Agenda
- Check In
- Review WWWs
- Weekly Events Logistics
- Review Agenda
- Guided Meditation Feedback
- SolSeed Soundbite
- Viventibus Galaxia ritual
- Funding:
- Children International
- Website
- Evaluation
Check In
- Eric: It's been a hard weekend ... tomorrow is Canada's Remembrance Day, so this morning's UU service was focused on that and on soldiers suffering from PTSD ... also I was feeling insecure about yesterday's service and how you guys felt about it
- Brandon: It's been a bit of a crazy weekend for me ... one thing after another, not that well prepared ... went to Tillamook, saw my grandma, went to Fall Festival, then this morning there was soccer and a birthday party (I forgot that it was a costume party and Sequoia wasn't dressed up) ... a lot going on and not managing it very well
- Ben: I spent the morning writing and posting my first blog entry in months. I feel accomplished about the act of doing that and depressed about the subject of the blog entry.
WWWs from last time
- <s>Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing</s>
- Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- <s>Brandon ... mail ammonite shakers to Ben and Eric ... by tomorrow</s>
- Eric... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- <s>Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing</s>
- Eric ... Write community garden sponsership proposal ... by next call
- <s>Eric ... Invite Michael Dowd to the next call as a orientation call ... by this call</s>
- Eric ... Spend some time creating pages on call subjects ... by next call
- Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
WWWs
- Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
- Eric ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
- Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
Weekly Events Logistics
Service rotation: Eric, Shelley, Brandon, Ben
- November 16 Service: 9:00 am PDT (12:00 EDT) (Shelley)
- November 23 Service: 9:00 am PDT (12:00 EDT) (Brandon on his birthday!)
- November 17 Work-Bee: 1:30 pm PDT (16:30 EDT)
- November 17 Seeing Nature Readings and Practices (Ottawa): 13:00 EST
Guided Meditation Feedback
- Eric: I did something pretty different and was a little worried you guys wouldn't like it, and then when you didn't say anything in the end I was pretty discombobulated at the end ... why were you silent?
- Ben: I was silent because I needed time to think. If we do a guided meditation it should be followed by a silent meditation for at least a few minutes? I liked Shelley's comment as well: "sometimes silence is a form of appreciation."
- Brandon: I can speak for Shelley that she loved it ... she liked it a lot.
- Brandon: I had a couple of logistical issues, managing the boys and not being able to hear Eric for part of the time ... but I loved it and would like to do more of it
- It's in line with our ideas for spiritual experience experiments
- I also agree we should experiment with having a silent meditation to think through our response
- Maybe the guided meditation should replace the reading, so as to take up less time (we can only keep the boys quiet for so long)
- The part I want you to hear is that I loved it ... I appreciate the amount of time and effort you spent putting it together ... it made me feel special and cared for
SolSeed Soundbite
- Ben: I took a Democracy For America activist training course back in 2007 in Redlands ... and I learned that although soundbites aren't everything, it's good if you can reduce your main points to a soundbite so that you can get your main ideas across no matter how little time you have
- Ben: Here is my soundbite and I'd like to hear yours. "SolSeed is a tiny quasi-religious movement. We believe that all life is precious, and that we should help it thrive, grow, and spread to the stars." Meets the DFA criteria of 27 words, 9 seconds, 3 points.
- Brandon: "SolSeed is a cosmic Wisdom Tradition whose central tenet is that Life, in all its messiness, is worthy of veneration. We seek to express Life's vitality through our practice, both individual and collective."
- Ben: I'm concerned that most people won't understand the word Arete (Brandon replaced it with "vital nature")
- Ben: What is your purpose with the phrase "in all its messiness"?
- Brandon: Separate us from "pro-life" ... also, Thomas Berry would say that spreading to the stars is sacrilege until we've gotten into right relationship with other life on Earth, and I want to counter that and say that life is fundamentally worthy of spreading
- Ben: Is the word "cosmic" enough to evoke spreading to the stars?
- Brandon: No, but one of the first questions people will ask is "What is life's excellent nature?"
- Ben: But now you've replaced "excellent nature" with "vitality"...
- Eric: It seems to me that you've felt for a while now that the more important aspect of SolSeed's belief is the "life is precious" part, not the "take root amongst the stars" part ... and that's cool ... you don't need to include the latter in a sound bite about SolSeed, because it emerges from the way we see life
- Eric: "SolSeed is an agnostic religion. We believe that all Life is precious, that we should nurture lives, help Life thrive on Earth, and spread to the stars."
- Ben: combining the terms "agnostic" and "religion" is a very clever way to get a novel idea across
- Brandon: would "atheist religion" also work? ... "agnostic" is much softer and less confrontational
- Eric: I like the feeling of less confrontational (maybe because I've been hanging out at UU). I think it would be interesting to draw believers into SolSeed and see what they do. If we really believe that we would be doing this if God existed, then why wouldn't believers also want to take part in SolSeed?
- Eric: UU talks about the 30-second elevator speech ... this is our version of that
- Of course this concept is also very common among entrepreneurs pitching business plans
Viventibus Galaxia
- Brandon: I loved the fire ... I also loved Ben's design with a pan that's bigger than the galaxy plate, so the candles can go around the edge
- I had the candles in the middle of the plate, which doesn't really match what we're saying
- Eric: If you use alcohol and it spills off the galaxy plate into surrounding water, that should douse it
- Eric: I was having trouble reading the ritual off the e-reader, which isn't backlit
Proposals for what to do with funds
Children International
- Brandon: Are we doing this individually, or pulling funds from the shared pool?
- Can we create a shared account to automatically fund this (and serve as our shared SolSeed money pool)?
- We'd need an official organization, which may cost $500-$1000 per year in directors' liability and general liability insurance
- Eric is in a club, a community association, and a community garden project, and each of them is struggling with funding these insurance policies
- Brandon: Having a huge percentage of Eric's tithe go to Children's International before it even "gets to the virtual pool" doesn't seem right to me
- Eric: We could temporarily just send our tithes to Brandon
- Brandon: I don't feel great about that either ... it doesn't feel wise to do that with any one member
- Brandon: We could set up an account for which I act as custodian but the statements go to Ben or Eric
- Pretend we have an organization, so we can practice for when we eventually officially do so ... this would involve officers (President, Secretary, Treasurer)
- Brandon: Another alternative: We all keep our money, but Shelley and Brandon pay for all four of the Children International projects, and Ben and Eric would pay for something else in the future
- Eric: Children International USA may be confused by a donation that says to send the mail to a Canadian address
Website Design Help
- Brandon: As between having Ben feel self-expressed and getting an ephemeral paid contributor, I'd choose Ben ... therefore I withdraw this proposal
Evaluation
- Eric: I feel much better than I did at the start of the call. I love how these calls are healing.
- Brandon: I am amazed that we have done at least two hundred of these calls and it emphasizes that the doing of the calls needs to work and not just the outcome.
- Ben: I'm feeling like SolSeed is getting close to making big commitments to real stuff in the world. And that's a big transition. Yes we've held events, but there hasn't been an official commitment to bookkeeping and ensuring that everything is responsibly done in a way that will be sustainable. I'm working on coping with that.