Sunday Agenda
- Check in
- Opening Blessing
- Review WWWs
- Weekly event logistics
- Review Agenda
- Winter Solstice
- WWWs for Gaia Kickstarter (do they need any revisions/additions?)
- Strategic Planning
- SolSeed Creed revisions
- Evaluation
- Closing Blessing
Check In
- Eric … I had a realtor come and look at the house … he was very critical, and it brought out how much pride I have in this house
- Brandon … I stayed up way too early (4;20am) this morning. (zzzz) In my freedom from work responsibilities I reveled
- Ben … I’ve had a fairly productive weekend. I finished my last graphic design homework with moderate quality and made good progress sorting legos. Also, if my "success rate" so far in attracting people to this event is predictive then there is just going to be us.
Opening Blessing
Our everyday responsibilities which too often point away from our highest aspirations, sap our energy. We must find ways to replenish it. May this gathering of kindred spirits provide some of that renewal. -- Blessed Be
WW(W)s from last time
Organize the WWWs by person and then due date. We’ll start checking in on topical community protocol and meditation for each mini-period between workbees. Holacracy founder Brian Robertson says these are bad: http://holacracy.org/blog/the-insanity-of-the-what-by-when
- Brandon … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing
- <s>Brandon … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing</s>
- Brandon … contact Oberon Zell about appearing in our Kickstarter video
- Brandon … call the Regional Arts & Culture Council to discuss painting the water tank or placing a sculpture
- <s>Brandon … plan travel arrangements for winter Solstice … by next business call</s>
- <s>Ben … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing
- Ben … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing</s>
- Ben … make actual videos of my Gaia statue … by next call (might do that tonight)
- Ben … organize my LEGOs … by next call (making good progress)
- <s>Ben … Post the Sostice event to Facebook … by tomorrow</s>
- <s>Eric … meditate regularly with Ben ... ongoing
- Eric … meditate regularly with Brandon ... ongoing</s>
- Eric … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Eric ... Organize Patrick’s Lego and make sure a motor and battery pack are available ... sometime next weekend
- Eric ... Consider creating a SolStice event with the lego on SolSeed Ottawa ... by next week
- Eric … Contact Pat and Gary to see if we can use their farm to launch rockets and fireworks
WWWs
- Brandon … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing
- Brandon … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Brandon … call the Regional Arts & Culture Council to discuss painting the water tank or placing a sculpture
- Brandon … order spiral apple slicer
- Brandon … order spiral pineapple slicer
- Ben … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing
- Ben … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Ben … make actual videos of my Gaia statue … by next call (might do that tonight)
- Ben … finish organizing my LEGOs … by next call
- Eric … meditate regularly with Ben ... ongoing
- Eric … meditate regularly with Brandon ... ongoing
- Eric … follow your topical community protocol for this period ... ongoing
- Eric ... Organize Patrick’s Lego and make sure a motor and battery pack are available ... sometime next weekend
- Eric ... Consider creating a SolStice event with the lego on SolSeed Ottawa ... by next week
- Eric … Read KickStarter Rules
Weekly Events Logistics
Midweek
- December 10 Work-Bee: 6:30 PM PST / 21:30 EST
Weekend Service rotation: Eric, Shelley, Brandon, Ben
- December 12 Service: 9 AM PST / 12 EST … Brandon
- December 13 Business Call: 5:30 PM PST / 20:30 EST
Winter solstice
- Anything Ben and Brandon can do to help with Eric's event?
- Michelle's mum is really sick, which will make it hard to plan the event in Ottawa/Gatineau seeing as her priorities are elsewhere.
- Snack ideas for the Redmond event?
- Fruit/veggies and dip
- Petite carrots & hummus
- Apple slices and caramel dip
- "Green fire": raw jalapenos, green spicy sauce?
- A dip made from the above and served on round (world shaped) nachos
- Ben is putting Brandon in charge of this one
- Rocketship-shaped shortbread cookies!
- Blueberries on a plate of spiral sticky green stuff like icing or jello
- Something else spiral-shaped?
- Maybe some relative of artichokes that has an obvious Fibonacci spiral?
