September 1, 2013: Online Work Bee

Agenda

• Check In
• Review WWWs
• Weekly Events Logistics
• Review Agenda
• Equinox
• What with funds? Upcoming exercise
• Issues with WeBelieve
• Evaluation

Check In

• Ben ... is sleepy
• Brandon ... having problems with website at work :-(

WWWs from last time

• <s>Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
• Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing</s>
• Brandon ... finish the visitor cookies and logging including google analytics ... by week after next
• Brandon ... send the image of the SolSeed emblem to Eric ... by week after next
• Brandon ... react to the transcendent experiences table ... by week after next
• <s>Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
• Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing</s>
• Eric ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
• Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
• Eric ... Extract issues from Commentary on commentary and add to Git ... by next call

WWWs

• Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
• Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
• Brandon ... discuss Equinoix ideas with Shelley and report back to crew ... by tonight
• Brandon ... finish the visitor cookies and logging including google analytics ... by week after next
• Brandon ... send the image of the SolSeed emblem to Eric ... by week after next
• Brandon ... react to the transcendent experiences table ... by week after next
• Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
• Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
• Ben ... find out how long it takes to get to Rooster Rock ... by next call
• Eric ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
• Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
• Eric ... Extract issues from Comentary on comentary and add to Git ... by next call

Weekly Events Logistics

Service rotation: Eric, Shelley, Brandon, Ben

• September 7 Service: 9:00 am PDT (12:00 EDT) (Shelley)
• September 8 Work-Bee: 1:30 pm PDT 14:30 EDT

• September 14 Service: 9:00 am PDT (12:00 EDT) (Eric) ... Sanders out
• September 15 Work-Bee: 1:30 pm PDT (14:30 EDT) ... Sanders out

• September 21 Service: 9:00 am PDT (12:00 EDT) (Brandon) ... but it's the Equinox
• September 22 Work-Bee: 1:30 pm PDT 14:30 EDT

• September 28 Service: 9:00 am PDT (12:00 EDT) (Ben)
• September 29 Work-Bee: 1:30 pm PDT 14:30 EDT

• October 20 Seeing Nature Readings and Practices (Ottawa): 13:00 EST

Equinox

Sunday September 22nd, 20:44 GMT (1:44 PM PDT, 16:44 EDT)

• Shelley is NOT on call

http://act.350.org/event/draw_the_line/6196

• Climate workshops on Saturday September 21, 2 PM
• Rally at 5 PM
• Possibly too politically radical

Tabletop biospheres again?

• We don't have the energy for this this year
• Timed writing exercise about what to do with our $14160 yearly budget?

https://www.omsi.edu/starparties/autumnal-equinox/092113

• Star party on the 21st, Rooster Rock or L.L. "Stub" Stewart Park
• Hike in the Columbia Gorge, have a picnic, then go to the Rooster Rock star party
• Hike ideas: Bridal Veil Falls or Beacon Rock

What with funds? Upcoming exercise

• Carol is going to make an exercise for us to consider how to apply our values in using the funds we're putting together
• Don't know if it will directly focus on specific projects like sponsoring space groups' activities, or be more "oblique"

Issues with WeBelieve

• https://github.com/SolSeed/SolSeedCreed/issues

Eric's comments from email

Venerable Life

• I always think that something is missing at the bottom: "Even if we had more wars, more hunger, and more systemic injustice, Life would still be precious."
• Does this mean:
• If we had more life, we would have more wars, more hunger, and more systemic injustic but we would also have more joy, more community, more nuturing and care. Life is precious regardless of pain and suffering.
• or does it mean:
• If things were to go badly, and war and hunger and systemic injustice were to spread and intensify, we will always be able to remember 'Life is precious', these three simple words can give courage, moral guidance and hope to us in the darkest places.

The Nature of Life and the upward spiral

• When I read 'the myriad deaths and extinctions that give rise to that spiral. We celebrate it all.' I think of Ben's reaction.
• But we celebrate the deaths and extinctions of the past because they are what lead to the upward spiral. Without death, without extinction, there is no upward spiral. Just a huge glob of bacteria consuming all inanimate matter in an infinite universe eventually (due to the fact that exponential growth always eventually outstrips geometric growth) the bacterial spherical shell must expand superluminally or death is unavoidable.
• To prevent all death would be to prevent the room for new and better forms. We are not the final product of evolution. To try to become immortal is to treat ourselves as if we are that final product. It is to steal the life from the ever-growing possibilities of the future. Celebrate death because death is the path to better life forms.
• Immortality can be achieved but not for our own patterns. Instead we must experience the spiritual experience of being part of something larger (the Biosphere; SolSeed) and then accept that while our part of the pattern is fleeting, the pattern as whole, of which we are a part may be immortal. Life may burst through all boundaries and flower and spread beyond the possibility of destruction. Just as we expect our skin cells to give their lives to protect us (the larger pattern of which they are but a part). Just as what makes each skin cell individual and unique is lost as is composts down the drain when we dust and wash the dust off our duster, we must accept the expectation of SolSeed that we give our lives (both dedicate our lives and eventually accept the loss of our lives) to help the pattern of SolSeed as a whole, propagate and expand into the future.

SolSeed the body of all life.

• Perfect

Life expressed.

• Yes just think of the possibilities.

Called.

• Just do it!

Dedicated.

• Practice what we preach and preach what we practice.
• I like the way this foreshadows the interrelation of passion, empathy and wisdom while calling forth the dedication life and the affirmation of that dedication through community.

Awakening.

