Upcoming events: seasonal cycle start!

• Friday, July 10: Open IS Connection Call (see you tomorrow!)
• Sunday, July 12: IS Community Call 23.1

The previous newsletter was Learn to love again and last Sunday was a rest week for our Community Calls.

Note: there will be no public newsletter next week — I'll be entirely offline while on vacation, and will next mail you again on Thursday the 23rd.

Sometimes I wax poetic (like last week) here.
Other times I get transparent with the quantitative: 70 Web members, 39 Community participants, 27 pulling the lever on the Gumball Machine, 408 subscribers to this public newsletter, 6 recent unsubscribers (yay for clarity and choice), 7 other private weekly/biweekly meeting types that don't show up in the regular list above, etc... oh, and a new email template (piloted internally last season).

And sometimes, perhaps most often, I try to convey "what's alive" through a blend of "what's happening" and "what am I learning." And I'm talking meta about this, and I'm searching for an inroad, because this week, hoo boy, this week was a growth week for me personally — kicking my ass in the best way, friends helping me pull my patterns out of the shadows, pushing and pointing at ways I get in my own way and unconsciously add stuckness to the systems I'm trying to lead well.

The last five days of learning — gosh this newsletter wouldn't fit the context or the content that would connect across this gap as I perceive it. At least, not in the way that I've been able to be with people, friends, this week and just open up powerfully and bidirectionally... the communication rides on the connection.

That's the thing I'll try to translate out from deep-in-the-context-onion today: the connection between love and challenge, and the way that connection sits at the point between subordination and separation in the dimension of source-level tension. Heck though, that's just a geeky way of saying that friends who'll call you out in love are priceless treasures. Even more so when doing it across some kind of power inequality! Another phrase that comes to me (which, if it's not a cliche should become one) is "you need a push back to lean in without falling over". Such a gift, such a precious gift.

It'll take some time for more of this week's revealings to percolate up into less-embedded packages. By then (post- 20th anniversary trip, woohoo) I may have yet another pile of downloads — I'll be honest, I'll probably never catch up or get it all out to you here, dear reader.

But that is why Intentional Society is more than a newsletter. It's an ecosystem of real human connection, across spaces which support and concentrate that intention — because we are made for relationship and become most who we are called to be when we're connected to a kinship bigger than any solo self can be. Find yourself some of that somewhere, there's some advice — trust me, it's worth it.

Cheers,
James