Episode 2.20: Woven

THE PODCAST: June 30/20

STAYING INTERCONNECTED

In season two’s final episode, Tim and Tuesday wrap up by offering a piece of advice: stay woven! Stay woven with the people you care about, stay woven with the people you work with and pay attention to how woven and connected you are in your communities. And if you notice someone falling away, weave them back in! Keep weaving the world events into our everyday living. These times demand all of us together meeting these times.

Together, Tim Merry and Tuesday Ryan-Hart are THE OUTSIDE—systems change and equity facilitators who bring the fresh air necessary to organize movements, organizations, and collaborators forward for progress, surfacing new mindsets for greater participation and shared impact.

2.20 —— SHOW NOTES

Tues: This week on the podcast we are talking about being woven… being woven together as Outsiders, and as a team, being woven together with our clients a little bit in this changing context and then making sure our work is woven and meeting what is happening in the external world.
Tues: I am feeling that Tim and I are quite well woven together. I am feeling good about where we are in partnership with this business and my experience of that is simply a re-weaving or re-knitting together, in the past couple weeks, that make us quite strong and smooth.
Tim: This is our final podcast of this season… and I like the idea of woven as well as it brings together many of the topics we’ve been talking about over the last two seasons and that feels right - what’s happening between us, what’s happening in the world, what’s happening in our team and in relationship to the people we work with. It feels like a good way to end talking about things being woven, and how they are woven and how well they are woven and how we weave each other together and how important that is when you are working remotely. The quality of attention and alertness we need to have to our relationships so that we can deliver on the work that is at hand is heightened. We’ve always said that relationships equal results. I think that is even more true in terms of being able to deliver results when you are not able to take a walk that morning together or whatever else it might be that you need to do to sustain your relationships. It’s that intention and aspiration to pay attention to each other.
Tues: I did this work to be in partnership with you and the work is better when we’re in it together. This idea of distance - we can’t in the same way know what is up for each other. I wonder if there is some inevitable moving apart in this remote way of working that then says what are your practices for coming back together?
Tim: When we are working remotely, and in technical web-based spaces, we also need to pay attention to the conditions we put in place for people to connect and contribute. There is a personal reaching out and paying attention to relationship but a lot of what we are doing is tech upgrade. How do you create the ease between people of reaching out to each other to keep everyone connected in?
Tues: We were able to get by on good equipment until that was “the way” of being together. We are making it possible for our physical bodies to connect more.
Tim: Yeah, can you have a set-up that allows you to relax and be online? Find your techie mate and have them help you to set up an environment to be conducive to being relaxed into online spaces. It’s a big deal when running online meetings and to organize effectively. The other thing I am realizing is one-on-one conversations still need to happen to build the relationship. This also requires effort and planning and it is part of the work.
Tim: It’s wild out there, mate and that’s another reason to stay woven. It feels stressful. Meg [Wheatley] also says when the shit hits the fan, “people turn to each other.” That is why this species has managed to evolve. When things get hard, we turn to each other.
Tim: If there is one piece of advice in our final podcast episode, as all of us head through the summer and into the Fall and Autumn, it’s stay woven. Stay woven with the people you’re caring about, stay woven with the people you’re working with to deliver the things that matter to you in the world, pay attention not just to the inevitable pivot and thrust of energy we all need to create to get through re-entering our work spaces in new ways but also pay attention to how woven we are and how connected we are as teams and caring members of communities.
Tues: This particular moment is calling for a re-weaving or different kinds of weaving that we haven’t had to access before. Most of us haven’t had to do this kind of online life before. There is also the larger movement of breaking down of systems and seeing the brokenness of systems that I think also will require a re-weaving. As you think about staying woven, find new ways to weave and then also look for opportunities to re-weave.
Tues: My uncle Chucky was very active in SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), so I can go to historical news reels and find mention of him and what he did and read his story. This makes me think of what my grandkids will ask of this time and what we did and how we were and will I be proud of how we/I responded?
Tim: There is something about looking back and understanding the complexity of our heritage and our lineage that contributes to our ability to be here now.
Tues: I feel like we all have to do that. We all have to know where we’re coming from to point where we’re going.
Tim: For those of you who dane to tune in to us, we are grateful. Thank you for joining us. We will continue thorough the summer through a vlog series. You will find us on Facebook and Instagram for that. You will get to meet the members of The Outside team. The podcast will start up again this Autumn - let us know if there are things you want to hear in Season 3 or things you want us to go deeper into.
Song: “Abebrese” by Ebo Taylor.
Poem: “Turning to One Another” by Margaret Wheatley, “Turning to One Another,” 2002
There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about. Ask “What’s possible?” not “What’s wrong?” Keep asking.
Notice what you care about.
Assume that many others share your dreams.
Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters. Talk to people you know.
Talk to people you don’t know.
Talk to people you never talk to.
Be intrigued by the differences you hear.
Expect to be surprised.
Treasure curiosity more than certainty.
Invite in everybody who cares to work on what’s possible. Acknowledge that everyone is an expert about something. Know that creative solutions come from new connections.
Remember, you don’t fear people whose story you know.
Real listening always brings people closer together.
Trust that meaningful conversations can change your world.
Rely on human goodness. Stay together.

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Find the song we played in today’s show—and every song we’ve played in previous shows—on the playlist. Just search ‘Find the Outside’ on Spotify.