Seattle Night Out

I loved our SoZoo block party!!

The musicians really had it together, basically 3 local bands, followed by a midnight acoustic jam...
the other activities were fun and well-intuited,
there was plenty of everything,
cool lighting...

Thanks to MarkeTime, our local mini grocer, we had over-abundant BBQ goodies and buns, (and free photocopies for the paper-airplane-survey explained below!)

Thanks to other local businesses, we have over $200 of incentives. I gathered these with the promise to give them to neighbors who jump in and cultivate a small monthly gathering.

Thanks to: Hunger tapas café,
Swingside Little Italian café, Fremont Abbey Arts Center,
Richard's Salon, Hansen's Florist,
Rialto pasta bar & grill,
Video Isle,
American Music,
Lighthouse coffee,
Caffé Vita,
our local Dry Cleaner,
and an Extra Special BIG thanks to the Zoo!!!!!!!!

...As a direct result of these enticing gifts, 3 new groups got started who will meet monthly! One will be crafting, one will be a book group, and one will organize more neighborhood parties... plus our holiday caroling group just
doubled in size and quintoupled in frequency, and might ACtually practice in advance this time (haha)! I wish much joy to the neighbors who are spearheading these efforts, and to those who responded on the sign-up sheets! I'm supporting them in getting up and going within 2 months.

I feel hugely supported as a community organizer/spearheader-support-person now. In the picture you can see some bright green surveys I handed out regarding 'How I would like neighbors to invite me to come together' ... they were filled out, folded into paper airplanes, and flown in!! We now have a poll of how a sample of our neighbors indicated they'd prefer to be kept abreast of neighbors' invitations. Half of the surveyed neighbors signed up for a conversation to help make at least one of these 'media' a reality!

Perhaps our private online social network will become much more active, or something else, the jury is still out on which mode of communication wins our attention first...

Oh, and in the middle of it all, the mayor McGinn popped by and asked me for my business card and some of my time to help his office - I'm in heaven. Sol Villirreal in his office is engaging Seattle's Neighbors, On Purpose!

Making Common Sense

The full title of this essay published in a small book format by the Center for Creative Leadership and written by Wilfred H. Drath and Charles J. Palus is:

MAKING COMMON SENSE
Leadership as Meaning-Making
in a Community of Practice

The essay essentially explains the title. The whole essay rings very true for me.

• Leadership is the practice of making meaning, making common sense (making basic, unbiased observations) in the context of a group of people seeking meaning in their togetherness, all practicing making meaning (feeling useful and On Purpose) together.
• Making meaning together is all of our jobs, to be practiced perpetually.

What this means to me is: we are all here to observe through a specific lens (the lens of our talents, attention, and personal, current vision, mission, and purpose) and feed into the common sense of what is going on. As frustrating (and detrimental) as it can be to have convincing evidence of something and nowhere responsible/responsive to put our wisdom, it is our responsibility as leaders to find out where the information we naturally gather, goes, so that all can benefit.

Exercise Generates Local Energy

I struck up a conversation with a neighbor today who runs a local triathlon training center. Knowing beforehand that I was going to suggest that he generate power with his training machines would have made the conversation awkward, had I not remembered to just connect heart to heart in the moment, and trust whatever will happen to happen at the rate it wants to.

Well, this man and I connected on many, Many more levels than I'd have dared dream possible!! And, long story short: he actually worked at the place that makes the machines he trains people on and was influential enough to ENSURE that they would easily convert to energy-generators... And my enthusiasm prompted action: He's going to convert all of his training gear into grid-feeding machines! When I bump into a neighbor who wants to store/use the energy, I'll hook 'em up... on purpose.

Excuses to Bump Into Neighbors I: Solar Cooking

If you have any love for the following, you'll have a blast experimenting with solar cooking: meeting neighbors, science, interesting conversation, living lightly on the planet, arts and crafts, engineering, thermodynamics, cooking and baking, cutting edge technology, common sense, saving energy, survival skills... the list goes on.

I love putting something out to cook in my solar oven and doing other things within earshot or with it in view. I notice people noticing, or I notice neighbors not noticing, and I have an innocent excuse to strike up conversation: check on my food that's cooking thanks to the sunshine!

"Would you like to see my dinner in progress?"
"Woah, check out this thermometer!"
"Your dog is curious about my ______ dish. Come look!"

Next thing you know, we're talking about alternative energy efforts they're making or considering, or about little changes they've made to live lightly, sometimes diet is the topic, other times its engineering and science. No matter what, it's much more fun and engaging to share an experience than to talk about ourselves, in my experience. I love solar cooking! ...and it's yummy too.

It's one way to meet neighbors on purpose.

