Complete and Declare

Finish cleanly and say so out loud: promised against delivered, loose ends named, thanks given.

Most work does not end. It trails off, gets quietly superseded, or is still technically open two seasons later while everyone has moved on. The cost of that is larger than it looks: unfinished work goes on occupying attention, the body never learns what it actually managed, and nobody gets thanked. Completion is therefore a move rather than an event — something a body does, at the end of a piece of work or at a turning, whichever comes first.

Three things are said. Promised against delivered — what we set out to do, and what is actually done. Said plainly, both ways, with no rounding in either direction; a body that inflates its completions loses the only measure it has, and one that discounts them loses heart (Keep Promises Visible, The Record). Loose ends named — the parts not done, who now holds them, or that nobody does and they are being let go. An unnamed loose end is a debt the body will pay later without knowing why (Consciously Breaking Commitments, The states of a commitment). Thanks given — by name, for what, while the work is still warm. This is not decoration. It is the part that makes the next round possible (Gratitude).

The declaring matters as much as the completing, and for a reason worth stating: until it is said, the work exists only inside the people who did it. Saying it is what converts private effort into something the body can see, count, learn from and build on (Declare carries a different move under a near-identical name — the naming, at a door, of what a person carries that is not theirs to give).

And a completion is not finished until it is told. The canon is firm on the sequence: complete, then harvest what was learned, then tell it (Share the Stories, Every Story Is A Prophesy). A Quest that was completed and never told has been done once instead of many times.

Also called: completing · the clean finish Stands on: Commitment · Keep Promises Visible · Gratitude · The Record Opens onto: Share the Stories · Turn the Season · Celebrate, Learn, and Improve · The states of a commitment · Consciously Breaking Commitments · Release · The Circle's Scorecard · Resource the Work In play: the table — when the work is done, or when the turning arrives and settles the question Sources: Play — Complete and Declare, in The LIØNSBERG Playbook's Questing Plays (first-season vintage, four lines) · Play — Harvest the Story and Play — Tell the Story, which the card requires before a Quest counts as finished (first-season vintage) · lionsberg.wiki: The LIØNSBERG Playbook Open: The name collides with Declare, which is a different move in a different part of the Field; both are live and neither page renames the other. · The card gives no form for the declaration, so what is actually said and where it is written is left to each body.