- Romanesco broccoli
- Green rotini pasta
- Spiral-cut green apples
Any change to the Gaia Kickstarter WWWs?
Nope
Strategic Planning Exercise
Pick one of the entities that you most admire, and write what you admire about it
Eric:Trees. I admire trees. They create the conditions for more life. I love waking up in my new home, because the first thing I see as the dawn begins to lighten the sky, before I can even see objects in the bedroom with me, are the branches of trees. They almost cover the part of the sky that I can see through the window. There is the tree right in front of our home, a crab apple, which is creating the conditions for more life by providing crab apples to the local squirrels to help them get through the winter. Beyond that I can see the big trees which are about two blocks away in Gatineau Park. They provide homes for those same squirrels. This all makes it sound like trees are justified by squirrels but of course they are doing so much more. They are sucking up our waste CO2. They are producing O2. They are supporting the lives of many species of bird, and insect and nematode and arachnid and under their roots amphibians are probably hiding. They keep streams cool and so support fish. They create a three dimensional space in which life can fold its surfaces creating ...
Brandon: I admire Elon Musk because he is fearless, focused, and facile. He made a list of the major punches he wanted to make in the course of his life and then he made those punches. I also admire Trackers Portland. The play a lot. They make a lot. They have a very clear identity that they uphold. They’ve created an awesome indoor space in Portland and purchased/created a super neat camp out in Sandy just south of the Bull Run watershed. Their camps for kids sell out because kids love the activities that they provide and parents like having their kids engage in the world with less high tech mediation. A person who subscribes to the Trackers community and invests their time in it has lots of different opportunities to engage. They also get a very clear identity.
Ben: I admire a local activist group called Backbone Campaign. They are small but have had national impact, thanks largely to their finely honed artistic skills, producing props like a coal train whose sides turn to reveal a mural of a sustainable future, beautiful salmon a meter in length that are held aloft on long poles, etc. They also hold annual Action Camps to help grow the number and skills of local activists and help them with their various campaigns. This doesn't mean they have no agenda of their own--in fact, the Sierra Club won't work with them anymore because "they tend to go off-message"--but it certainly makes them a force multiplier for groups with less interest in tight control. Backbone has a "library" of past creations that can be borrowed for almost any event, including old standbys like a two-person polar bear costume and some wooden wind turbines.
How can we emulate what we admire?
- Brandon: The masks we made for last year … we're getting a lot of traction out of them in our family right now, and they just make me happy … the ceramics we have, the Gaia statues, the general "idolatry" we have is great … it makes Brandon happy … it has making … it has connection to the Earth, beauty, etc. … Green hat for now?
- Ben: I think of becoming a resource for others in communities who share some of our values. Like we tried to do with Spacewiki and we are still kind of trying to do with gaia.wiki.
- Brandon: I think of some of the props we've created, like the Spectacle rocket, the galaxy plates, the asteroid ship, the mural painting thing, some of our banners ... and it feels to me like if we took that to the next level and made one really awesome thing, that could be a resource that other groups use when they need something like that (we could advertise that it's available for people to check out) … like maybe a really awesome tree.
- Eric: I was thinking that (tree) but I didn’t want to sound so repetitive. My mom isn’t going to sell us the cottage, she’s decided. So we’ll have this large lump of cash once we sell our old house. Michelle and I were talking about the possibility of buying some acres. We could grow a really awesome tree there. (Ben: and porcupines). Eric (chuckling) yes some porcupines.
- Ben: And I suppose you could try and convince us all to move there and found an eco-village.
- Brandon: I've been thinking about making a Gaia statue that is a public installation, but what if we made a portable one that we could take around to various events and let other people use as part of their booth (with some awesome trees as part of it) (Eric: Gaia is covered in awesome trees)
- Eric: I remember you being excited about creating statues of Gaia growing up, after my reading a few weeks ago … should have no copyright issues, because the idea of Gaia is public domain
- Ben: I was going to say (looking back at the trackers thing) it would be cool to develop some aspect of our work that has a sense of place, learning about and talking about how our local ecosystems work and how to fit into them better.
- Brandon: I also admire the Human Access Project (because of the place connection).
SolSeed Creed
Ben: I propose that we spend the last six minutes talking about the SolSeed Creed.
