Reading the grain before cutting
The workshop of Paul Tan
Good Protocols is a Washington social purpose corporation in Columbia City, South Seattle, out of thirty years leading nonprofits across youth homelessness, foster care, refugee resettlement, anti-trafficking, and multicultural family programming, and twenty-five years at the bench as a furniture maker. The two trades are one discipline: read the grain before the cutting starts.
Formation builds the room where a person can become who they are.
Processing moves the file. This shop builds formation.
The ground
The shop is grounded in faith, and the faith is not one room among the others. It is the vertical thread, running from under every room toward what holds a life up, stated once at How to Stay. Its roots are theological, and the shop says so. Its door is open to anyone, and the shop says that too.
The doctrine, published whole
Knowing When Not to Measure
measurement at stations, never ambient; no reading finalon numbersKnowing How to Remember
the past held sincerely, without being held by iton the pastHolding the Future Now
generosity toward a future we cannot control and may not seeon the futureProvision Without Power
one analogy tested before it is trusted; the manna clauseon an analogyThe Scout
a tool specified by what it is built to be incapable of doingon a refusalThe Canon Behind the Ethos
the bibliography, shelved by the work each voice doesthe shelf
Held in-house and quoted once, at How to Stay: the Theology of Formation. Everything the shop publishes, shelved by the work it does, is on Publishing.
Four tools the shop works from
- Processing and composing. One builds from a template; the other responds to the grain. Which is a program doing to the people it serves?
- The hull and the sail. Security is the hull, growth the sail, and the sail can flutter while the hull is mended. After Scott Barry Kaufman.
- The anatomy of formation. A person who stays, the truth spoken in love, and a response no one can engineer.
- Rosa's four questions. Are people affected here, do they act and see the world answer, do they meet rather than use, and does something stay beyond control?
The rooms
The Open Shelf
a small public library in the languages families speakshelf.goodprotocols.orgThe Family Library
a page for each moment of raising children, and a staff roomfamilies.goodprotocols.orgThe Long Tack
a formation space for eighteen to thirty; its benches open with a word a person gives yougoodprotocol.aiThe Boatyard
working rooms for organizations, behind a courtesy wordgoodprotocols.ai
Paul Tan is the author of True Frequency: Finding the Sound Every Person Carries, forthcoming. Write to the shop at hello@goodprotocols.org.
Every room here stands on one ground, and the thread that runs up from it, toward what holds a life up, is How to Stay.