Intentional Society: Community in motion
Three small vignettes of what is happening, moving, weaving around and in us:
The tangibility of our relational field was present again with us last week, when we contrasted a high-structure activity (the skill-building of Empathy Circling, the communications equivalent of isolating and exercising a few specific muscles) with a complete lack of goal/rules/structure (aside from our standard Interaction Agreements). Inside that freedom, we could still see something happening in the quality of what it's like to be together. There's a "we space" active in shared presence, and a connection of every I-to-We along which something energetic/empathic flows, and a web of interpersonal connections and relationships undergirding the relational field/fabric. I feel more gravity in our "us" week by week, anchoring and holding more securely the characteristics of the essence of our we-ness.
We're trying out a name, "Community Practice Session," to replace the generic term "General Session" in referring to our weekly calls. This also adds some specificity as we de-center the weekly call sequence in the identity of Intentional Society and make our membership membrane more inclusive. The concrete shifts are small and low-impact, just like this name change, but they add up to a perspectival expansion that will both widen and deepen the spirit of this society we're growing together.
In our community practice session this week we're welcoming Mary as friend and featured guest, who will introduce us to a gift economy structure, a circle practice around giving and receiving in community. This has been reified as the Gift Circle practice in one lineage, elsewhere as an Offers and Needs Market, and Mary has learned and iterated this practice in a way that focuses on giving and receiving in an intentional and conscious way.
Cheers,
James