Longing and BElonging

I asked myself the following question one day, and I have felt like I belong ever since: "In a perfect world, in which everyone's needs are met, and we all know how to stay that way, where do I live?"

...I imagined myself stirring, waking from sleep in a new place. I asked myself: what does it smell like here? how does the light on my eyelids feel? what's the temperature like? how do the sheets feel on my skin? as I get out of bed, what does the floor feel like beneath my feet? what size and shape is the room? what other activities take place in this room? where is my desk/creation station? what communication tools are present? ...and I just noticed the wordless answers - the sense of the space...

Next, I asked myself: when I open my bedroom door, how does the doorknob feel in my hand? what does my door communicate to the outside? what is just outside my door? who is there? how does our connection feel? what is just down the path? what do I do there?

...I simply soaked in the sensations that came to mind. For me, this involved coaching myself "just go with the image, it's just a dream, no need to stop, just finish the exercise" ...and I am soh. glad. I. did!

I knew from then on what kind of neighbor I longed-to-be, and being-the-longing, I found myself becoming... a neighbor on purpose!

turning to one another

Margaret Wheatley wrote a wonderful book that liberated me from some important cart-before-the-horse thinking. When I started reading 'turning to one another', I immediately felt a deep sense of trust in this author.

I soon found myself scanning the appendices for what schools of thought and conversation formats she appreciated enough to mention there. I feasted on the list: some were familiar, some new. I felt my energy go 'high' out of my desired range and the accompanying thoughts were:
"I must study all of these! I love this! A comprehensive list of the Great Conversation Formats! Yay! ...and... oh no... that would take years... I feel so ignorant... Well, I will always be a beginner, and having a 'beginner's mind' is good..."

I read on and discovered that this wise woman recommends that we Just Do It: Just turn to one another! The title of the book is even devoid of capitalization, as if to say: "this is not a Method, separate from you. this is what humans DO." I feel relieved of some kind of tension I never knew I held. I promptly started sharing my Neighbors On Purpose project with neighbors, and haven't looked back. I have access to more intuition, and feel more rapport with others thanks to this book. I feel I gave myself permission to move forward, to be a neighbor now, freestyle, feeling on purpose.

Transition Handbook, Transition Movement 2

I changed an old post from another blog I used to have now that I have more perspective. This is dated around the time I was speed-reading the book, and the insights that ensued invited a deeper level of my being to become conscious, confident, and loved. I quit a job I loved, so I could more fully embody the wisdom this book aroused in me: wisdom about myself, and about my role in the context of my neighborhood.

If you plan on reading this book, please don't read it alone. Regardless, also, please read the 3 segments in the following order, so your brain doesn't make you top-heavy: Hands, Heart, Head.

Though it's a great thing he did, and I'm very very happy with the book that became my Bible for a year or more, I was never completely satisfied with the causal orientation of it (peak oil, living without oil) (...in fact, noticing the feelings of guilt that came up for me regarding CO2 while reading this book helped me to see the false motivations my environmentalism had been partially based in in the past and let that go.)

Frankly, I was happy at reading the (then) news (to me) of peak oil, since it would cause everyone to be an environmentalist... the thought of which brought me to consider the following issue I find to be both an effect and a cause of environmentally unwise behavior: loneliness (perpetuated by goals to unite too many people to remedy loneliness in one way or another, and frustration to the point of self-isolation).

I think the author has a good point: through collaboration on a local basis, on a manageable scale, guided by common vision, we can transcend the all of issues arising from peak oil and climate chaos without exacerbating either of the 2 aspects... AND I think there is a third aspect... an aspect of human perception very easily exacerbated in cultures where the issue is under-recognized already, an aspect of sustainability that is equally pivotal: the balance of living in both privacy & isolation, uniqueness & loneliness, empowerment & restraint, an image of humanity & a role in the whole, survival & spiritual transcendence, Response-ability & Trust.

I commit to being inspired by the Transition Movement, and embracing it as a wake-up call to my role as an invitation to healthy interdependence on the scale that I can affect, in the realm that I am naturally talented, with an eye for authentic and deep sustainability. I'm not a scientist (anymore). I shouldn't talk about science. I'm a social being. I'll be a neighbor on purpose.

Of course my efforts are part of the global transition, and I am in the 'heart and soul' area described as necessary for a good transition... I just don't want to call it that, and I don't have to wait for someone to host alarming movies in my neighborhood to have the same positive effect. I believe that when my life is a party boat, and more and more people get on it, and they inspire more, and learn how to invite more... there's no need to tell the last few they're on the Titanic. When it's just them, they're bound to get together and find community of some kind... and we'll just keep inviting them to the party... or rescue them out of the water later.