Intentional Society: It's time! Season 11 invitation
To catch the start of Season 11 as a new member, click here for the day-before-kickoff orientation on Saturday, July 8th at 1pm Pacific (4pm Eastern, 8pm UTC).
I feel a (joyful, rapture-ish) pīti suffusing outward from my chest, as my awareness touches the edges of this upcoming season and the possibilities of growth, connection, life, and progression. What follows is the invitation I wrote yesterday. Whether it's for you or someone else, please use it however you're inspired to. Onward and upward together, even when/where we're apart! (Existing/past members, check your inbox for your Season 11 registration link.)
What sort of collective life would make an ideal space for you to thrive? How could we get there from here? Last night as I listened to the sound of fireworks in my neighborhood, notionally celebrating the formation of the USA, I wondered what “convening a new societal contract” might have felt like almost 250 years ago. There must have been (momentarily setting aside the political and moral complexities of revolution and colonialism) a breathtaking sense of possibility permeating the establishment of new laws and new power structures. In frontier towns, religious settlements, and the continental congress, what societal innovations could they “of the people, by the people, for the people” see as within their power to choose?
Today, one collective exploration of these culture-crafting questions goes by the name Intentional Society. Maybe you’ve heard of it as “becoming the people we want to be” and “a community for people who want to grow.” Yet as we evolve, it’s not merely about individual self-transformation, or the “relational field” that powers it. We’re starting up our next season in a few days and I’m wondering, what does “becoming the community we want to be” look like, and how will we continue growing and maturing into that?
We have a lot going already: our structures support connection and engagement at pairwise, small group, and congregational sizes. We’ve practiced coaching and feedback and perspective-taking and giving and receiving and accountability and holding all those things in expansive acceptance. We’re dancing with polarities of being and also doing, interior and also exterior, individual and also collective. Now how far can a distributed/virtual community go? How does it connect to everything physical? How shall we engage with the world as we extend our integrity outward?
We intend to keep following the aliveness of these questions and leaning into awareness, acceptance, and integrity. The only way to know, facing a complex system, is to live it and learn continuously! Now, we asked ourselves “who else do we want to be here?” a few weeks ago and, if you are someone who:
- is looking for relational development and heartfelt community
- has gone through a personal growth journey and now wants to expand out and integrate further
- brings under-represented or less-WEIRD perspective or lived experience
- would like to co-create-and-do things that have never been done before (with post-achiever-mode, positive internal ambition)
…then you might want to get involved with Intentional Society — starting this Saturday (yes, in a few days) or whenever that resonance touches you. Cheers as well to all our friends and allies living life with greater intention. Ever onward and upward!