Before you begin
Where I Am From
An honest inventory of your life — as you understand it, as you remember it.
Twenty-six small questions about the people, places and things that made you. Not one of them is hard to answer — the brand that was always in the cupboard, a sentence you heard so often you stopped hearing it, what the house sounded like at night.
Answer them and a poem builds itself, line by line, out of what you already know. Every line starts with I am from — the same rule Hebrew poetry uses: say the thing, then say it again another way. Some of what comes up will be good and some of it won't. Both belong, and nobody is grading it.
About ten minutes. If you need to stop, Save keeps what you have on your page and you pick it up where you left off. When you finish, save it, print it, or copy the words — and come back and write another whenever you want. It never comes out the same twice.
Or write it by hand. Print the worksheet — the same twenty-six questions on paper. Fill it in over a week at the kitchen table if you like, then type it in here when it is finished.
Am is present. From is past. What happened back there is not behind you — it is what you are made of. This is not writing a history. It is taking an inventory.
The form belongs to George Ella Lyon, who wrote the original poem and has invited people to make it their own. You can read hers at georgeellalyon.com.
Your poem so far
Here it is.
Read it out loud once. That's when most people find out what they wrote.
Where I Am From
ancientpathcoaching.com
The picture saves to your phone or computer like any other photo — keep it, print it, send it to whoever should read it.
One more thing, if you want to
Nobody ever gets asked about their own writing. I'd like to. Most of these are a single tap, and you can skip any of them.
How do you feel, now that it's written?
Tap whatever fits. More than one is normal.
Where do you feel it?
In your body, right now. It will feel odd the first time — most men skip it. Do not. A feeling you can point to is one you can name, and a feeling you can name stops running you.
Which line surprised you?
Tap one of your own.
If someone read only one line, which do you want it to be?
Before today, how much of this had you said out loud to anyone?
How do you feel about someone else reading it?
Anything else you want to say about it?
Optional, and nobody is grading it.
That's everything. These answers are for you — they are not saved with the poem, and they are gone when you close the tab.
Where this came from
Ancient Path is a coaching practice for men in the seasons that ask the most of them. Most of that work is story work — a man says the thing out loud, and someone else is there when he does.
This exercise is where a lot of that starts, because it's the smallest possible version of the same act. You put down what's true and specific, and then you look at it. Nobody has to interpret anything. The list does the work.
If the poem you just wrote opened something, that's not a malfunction. That's the exercise.
Where Jesus was from
Ask Jesus where he is from and you get two answers. One is a place. The other is not.
The place is Nazareth. A town so small and so disregarded that when Nathanael hears the messiah is supposed to be from there, he says out loud what everyone was thinking: can anything good come out of Nazareth? A nothing place. A bad address.
The other answer is I am, and that one goes back to the burning bush. Moses asks God what name he should bring back to Egypt with him. God first answers with a family — the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob — and then with something that is barely a name at all: I am who I am. Pure present tense. No origin, no ancestry, no address.
John's Gospel puts that same phrase in Jesus' mouth again and again. I am the bread. I am the light. I am the door. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection. I am the way. I am the vine. And then, at the sharpest point of an argument: before Abraham was, I am. The men listening pick up stones — which tells you exactly what they understood him to be claiming.
So: from a town people made fun of, and from no origin at all. Both true, said about the same man.
And here is the part worth sitting with. The best reading of the name Nazareth traces it to netzer — a branch. The shoot Isaiah said would come up out of a stump that had been cut down. Branch Town.
It had been named for the promise the entire time. The word sat on the signpost for generations while people used the place as a punchline, and nobody there ever read it.
So where you are from is not the verdict on you. It is the opening line — which is literally true of what you just wrote. Every line of it starts with I am from. That is where the poem begins — and the poem is the opening line of something a good deal bigger than itself.
See what else we doNothing you write here reaches us unless you choose to save it with us. Everything else stays on your device.
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