Revisions that are already in play and could be formalized:
- Network of practice
- Replacing
- impotent with lethargic
- feeble and capricious with reckless
- destiny with Great Birthing and changes of verb to go there with (to attend, to hasten).
Eric also wanted to try revising "Through art and the natural world"
Ben: I would still like to try a new version of the passion verse that doesn’t use the word compassionately or that doesn’t use the word elephant but that is still okay with people.
- Eric: When doing the Creed on the bus, the "elephant" part seems the most likely to make people think I'm crazy
- Brandon suggests “Tenderly care for my inner critters.” because these things represent the mammal need for belonging and the reptilian need for safety. Lacking these, we are stripped of our motive power because instead our power is directed to safety and belonging. If we care for these we can direct our motive power toward meaning. If we don’t have safety then all our resources will go toward that. If we do have safety but not belonging, then all of our resources will go there.
- Ben: Still tenderly seems to belong in the empathy part
- Brandon: but empathy is about others … this verse is about power and moving in the direction we choose (rather than a reactionary (hijacked) direction).
- Ben: So maybe something more like, "allowing the needs of our inner critters to … shape our path"
- Eric: We’re more satisfying the needs of our inner critters so that they in turn allow us to move in the direction we’ve chosen. But we don't want to focus too much on "satisfying their needs" because it will make us sound too hedonist.
- Brandon: Compassion toward our inner critters is about loving them instead of otherizing them, so these super-powerful parts of ourselves will gladly help us. We also want to oppose the commonplace, alienating belief that we are only our conscious minds.
- Eric: We can’t successfully express the arete of life if you are only doing one or two of the trinity (passion, wisdom, and empathy). I feel like some of the words in the other ones … the whole thing is wisdom. Passion shows up in the empathy one.
- Brandon: The critical piece is what we miss if we don't have it. Passion enables us to powerfully move in the direction that we choose. Two of the biggest hijackers are not being safe and not belonging. I am going through this and still am and it relates to the fact that I don’t feel safe financially.
- Brandon: Why are we not passionately self-expressed?
- Eric: for a lot of people it is fear of judgement of others (which is a lot of safety and belonging wrapped up into one … I wasn’t trying to head that way but it just occurred to me).
- Eric: fear of failure.
- Ben: Laziness
- Brandon: What is laziness?
- Ben: Feeling like you have more desire to rest and just have fun than to be passionately self-expressed.
- Eric: It sounds like exhaustion
- Ben: Could be, or it could be that you just don’t feel like spending effort
- Eric: Lack of protestant work ethic
- Brandon: This is an interesting one, one that I struggle with … I have some insight into the cycle of self-judgment, where I'm disappointed in myself and I try to escape it with entertainment, and then I punish myself for not being diligent and am even more disappointed in myself, etc … it's painful, and not safe.. Self judgement is my keenest razor (more than judgement from others).
- Ben: Let's talk about it more next time.
Evaluation
- Brandon … I like working on the Creed, I like the strategy stuff … it gives me energy … I don't know whether that translates into actual execution or not, but it does build up my energy some
- Eric … I agree, I like those two things that we were working on. I think it is probably because I am proud of the creed and our vision (which is coming out of the strategy stuff). It feels like work that we are called to do rather than work that we have to do in order to express our calling in some other way. More direct. We’re directly working on what we are called to. When we are planning an event and we’re figuring out who to invite and which snacks to get, it is more indirect.
- Ben … And yet, all of this is just words. It is easy to see another sense in which the only direct way to work toward our vision is to make things and talk to people and make concrete steps toward a future where Earth gives birth to a family of living worlds. And it is hard, and I have problems with laziness too. And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do this work (I suggested the revision of the creed) but we have to avoid being seduced into only doing this.
Closing Blessing
- Do we feel replenished? Yes, somewhat, yes
- Do we feel like our highest aspirations are visible before us? Somewhat, yes because I’m looking at the Living Earth, yes figuratively
- Do we feel that as this next day/week/month/season/year stretch out before us that we can walk with tiny but sustainable steps toward that highest aspiration? Yes, yes, yes
Please feel gratitude for these positive answers. Beautiful future, we are coming your way! -- Blessed Be