Thursday Agenda
- Check in
- Project Work
- <s>Brandon: Work on venues for the Kindred event
- Ben: Work on the newsletter</s>
- Ben: Work on the SolSeed 10-year retrospective draft
- Ben: Work on the "Gospel According to Ben"
- Eric: Write a stub for Gaia.wiki
- Eric: Write a story for Equinox 2016
- Evaluation
Check In
- Eric … I'm feeling overwhelmed by the number of things I'm juggling right now … but I will find a way
- Brandon … I'm feeling somnolent
- Ben … I am almost the same as Brandon and was even more so this morning. I need to find a way to get more energy. I guess the first thing I will try is Vitamin D.
Opening Blessing
We come here to do the work that is aligned with our highest aspirations. We come as brothers to join our efforts together. May our work together be guided by empathy and wisdom and driven by passion. --Blessed Be
Newsletter
This is a special newsletter indeed: in addition to celebrating our entry into the brighter half of the year, we just celebrated the SolSeed Movement's tenth anniversary! That's right, we got our first official member (Brandon) on February 16th, 2005. Check out the new SolSeed History page for my summary of our whole story so far. As for the story of the past season:
Continuing his mission to deepen his understanding of and connection with the Pagan community, Brandon journeyed to San Jose to attend Pantheacon, America's largest indoor Pagan gathering, just before the anniversary. Finally meeting our new friends John and Ruth Halstead and Mark Green in person, Brandon immersed himself in a vibrant community containing a surprisingly large number of naturalists (people who don't believe in the supernatural), and came away with the impression that "now is the most fertile time for a Kindred festival ever!" So I hate to be a flip-flopper about this, but it looks like at least a proto-Kindred event is on again for this August.
Meanwhile, I was traveling through the Southwest to visit relatives and fulfill a long-held dream: taking a tour of Biosphere 2, the world's biggest and most famous Closed Ecological Life Support System experiment. Sadly, the research going on there now is no longer about full closure or space colonies, but the three-acre greenhouse outside Tucson, with its sophisticated environmental control machinery, is still an immensely valuable ecological laboratory. I wish I could have spent more time exploring the place, but there's also a lot I couldn't learn on site, particularly about the history of the human enclosures in the early '90s and the intentional community called the Synergists who built the place. I'm currently reading my second book on the subject.
A week after I got home, it was time to head south again, this time to Portland for SolSeed's tenth-birthday party! The Sanders, my parents, and I celebrated by renting canoes and taking a short trip down the Willamette River from near our local science museum to an island beach with a great view of the city. It was a beautiful sunny day, but we lit a fire anyway
Kindred Event in August
Name
Should represent the intersection of:
- Cherish the Earth
- Embrace Science (Naturalistic world view)
- Accept the Call (Advance the Destiny) (Midwife the Great Birthing)
- Eric: but the call in the context of Kindred might be more general, right?
- Brandon: no, it's the space thing … with religious overtones
- Eric: I think using the word "tribe" helps draw people who are okay with the idea of a religious Call and also with practicing in community
- Practice in Community
Ideas
- The Kindred Festival
- Festival of the Called (generic sense, earnest tribe type folks)
- Festival of the Tribes
- Vision Festival
- Vision Fest
- World Growers Festival
- Festival of the Movement of Movements (invokes concepts from the book Blessed Unrest)
- Soul Tribes
- Kindreds Festival
- Bright Futures Festival
- Green Optimists Festival
- Gaian Optimists Festival
- Gaian Optimists Convergence
- Gaian Optimist Tribal Convergence
- The Shiny Green Festival
- Like mindeds
- The Shiny Green Tribal Festival
- Shiny Green Convergence
- Shiny Green Tribal Convergence
- Shiny Green Tribal Vibe
- Festival of the Shiny Green Tribes
The choice
The Shiny Green Tribal Convergence (ShinyGreenCon for short?) … find your tribe or create a new one. Celebrate and share with other folks who cherish the Earth, embrace a scientific worldview, and practice in visionary communities.
There's an existing group called Tribal Convergence, with a nice mission statement: Tribal Convergence is an evolving meme that consists of gatherings of Visionary Leaders from diverse regional conscious communities coming together as one Human Family to cultivate right relationships between ourselves, each other, and the Earth. The Tribal Convergence Network holds Tribal Convergence events at regular intervals, each with a theme, and hosted by a different region within our wider family.
However, their vision video is kind of ridiculous.
Who we invite
Which of the principles is non-negotiable? Is 3 out of 4 okay?
- Ben: I think most of our potential co-conveners are either Paganesque people who aren't into space, or space enthusiasts who don't practice in community, so yeah
- Eric: I think even 2 out of 4 would be okay
- Brandon: Is a naturalistic worldview non-negotiable?
- Eric: I don't think we should necessarily disqualify people who believe in gods or even astrology
- Brandon: Maybe we should call them attractors then rather than intersection sets for a Venn diagram
- Brandon: I think cherishing the Earth is almost non-negotiable
- Eric: But what about people practicing shiny-but-not-green space enthusiast visions as a religion?
- Brandon: Terasem is a good example of that … although mostly about the Singularity rather than space
Evaluation
- Eric … I really love brainstorming sessions with you guys
- Ben … I was thinking that we didn’t do that much this past season but I am realizing that we kinda did, even though it was a few big things rather than stuff that was spread out thorughout the season which makes it easy to write about.
- Brandon … (singing) I'm excited, I’m excited, I’m excited for the Shiny Green Tribal Convergence [repeat twice]
Closing Blessing
We close this circle having striven toward The Destiny having cared for the earth and having taught our elephants to care for our little community. We carry these feelings of connectedness and accomplishment until we can do this again. Blessed Be.