December 29, 2013: Online Work Bee

Revision 42786

Date
Author
SolSeed archive migration
Comment
Create maintainable Markdown archive revision
Size
7772 bytes
Delta
+31 bytes

Agenda

Good News

WWWs from last time

WWWs

Weekly Events Logistics

Service rotation: Eric, Shelley, Brandon, Ben

GaiasHeartbeat

Ben has a quote that we might want to use (show onscreen or in YouTube video description):

"Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive."

— Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, 1974.

Sunday Assembly

Newsletter

Brandon thinks we should try to tweak things like the email subject in order to get more people to open it.

Content

Something about the headline lower ... but first.

Brandon: "Begin with expression of gratitude" ... As we reflect on the end of 2013, we are filled with gratitude for the many wonderful people who are part of our lives. You know who you are ... thanks for what you do.

Despite not having incorporated as a legal organization such as a nonprofit or church, this season the SolSeed Movement has established a formal system for managing our finances. Using a "virtual SolSeed account" made up of money each of the four active members has set aside, we're now able to propose budgets for specific projects and track how that spending affects the "total SolSeed budget." Here are two such projects:

Months ago, I discovered a charity called Children International that offers something we had sought and failed to find during the first SolSeed venture into charitable giving: a pen-pal system that would let us actually get to know the people receiving our aid. In November, we finally got around to sponsoring three impoverished children through their program, in Ecuador, India, and Colombia. As a Canadian, Eric was unable to sign up for this program, but he found a similar one offered by Plan Canada and sponsored a child in Niger. We look forward to years of exciting intercultural exchange as we help these four children along their journey to adulthood.

I'm finally getting started on a new music video for "The Seed." While I work on that, Brandon has launched another music video project in collaboration with John Boswell, called "Gaia's Heartbeat." This time, having finished composing the music based on our lyrics as he did for "The Seed," he will also produce the video itself. We did some research on video clips he can use, mainly time lapses of the motions of clouds, tides, growing and falling leaves, and global snow cover. These videos speed up Gaia's slow rhythms to human scale in order to evoke breathing and heartbeats. Our goal is to tap into our natural ability to anthropomorphize in order to create visceral, overwhelming, transformative empathy for Mother Earth as a living being. We believe people's actions will only fully honor the needs of Mother Earth when she is as real and immediate to us as our friends and loved ones.

Although we didn't do a formal funding proposal for it, the latest SolSeed Winter Solstice celebration did have an exciting new twist: we invited two teachers from a company called Music Together to lead us in a series of sing-alongs, including dancing and instruments such as drums and "jingle bells" that everyone could play. In the middle of this, we added a ritual in which we turned out the lights, blew out some candles held by the participants, and then "ignited the new year" using one of the brand-new clay galaxy plates we made for our last liturgical season, Viventibus Galaxia. The galactic arms are sprinkled with boric acid and can be filled with alcohol, which burns green to represent life spreading across the galaxy.

Brandon: "End with a wish for the new year" ... As we launch into the new year, we wish for you a year of life and love. May your 2014 be truly blessed.

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Evaluation

SolSeed Soundbite