Yesterday I uncorked a bottle of tea I’d been quietly fermenting this summer.
There is always a small moment of anticipation. The tea has been alive for months, shaped by thousands upon thousands of unseen relationships, each responding to one another in ways impossible to choreograph. I can influence the conditions. I can never completely dictate the outcome.
Every batch surprises me.
As I poured the first shimmering glass, I found myself thinking about our newest TIES seminar.
This month our learning community has been immersed in David Bohm’s On Dialogue and John Briggs’ Seven Life Lessons of Chaos. As I read through the unfolding conversation, I was struck by something both subtle and beautiful. No single voice defined the discussion. Each reflection invited another. Questions opened new pathways. Ideas intertwined. Meaning accumulated patiently.
One student expressed it this way:
“True creativity emerges not in isolation, but in the dynamic, participatory spaces between us.” — LC34 student
I returned to that sentence more than once.
John Briggs spent much of his life inviting us to notice that living systems rarely reveal themselves all at once. What first appears to be randomness often conceals relationships we have not yet learned to see. Bohm extends a similar invitation. Suspend certainty for a while. Listen a little longer. Allow thought itself to become something we observe together.
Perhaps chaos isn’t the opposite of order.
Perhaps it is the way deeper patterns first become visible.
As the seminar unfolded, I noticed another pattern emerging. Students weren’t simply responding to the books. They were responding to one another. One reflection became the seed of someone else’s inquiry. A question lingered long enough to gather new meaning. Ideas seemed less interested in arriving than in evolving. The conversation itself felt alive, shaped by unseen relationships that no one could have designed in advance.
I found myself thinking back to the ferment in my glass.
Its character had emerged through relationship, patience, responsiveness, and time. No single organism could claim authorship. Something larger had quietly taken shape.
I smiled, took another sip, and returned to the seminar.
Every January, a new TIES cohort gathers around a table of books, questions, and lived experience. We never know exactly what conversations will emerge or what new patterns will reveal themselves. That uncertainty has become one of the things I treasure most about this community.
The January 2027 cohort is now beginning to gather.
If these reflections resonate with you, perhaps there is a place waiting for your voice in the conversation.