A seed of something beautiful!
21 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
Hello friends! We’ve had our first two gift circles and they have been wonderful and successful. We’ve started a group on facebook to facilitate our meetings, please find us as “Oakland Gift Circle.”
While we’ve only met twice, we’ve found a profound sense of intimacy and connectedness through the simple acts of speaking what we need and offering what we have. Though not all needs or gifts are met or received on the spot, the act of saying these things out loud to others is a powerful personal and communal practice. A sacred space emerges as we both honor each other’s individual paths and are also woven together through freely helping each other on those paths.
For those who are interested in the spirit circle, for the moment we’ll be organizing this through the gift circle too as it is already emerging as an amazing way to weave spirituality and community together. It’s all an experiment though so we’ll see what the future holds!
Again, join us on facebook if you’re interested in attending, or email me if you have questions, dashielle (dot) vawter @ gmail (dot) com
November 11th, 7pm Gift Circle Workshop with Alpha Lo
26 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
If you have needs that go unmet, if you have ever wanted to share your skills or talents but not felt you had the support or context you needed, if you are interested in building community, you should come to this workshop.
On November 11th Alpha Lo will be coming over to talk about a really exciting project; gift circles. Gift circles are a new social technology aimed at making it easier for us to create abundance in our lives. At its most basic level gift circles are small groups of people that get together to ask for what they need, to share their gifts, to manifest vision, and to transcend the limited realm of possibilities available to the “undermonetized” (cash poor) in this economy. By sharing resources, time and skills without money, barter or fear of scarcity, we build resilient locally sustainable communities.
Alpha has helped design and start these circles all over the Bay Area and is also involved in writing grant proposals to take this nascent social technology to a higher lever and a bigger audience. I’m excited to learn from him and really excited about the prospect of beginning a gift circle here in Oakland. Please join us, even if you’re interested but not sure yet if the idea makes sense.
Thursday November 11th, 7pm
3209 Hollis St, call 619-818-6359 when you arrive to be let in through the gate
RSVP to this post in the comments, or to my email Dashielle.vawter@gmail.com
Bring a dish or a drink if you like, I’ll have some food and drink to enjoy as well
Berkeley gift circle and Bay Area gift circle Anniversary!!
18 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
The next Berkeley gift circle meeting is on Monday Oct 25th at 6:30 at 2209 Spaulding. They’ve been on hiatus for awhile but they are open to new members and I will definitely be going to this meeting next Monday. Come check it out if you are interested!
There is also an anniversary party for all the Bay Area gift circles that will be going on in Fairfax tomorrow evening. This looks like it’s going to be a great group of people and a really sweet evening of connecting to the greater picture of the movement back towards community. It starts at 6:45 at 102 Wreden Ave. in Fairfax. Have fun with this….
Gift of ceremony to the community
15 Oct 2010 1 Comment
I’m creating an apprenticeship for myself. I’m offering ceremony for the next six months to my community. If you need a wedding performed, or to create a ceremony for your little girl who is soon going to be an older sister, if you want a coming out ceremony or a divorce ceremony, if you want to bring intention to an area of your life, I am offering to help you craft that ceremony as a gift. Please contact me to discuss your needs! I look forward to engaging with you.
Street Retreats
07 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
Street Retreats- put on by an organization called Faithful Fools Street Ministry. For either a day, or a full week a group of people take to the streets of San Francisco and live in the shoes of the homeless and disenfranchised. Participants meet up the day of to discuss their hopes, expectations, fears, etc. The regular monthly street retreats happen on the third Saturday of each month, beginning at 9 AM at the UU church @ 1187 Franklin St., and ending at 5 PM at Fools Court @ 234 Hyde St. The next few dates are 10/16, 11/20, 12/18, and 1/15.
The longer retreats “take the day-long street retreat experience to a much deeper level, [people] encounter even more of their own inner story as it interacts with the outer story of what it means to survive without a home or money. These have been powerful experiences for all who have experienced them, and have created a platform for deeper engagement with issues of poverty in our nation and around the world.” Both adults and children participate in all of the street retreats and people come from across the country as well. Joody and I are both considering participating in a day long one in October and one of the longer retreats sometime in the near future. To learn more about these visit http://www.faithfulfools.org/programs/street-retreats/
This organization is pretty wonderful. The work they do is very transformative in that it does not follow the traditional model of “helping” the homeless. The idea is more to dissolve the divide between rich and poor and hold in a very real way the dignity of every human being by creating a space in which we all can interact together without the typical identification divide of service worker/volunteer to served/needy. This kind of practice is incredible for personal consciousness raising and deepening awareness of structures and ideas in our mind that still hold us in separation.
Next meet up dates
04 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
Hello friends,
Here are the next three dates for gathering; October 14th, 2010, October 27th, 2010 and October 39th, 3043, j k, November 18th, 2010
November 18th. I’m really excited about the November one, Thanksgiving is the following Thursday. We can celebrate families, friends, spiritual families, abundance, what we are grateful for in life, etc. We can also bring traditions, stories, lessons, wisdom from indigenous peoples, or music, poems; whatever you feel would be fun or interesting to share with people. This holiday and time of year are all about abundance and sharing so I may look for a larger location for this so that we can really invite people and celebrate. For some reason the idea of sharing a story about a difficult event that has happened this past year is also calling to me. It’s been a difficult year for some and the idea of looking back together on some of the hardships feels like it could bring gratitude for being in the company of friends into greater focus. It also seems like an acknowledgment of the cyclical nature of life – which is what fall is all about!
October 14th, Share Circle- The idea is similar to what we spoke about at the last meeting, an opportunity to present on your new business/some interesting information you heard/six new organizations you think are great and why/what you’d like to create in the world/what you want to share/what you want to teach/etc. It’ll be a little different in that it is an opportunity to present whatever something going on in the world rather than perhaps the more personal and intimate conversations that sometimes occur.
October 27th, Spirit Circle- Come with a some food or don’t, bring friends and/or lovers, and this is space to talk about whatever is alive for you right now, but also to listen to what others have been experiencing and to hear what others have to say to them. What I love about this is the wisdom that emerges from everybody’s lips on issues we’ve all experienced. All the books we’ve read, all the traditions we’ve studied, all the mentors we’ve known and all the lives we’ve lived show up to listen and to speak to what we share… these have been rich conversations…
Everything starts at 6 meaning you should show up between 6 and 8. At 8 we’ll begin and by 10 we’ll close. This is a little different but it seems like a good move so the group can open and close together. Let me know if this doesn’t feel right to you.
Hello and welcome current and future friends…
30 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
This is a place for keeping up with and/or launching endeavors, projects, and experiments in creating community. It’s new so feel free to make this space your own by making suggestions, becoming an author for it, proposing new ideas, etc.
Coming together, trying out, learning from others, and finding people, projects, and occurrences that have interest for you- I hope you find it useful!
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