Thanks, Ria

What did we 'learn'?  Thanks, Heather, for the question.  And thanks especially for reminding us that whatever happens is the only thing that could or should.

I found myself full of great yearnings throughout the salon.  It steadily felt like my yearnings could be sated (satiated?) if only . . . if only. . . something felt almost within my grasp but it never quite coalesced for me.

I had a lot of inner dissonance around the push for action, esp. around the idea that we are seeding a movement.  It seems so wrong, to me, to start out creating a large-scale movement;  this seems like a top-down approach and, yet, all my instincts about 'what wants to emerge' tell me that the days of top-down, large-scale change are over.  

Yesterday, I had a lovely moment of clarity in which I felt a new ease.  I wrote a story for the Open Space Listserv about living in a co-housing community and I realized the folks in my former co-ho were living evolutionary lives, creating new culture day-by-day, bird-by-bird.  And then I realized that millions of people all over the planet are creating new culture, stone-by-stone, loaf-by-loaf.  I know my view, that a 'movement' is absolutely not what wants to emerge, is not held by the 'leaders' of our little salons (I guess I don't see myself as one of the leaders, eh?  I feel so driven by Tom's apparent certainty that we have to scale up big in order to have something worth doing. . .

What was missing?  What did I learn?  What am I still longing for?

I would love to go to gatherings like this salon regularly, cyclically.  Maybe four times a year, aligned with the seasons.  Having this element in my life would be dazzlingly wonderful.  That would be 'enough' for me.  Convening a wide range of people to get together and experience each other richly and with a conscious aspiration for collective consciousness is probably enough for me.  I realized that I long for more opportunities to love and nurture other people deeply.  I loved my role as hearthkeeper because I loved the opportunity it gave me to nurture other people.  so here I am, sitting with all my nurturing impulses cracked wide open. . . and I don't see where to put them.  I realized I long for deeper intellectual engagement.  I long to start reading big books with the kinds of people I met at the salon.  I used to always be involved with people who read books together; every work group I belonged to always used to read a book together. When did I lose that?  I long to talk about the books and ideas that fascinate me and to hear other people's ideas.  I long to live in community.  I want to join Andrew's emergent, intentional community but goodness, I don't think I qualify as an activist.  I am intrigued by Heather and Adin's intention to buy a retreat center in the mountains.  I want to go back and live again in my old co-housing community.  I want to fill my daily life up with brilliant creatures of love that will let me love them and love me back.

I don't want to go back to my life.  I want a new one.