Invitation

Our draft theme

We came to agreement around this purpose: an invitation to invoke and explore the dynamic tensions we are holding as a collective.

See separate page for considering [[WhoGetsInvited]]

[[PreviousInvitation]] (saved aside in original form for reference and raw material)]

The remainder of this page is a working draft of the new invitation. Please make your suggested changes right in this copy by editing the page if you are comfortable with that, otherwise use the comment feature at the bottom of the page, leaving it open for someone to try to incorporate your idea into the text.

Dear ________,

Two extraordinary multi-day "Evolutionary Salons" took place recently. These two gatherings engaged over 100 leaders like yourself, people who are re-shaping their fields of expertise and/or advancing their work by means of an emerging evolutionary/ecological perspective and inquiry.   

The theme of the first salon was "Evolutionary Directionality, Emergent Complexity, and the Future of Humanity," and of the second, "Catalyzing Collective Intelligence and Social Creativity."  See footnote #1 for details of first salons.

These events were profoundly moving and inspiring. The response to our initial invitations was so strong that many of the leaders who wanted to attend had to be placed on a waiting list. Salon 2 participants arrived from over fifteen countries. A shared sense emerged that this moment in history and evolution is calling for additional gatherings of this nature, and that some kind of movement or wave is being seeded. 

We are today inviting you to Evolutionary Salon 3, the theme of which is to invoke and explore the dynamic tensions we are holding as a collective.  We are finding that many people read their invitation to the salon and feel a call to attend.  Perhaps you are feeling such a call as you read this!

Salon 3 is scheduled to be held May [19 or 20]-24, 2006 at the Chinook Center of the Whidbey Institute, a remarkable retreat setting located on Whidbey Island, an hour north of Seattle, Washington.  See footnote #2 below for more detail.

Our shared inquiry over the course of these salons has been framed by questions such as the following:

• How do we support a movement towards the conscious evolution of increasingly conscious social systems?
• How can we make the community of co-evolutionists more visible to itself so that it can be as influential as possible?
• What existing or visionary forms of social creativity could play significant roles in the evolution of social systems?
• How can "The Great Story" (the epic of evolution told as a personally and socially meaningful, inclusive, science-based creation myth) be told in ways that inspire millions of people with different belief systems to cooperate along just, sustainable lines? 
  
• What can we learn about the interrelated facets and dynamics of social evolution that can be used as a curriculum to educate agents of conscious evolution of social systems as well as orient people to the role of their work in the larger movement?

The emerging focus of Salon 3 (ES3) is "to invoke and explore the dynamic tensions we are holding as a collective"   We are finding that we want to focus ES3 on what all this exciting energy means and where it wants to go and what is being called into the world.  Those of us convening this salon feel called to explore into areas such as these:

• When we feel "called", what is calling us?  How does this experience relate to evolution?
  
• Can we envision or recognize attractors that are drawing us into the future?
• What sort of coherence, if any, would enhance the evolutionary power of today's wildly diverse future-oriented initiatives to catalyze a consciously evolving civilization?
  
• How can or do we embody evolution and vision as we co-create our world?
• How do consciousness, social systems, and tools/technologies interact to influence evolution?
• What does it mean to increase the capacity of the field of conscious evolution?
  
• What are the evolutionary processes that support us in these inquiries?
• What do we really mean by evolution? Should a common meaning emerge? What is the role of the Great Story in this?  Are there other evolutionary frames of reference we should include?
  

As mentioned above, we will be meeting at the Chinook Center of the Whidbey Institute, on Whidbey Island, just north of Seattle, Washington.  You are asked to pay for your personal travel, food, lodging and facilities expenses.  The registration fee for this salon will be self-determined at the gathering. 

We very much want you to join in this conversation, and our space is limited. We have no operating capital so your deposit is necessary to make this salon happen.  Please [registration procedure, payment procedure]. WE NEED A REGISTRAR BEFORE THE INVITATION GOES OUT.

We know that evolutionary innovation and emergence is not just something that happened in the past, but is happening right now in profound ways -- developments in which we are intimately involved.  We feel an imperative for ourselves -- and for society as a whole -- to become more conscious, co-creative participants in this evolution.  We believe that generative cross-disciplinary conversation among well-networked, knowledgeable people is catalyzing an important shift in that direction.

If you would like to be part of this group, please register soon. We hope you say yes.

Sincerely,

Michael Dowd: Cell/425-760-9941 MBDowd@bigplanet.net

WHO SHOULD BE LISTED ON THIS INVITATION? 

 Footnote #1:  (More detailed writeups of the purpose and vision, bios & pictures of those who attended, and reports from each session can be found here: http://www.thegreatstory.org/ev-salon.html and http://www.thegreatstory.org/ev-salon2.html.) An energetic ongoing dialogue has emerged at a new web site catalyzed by Salon 2: please visit http://www.evolutionarynexus.org//.

Footnote #2:  More information, including participant bios and photos, is being collected at http://www.thegreatstory.org/ev-salon3.html. [This page needs to be created before the invitation goes out! Is someone on the host team called to do this tech work?] 

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