I have three books published. Most recently, The InnerGround Railroad: A 40 Day Journey to Remembering Soul & Spirit (Akan Publishing, co-authored with Amy Howton). And previously, Soul Growing: Wisdom for 13 year old boys from men around the world (Dos Madres, 2015) and Soul Growing II: Wisdom for 13 year old girls from women around the world (Dos Madres, 2019) I have a background in Organizational Management and Development with a concentration in Integral Theory which has supported me in looking at the world in a more holistic way. I also have had the privilege of studying with some amazing elders. Including Sobonfu Some and Jojopah Maria Nsoroma, keepers of ancient indigenous wisdom from the Dagara Tribe of Burkina Faso, Fanchon Shur in Embodying Creative Leadership through Growth in Motion, Peter Block, and Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea of The Circle Way. I live in Cincinnati, OH with my two children. I am inspired by the Ohio River and the stories of freedom that were birthed from this region. |
Tenneson Woolf www.tennesonwoolf.com
Lindon, UT. I am a facilitator, workshop leader, teacher, blogger, and coach committed to improving the quality of collaboration and imagination needed in groups, teams, and organizations — to help us be in times such as these with consciousness, kindness, and learning. My work over 20+ years has been to design and lead meetings in participative formats, across many diverse systems of people. I continue to feel very aligned with the work that is "being better humans," cultivating our "being" for many varied contexts of "doing." I post a daily blog, Human to Human, in which I offer reflection on varied aspects of participative leadership practices, insights, and human to human depth. In 2020 I published a book of poetry and reflections, A Cadence of Despair: Poems and Reflections on Heartbreak, Loss and Renewal (Centrespoke, 2020). I'll publish a second collection of poems, Most Mornings, in Summer 2022. It was in 1993 that I began working with Margaret Wheatley through The Berkana Institute, a group of global friends and practitioners committed to bringing forward new and wise leadership forms. It was the early 2000s with Berkana that I first encountered Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, and began practicing deliberate forms of circle that are now at the heart of all of my work. In addition to my lineages with Berkana and The Circle Way, I am also a long-time steward and colleague in the Art of Hosting community of practice. My educational background includes a Masters Degree in Organizational Behavior and a Bachelors Degree in Psychology. I live in a small town where urban meets rural, in Lindon, Utah, at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains. I am originally from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. |
A F E W R E S O U R C E S T H A T I N S P I R E U S
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O T H E R K I N D W O R D S
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Whoever you are, whatever ails or inspires you, Quanita and Tenneson shape the space with an ease and curiosity that invites a deep dive into what is essential and human.You are held here."
Chris Smyth Past Workshop Participant I told my friend that it was food for the soul; a rare time to be authentic and vulnerable in a safe space around people willing to be the same. It restored my faith in humanity. In a time when we are surrounded by all the awful things in the world to be in a group of 15 humans that are all on their journeys was inspiring. Q & T helped me move from seeking community to being and inviting community. Genevieve Sofranec, Past Workshop Participant As a mentor and coach, Quanita is the representation of her spirit name -- Wind Warrior. the shifting winds of change and transformation come forth when she is in your presence. I have experienced a beautiful transformation and growth since working with Quanita. She values my story and encourages me to keep writing more chapters. I am honored to know her and I am a stronger person because of her support. Regina M. Sewell Founder / CEO / Owner Creative Life Coach for Embraceable Living I have been deeply privileged to know Tenneson for a number of years and to more recently to work with him in his world of mastery — bringing forward the wisdom of the group. His magic is so subtle that it’s hard to name. He is at once deeply and lovingly present, authentic and humble, completely trusting of what unfolds in the moment, with an uncanny capacity to see, weave and illuminate unseen patterns of authentic truth from whatever emerges. Kinde Nebeker Principal, New Moon Rights of Passage "I am still floating from our experience and am beyond grateful for this time of deep transformation, or as I feel it now, a deep remembering of what we all knew/know.” Corbin Tobey-Davis Faith Community Leader Quanita is the real deal. As a grounded and completely authentic facilitator of healing ritual. Her capacity to hold space, bear witness, go with you to the depth of your grief and suffering, and bring it to reconciliation and resolution is rare -- even exceptional. I feel so grateful to count her as a friend and fellow traveler on the path. Nilima Bhat Co-Author of Shakti Leadership I met Quanita many years ago, and through her discovered a new way of thinking! I learned about animal spirits, crystal healing, spiral dynamics and medicine wheels. Six years after working with her, I still apply these lessons and share what I learned with my friends. Quanita has made such a positive impact in my life. Thank you Quanita! Muthoni Kori Kastner Cincinnati Waldorf School There are a mere handful of people in the world with whom I would ever host a circle that demanded deep presence, humour, attention to beauty and a fierce holding of the container. Tenneson is one of these few whose gentle and inviting demeanour belies a strong commitment to human beings working together past fear, ego and division. Being hosted by Tenneson makes me grateful to be in this field, as a host, as a colleague, and as a friend. Chris Corrigan Global Art of Hosting Steward Principal, Harvest Moon Consultants, Ltd. Tenneson's creative and welcoming style transforms complex challenges into intentionally simple constructs that invite sustainable change. Carla Kelley Executive Director The Human Rights Education Center of Utah |
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
Rumi, 13th Century Persian Poet
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
Rumi, 13th Century Persian Poet
