INTRODUCING GTW'S LEADERSHIP CIRCLE
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From: Nadine M.
Date: Tuesday, August 15, 2006, 3:36 PM
Subject: Introducing GTW's Leadership Circle
Reply to: 256292
ID: 253887

Jeannie,

thanks for posting this - can you or someone else from the leadership please post something to let us all know how the congress in Canada went? what things are being worked on or focused on - what events are coming up - what can we as women in the larger circle of circles do to get involved or offer support? What will be the focus of the November gatherings? and what work needs to be done to help prepare for those?

It is good to know that you are in regular teleconference with others who have led this effort for several years - but I still feel like we are missing some kind of feedback loop, that keeps the bulk of us informed - or not as the case may be

In the absense of that some things (in my personal experience of reading my emails each day) seem to be running amok

Is there a place on the website where summaries of what occurred at each of the congresses is or can be posted? Is the work from congress to congress progressive upon one another, or separate from eachother?

Are there themes or projects that have come out of the congresses that can be followed up on?

I guess while I am thankful for your explanation, I would appreciate if the leadership could step up here and lend some re-focusing

thanks Nadine

---- On Mon, Aug 14, 2006, Jeanie DeRousseau Eisen wrote ---

Dear Women Arising!

My name is Jeanie DeRousseau, and I'm a member of GTW's Leadership Circle. I join 14 other women who teleconference regularly about Gather the Women, and are holding the space for this initiative.

We are, in turn, joined into tiered and overlapping circles around the world, including women arising in Kenya, Brazil, Australia, India, England, and Canada to do the 6 Congresses on 6 Continents projects, and women stepping forward in the U.S. and Canada to do local gatherings in 33 different cities in November and March. We are entirely volunteer and arising to do this work from the deepest callings of our heart.

It seems incredible to me that all this is self-organized, not top-down, and that it began with a few women called to "gather the women" in 2002! My heart-connection to this arising came in two ways: through a broadcast email that spoke to me of gathering ONE BILLION women in small and large circles; and through a heart friend who unbeknownst to me was part of the initial discussions about GTW (convergent synchronicity!)

Our "leadership" has been as organic as the arisings to gather. We have learned that anything unexpressed will come back to haunt what we create. We have learned that when we do not value what is arising in us, we create lack of value. We have learned that conflict within us leads to conflict without. AND most importantly, we have learned that true sisterhood takes great courage to overcome the deep patterns of fear and mistrust that keep us smiling when we want to cry or shout.

It is really only since last October that I knew that my deep participation in Gather the Women was about the Internet. It is only since this past weekend (at a Retreat for Evolutionary Women in Santa Barbara) that I truly understood that my specific assignment was to create spaces on the Internet that are as living and resonant as our gatherings where women look into each other's eyes to see the One Aliveness that fuels us all.

I know that the Internet's potential is to be the nervous system of something new, of a body of humanity, harmonized and at peace with itself. I also seem to know that to shift this virtual space toward the qualities that we want the world to exhibit, each of us must show up here with as much truth and self-awareness as we can, and I believe, with as much love as we can.

Let me offer just three more thoughts:

First of all, when you logon through GTW's site, click on "LightPages", and you will go directly to the "Online Conversation", where you may post a new message. It is also easier on LightPages to change your preferences, to subscribe and unsubscribe to the forum. (POST...My contact info and preferences).

Secondly, may I ask that when you enter this space, you take a moment to breathe. Really consider it sacred space, where you may tune in to who we all really are. I know that it will take many of us showing up here with this kind of atunement to the greater whole of humanity, to move this Internet toward its harmonizing capacity, its possibility for truly uniting the human family.

And finally, I would like you to know that Bruce Schuman is GTW's volunteer partner hosting this interactive space. He is also hosting many sites for the interfaith movement, and is a man of deep integrity. If he mis-steps, it is only that his passion to develop the Internet as a means of uniting diversity is so strong, that it is pushing him from the inside to learn what he needs to know.

I am so delighted to find you all here, so inspired by your truths and by your projects. This is truly a time for women to show up collectively, bringing the skills of the mother to this adolescent world, from the knowing that we are indeed one human family.

Namaste, Jeanie

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