• I was walking through the food court at work today and I was thinking about ego-centric view and community-centric views. We are so certain in the West that our ego-centric, individual freedom centered world view is better than any other.
• Freedom is important. It gives each person the ability to seek a good purpose. Without freedom we could easily find ourselves as part of a society where everyone is forced to work toward a sad, grey, perhaps even evil, purpose.
• But so many of us have lost sight of the fact that Freedom allows us to reach higher not just lower.
• The self sacrifice of letting go of our egos and accepting that we are disposable parts of a greater pattern, who must serve that pattern in order to be meaningful worthy parts of it, this is what freedom allows us to take up.
• We need freedom in order to be free to dedicate ourselves to Life.
• The cosmic religious feeling is the path to understanding what freedom is for.

Sacred Practice.

• Why the emphasis on science here? I think we could drop the first two paragraphs (or move them to the Wisdom section) and expand the second two paragraphs.
• The first sentence of the second paragraph would benefit from a bit of unwinding and expansion.
• The power of our religion comes from supporting us in living the values we have discovered in ourselves. We do not believe that our religion has special access to absolute values. We do not believe that there are values and purposes which are the 'True' values and purposes of humanity. We believe that each religion should create a sacred practice which helps its members fulfill their highest aspirations. We believe that many kindred religions could form a network in which shared life-affirming values could be supported more broadly.
• But most importantly, we practice our religion, and we hold its practice as sacred to us, because we passionately want to honor Life, because we empathetically want to nurture Life and because we believe it is wise to strive toward the Destiny. We are tuning our religion to help us fulfill our individual duty to flower in our communities and our species' duty to help Life take root and flower amongst the stars.

Passion Drives Us.

• Please mister elephant, don't hurt the tree.

Embrace Passion.

• Ahh, Balance.

Empathy is Transcendent.

• To transcend our own ego's and see ourselves as the body of all life, is exactly what I was talking about in the Nature of Life (the talk about celebrating death) and Awakening (about using our freedom to choose to be worthy but disposable parts of a whole rather than individual consumers.

Cultivate Empathy.

• Service to others is something I was thinking about in the food court. When I am at work, it is as natural to me as breathing, to work hard to serve my colleagues. They ask for a report and my finger tips spew forth interlocked SELECT FROM's until the exact data they need is spooling past. I don't need to know why they need the data any more than my blood cells need to know why my muscles need oxygen. I need to know how they will use the data so that I can provide it in a form that will save them time and effort but I don't question their need. I just serve their need.
• For this attitude I am often lauded as if it is something special that I do. But it seems so natural to me that I don't understand the lauding.
• I am paid to do this and I love the craft of it. So why would I do anything else. Why would I shirk the opportunity to be useful, to perform my role, to do my thing.
• But deeply I want to serve the right thing. My colleagues are alive and so by serving them I am sort of serving life. But they in turn serve a bureaucracy which serves a government which I do not feel brings life.
• Around me I hear many colleagues talking about looking forward to retirement, not being happy working all day, wanting to go for a vacation and lie on a beach.
• For me, the only unhappiness I have in my job is that it does not align with my highest aspirations. I don't seek rest and freedom to be lazy as my colleagues seem to be saying that they do.
• I seek the chance to serve Life as unquestioningly and as naturally as I serve my colleagues. I seek the chance to be useful to Life, to play my role for Life, to do the thing I am best suited to do for Life.
• I am happy at work when I am in my groove, doing my thing. At those moments I need nothing more; I can ignore hunger, exhaustion and thirst. I can even ignore the need to pee! These moments are a kind of peak moment.
• But when I think of the big picture, I know that I would be even more deeply happy, if Life was what I was serving.

Wisdom is Effective.

• Ahh to be wise.

Pursue Wisdom.

• Cold (calculating) pursuit (not hot pursuit) silly joke really.

We Bring Life.

• I love this part because of my man-crush on Freeman Dyson. He described, in one of his books, a theory of the evolution of life in which an early form of metabolic protein life (without any DNA) never died but simply went in and out of balance, running metabolically at different speeds depending on where it ended up. That kind of life was the least binary of all.

Ben's comments from email

• "The Nature of Life" page
• Ben thinks we should avoid "celebrating death and mass extinctions"
• Ben thinks it’s worth mentioning that despite virtually every species having gone extinct, there is a tendency for biodiversity to increase over time.
• "Dedicated" page
• Ben thinks it should mention the word “empathy” somewhere.
• "Sacred Practice page"
• The connection between the actual verse of the Creed and the science stuff isn’t clear.
• "Embrace Passion" page
• Ben would clarify that “shaming ourselves fails to bring about change” because the elephant is too big to be pushed around that way.
• "Cultivate Empathy" page
• “Good religions demand...that we help others because it is ‘the right thing to do’” strikes Ben as contradicting our anti-authoritarian depiction of good religion as “supporting us in living the values we have discovered in ourselves.” We don’t want it to look like we support tyrannical religions whose members aren’t allowed to question their definition of what is right. This might be mainly a problem of word choice.
• Please capitalize and italicize The Fiddler on the Roof and add a comma after Tevye.
• "Pursue Wisdom" page:
• This is the first place we use the word “fruits,” and it might be a good idea to define that term somewhere.

Evaluation

• Ben ... feel a little a guilty doing this when people were at my sister's brunch and leaving and I didn't say bye to any of them
• Brandon ... stressed about work, and having the boys mostly by myself for 7 days ... looking forward to more progress on the book