thinkoutword eNews

SEEDLINGS

spring 2011

Think OutWord had an 8-hour meeting last Sunday. Sound boring? Try joining it over Skype from thousands of miles away in Switzerland. Try sitting in your room ALL DAY while the newly confident spring sun starts to lean into the bright-green hillside just outside your window...

Now, instead of imagining how bored you must be, imagine spending those 8 hours with a community that is at the edge of its being, that is constantly waking up to itself, constantly creating new forms, forms for the present day, tailor-made to fit (not some borrowed vestiges of the last century or even millennium!) This is what our meeting was like. It was imbued with the curiosity and excitement you experience when you start to make your own clothes or grow your own food, except we're growing our own group, our own community. 

This was our second meeting as a new core group and we spent much of it looking at the fruits  that we've already grown: the "Principles and Practices" we work with both inwardly and as a group; last year's "(Community) Benefit" where we raised enough money to support ourselves while giving all our auction items away for free;  the "Credere Fund" where hundreds of small donations from our peers add up to a few larger grants that we give away to fellow initiative-takers. Then, at the end of the meeting, we took a new step. Through a process led by Peter Buckbee, we looked at how money moves within our organization and adjusted it so that it aligns more closely with our ideals: instead of paying people for their work, we now give the money to those who need it most.

What struck me though, as I sat listening to my friends (munching my Toblerone bar and watching the Swiss sun pack up and move its shine to more appreciative hills), is that the most radical thing about it all is simply that it's peer-led. Since the beginning everyone has had the opportunity to be both teacher and student, but at first, only a few of us carried the administration. Last year was the first year we had a core group, but still, administrative tasks were spread unevenly and we paid a Creative Director (me) to take on some of the work more freely. Now we're finally a flat organization, deciding through consensus how to meet each others needs and empowering each other to take initiative on behalf of the whole. It feels amazing - knowing there's no one in charge but that we're all responsible and that we all have each other's back.

A very, very warm welcome to our four new core group members: Megan Durney, Karin Weinrich, John Scott Legg, and Emily Kozakiewicz. To get a little picture into who these four awesome individuals are, check out their bios on our "Core Group" page.

(Also, I'm very happy to announce the addition of a new section to our eNews: "Current Events through a Threefold Lens." In our ongoing quest to help people understand the world through a threefold perspective, we've created a blog on our website where core group members can share their observations. You'll find the first two articles below!)

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