(part of 2008 Conference Planning)

On the call: Adin Rogovin, Vanessa German, Jane Hughes-Gignoux, Skye Burn, John Abbe, Lyn Bazzell, Nancy Glock-Grueneich

What's next:

Adin, Jane and Nancy will keep researching places

Funding group (Jane, Skye, Adin - did Tom or Peggy come?) will meet again

Vanessa, Nancy and John will draft something about framing from the conversation in this call

Next call is December 22, 3pm - call 605-990-0400, code is 180380 - see 2008-12-22 meeting

Agenda/notes

Check in

Venues (research reports and next steps)

Adin, Jane and Nancy have started looking at places. Nancy says dates are filling up fast. Detailed notes on Story Field II Venues.

Funding (research reports and next steps)

Adin wrote up a Story Field II Budget Estimate

Who wants to write up a statement about what were doing?

Framing vision/process

Might help to look at:

Story Field Conference Report

Inquiry from Whidbey: How might we help to infuse the collective consciousness with the most uplifting, integrative, harmonious and life-affirming story available regarding humanity’s chosen future?

What's the intention of this conference?

In relation to first conference?

A vision inquiry - not really intended to get an answer - might be a good way to frame things, rather than a vision statement.

(I found multiple versions of the quote Jane read, and pulled together this. --John)

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers." --Rainer Maria Rilke

Some inquiries to help us explore:

What is the story field?

A field like the field of mathematics, or the field of literature

Is it an existing thing?

Something like a magnetic field that arises from all the stories

??

Are we creating a new story and if so what is it?

What is the old story?

Is this the dominant story?

Whose story is this?

Do we want to make all of the stories into one big story?

Can we tell a story that works with all the different stories?

How do we include all of the stories?

How might all stories have the space to be heard, and integrated into whatever collective story emerges, if one does?

Why are things the way they are today?

For example: Enormous, largely invisible institutions keep in place a system that privileges some over others. Based on the story that some people have more rights than others.

What needs to be there for the story field to be expressed?

What is the role of art?

Can "art" here include all of our creative capacities?

Many people don't experience art as something separate from themselves.

Other thoughts:

Invite Tom to offer something at the conference as part of the framing

Distinction between dominant story and shared story.

Stories of individuals related to stories of groups?

Not knowing - willingness to be in endless living inquiry, be willing to stay open to possibilities.

People of color have not been in control of their own story. Make a distinct break - be careful/mindful/prayerful, about our audacity, about how this invitation is put out there. There's been stuff in this conversation that feels bad in that same old way.