WEAVING THE WORLD
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From: Sharon Riegie M.
Date: Thursday, February 26, 2009, 7:01 AM
Subject: Weaving the World
Reply to: 267279
ID: 267284

Thanks Jeanie and many blessings at the CSW!

Here is what I am gathering from our conversations and I am open to feedback. What I see that is missing is a system that provides interconnectedness between women; individuals, groups, circles and organizations that flows information FOR action. I think that action is the piece I am looking for.

I understand the many places where wisdom is shared, where ideas come forth, and that is already in place and done best, I think, in smaller groups.

However, there is an aspect of female mission that has been missing or the planet would not be in the dire places it is today. That aspect is the movement from discernment and wisdom to say what will or what will not be allowed for our lives. That right to know what will bring greater life and what will bring further death is coupled with the responsibility to act and say NO to anything that brings dis-ease and death. If we had been at the helm, doing our complete job, we would not have mercury in babies inoculations, we would not allow the destruction of our planet, we would not have toxins in our food or touted as "sweetening". Do you see that part of the picture?

What I see is a way for women to share what is going on, new ideas for good as well as situations that show "death" and then to choose how and when to act.

As one example, I received this in my e-mails yesterday: Yesterday 28 undocumented immigrants were chained and arrested in a manufacturing plant in Bellingham, Washington. Seventy-five heavily-armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided their workplace with helicopters, riot gear, and buckets of ankle chains and handcuffs.

http://www.campaignforcommunities.org/act/stoptheraids

Hauling off hardworking men and women in chains in a paramilitary operation sows fear across our country. At a time in which we should focus on making America work for all of us, the Obama Administration is giving us more of the same divisive tactics that have only hurt our businesses and communities.

We need REFORM, not RAIDS.

And where are the millions of other mothers and wives in our country who are not asking for accountability, or reform or even asking questions beyond the media voice of... "we are protecting from terrorists?"

Thanks for the listening,

Sharon Riegie Maynard

--- On Wed, Feb 25, 2009, in msg267279, Jeanie DeRousseau wrote ---

Dear Sharon,

I'm certainly in tune with your vision... continuing to look for right partnership... I'm going to free associate here, and hope you'll bear with me (I'm off to the UN CSW meetings tomorrow, so I might not be able to participate for awhile).

LightPages began in response to the needs of Gather the Women and Evolutionary Women, borrowing lots from what Bruce had in place for groups that came before, who used his Interspirit platform. I think both Interspirit and LightPages have evolved, because different groups and women have asked for specific features. This seems completely right. And now your impulse is here...

We have used surveys before... in Standing Women, we had 1/10 of those who joined that community respond to our survey, several hundred I remember. Bruce, is that still up to take a look at? And I also did a few surveys on resonance in the Santa Barbara Conscious Evolution community. I actually spent some time analyzing them (I'm an anthropologist by training), and found that at those times anyway what people had to say was not very juicy, although it did help to see something about the demographics as you say.

Now I'm sensing in your idea, Sharon, something more than ordinary information, something that I seem to be reaching for too, certainly Bruce and Bonnie, maybe everyone. I might call it a path to collective wisdom. Clearly, when women get together in circle, something that is more than the sum of the parts comes through, and everyone benefits. But online...

Well, that's the point of LightPages... to have the resonance of the circle online, so that something more can happen.

Bruce, I loved your idea of a kind of survey / blog combination, where responses could be commented on. Then, I thought, what if new questions could be added by the survey-takers themselves.

But then, Bonnie, I turned back to what we've been doing with Teresa (Ruelas of Offerings Publications) on our radio show, and I imagined a survey process where specific questions were asked of each responder to bring out more of their wisdom. (Bruce and Sharon, on our radio show, we're practicing inviting each other deeply into the question from Evolutionary Women ... "what do you know that you were born to know for these times?"), and we're having incredible conversations. Sharon, I know Sisterspace has evoked some deep wisdom through audio "interview/innerviews" as well.

So I could envision that being able to comment or question on survey answers might function best in small online groups to bring out each person's wisdom, with everyone asking more and more questions of each other to really evoke the wisdom at the center.. more like interviews from the heart than impersonal surveys.

Sharon, it may be that many surveys to specific small groups (with better responsiveness, I would imagine) could then be "summarized" to provide the collective flow that you're envisioning, then eliciting the next round of questions in the smaller groups evoking more wisdom. Bruce, this could be more like the political process we've talked about and others have suggested, where conversations among a smaller group of people are taken to be representative of the larger conversation.

One final possibility might be partnering the audio kind of interview/conversation with the online survey/blog kind of interview.

So that you all for the evocation... I love it, and am very grateful for the opportunity. Please send blessings to New York for me... I'm going to mix with 5500 women from around the world with some trepidation... lots of tough stuff going on.

Namaste, Jeanie

--- On Wed, Feb 25, 2009, in msg267277, Sharon Riegie Maynard wrote ---

Here is where I have been this idea. I don't know that what I am envisioning can be done within Light Pages. I sense the need for a neutral field, whatever that might mean. And Light Pages has been created for a specific audience.

I have put together my plan in this form:

Weaving the World With Women

Women in Action within the U.S. is those who I would reach our to include, all ethnicities. Intent: To identify and expand or create a national system to network women into collaborative information sharing and action. What would be added to women: The possibility is joyful, honoring connections and powerful actions. How to begin: Events, surveys and communications leading up to a teleconference in mid-May, 2009.

Survey: The intent of the survey is: To create a space in which women can easily and simply give voice to their views, concerns, ideas on a regular basis. To create a space where the diversity of women’s voices can be seen and heard by the widest range of women as possible within the U.S. To use a system to analyze, i.e, demographics with concepts To gather information that will be the basis of conversations at the May 2009 teleconference around collaborative leadership, grass roots activism, building community beyond self or society imposed boundaries, circle principles, healing/transforming the female story/wounds that have kept us limited, etc.

Tele-conference: The intent of the tele-conference is to create a space to begin forming a sense of community as women within the U.S. To acknowledge that we are very different in our views of the world and realize the value of diversity with respect. To see the vision of collaboration and begin learned how to create partnerships within that model. To have various women leaders share their skills, i.e. circles, vision holding, activism in order to learn from each other rather than power struggle over who and what is “right”.

Beyond that, I have a sense of a very simple structure to flow information, allow action, point out organizations that serve in specific ways, etc. That is for another conversation.

It seems that what I am seeing here is conversations that are important to those within Light Pages and similar groups, very valuable.

It is within the listening that new emerges and so thanks for the space to listen.

Sharon Riegie Maynard

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