B. October 2009

A "New Beginning for Play as Being

Pema wrote the following mesage to the guardians on October 4:

This month feels like a new beginning for Play as Being.

Of course, there is the continuity, over the last one and a half years, of the four SL sessions a day, and the four RL 9-sec breaks an hour. During this time we have grown and matured, in many ways.  We have our system of dedicated guardians, hosting sessions and posting chat logs. We have our band of scribes, summarizing highlights every three days. In addition, many of you have helped out greatly with so many services, from building and landscaping to keeping the wiki and autorecording going, chasing chat logs, continuing the chronicles, rotating scribes.

All of that has been a major accomplishment, over and above anything we could have expected when we started in April last year, in the little tea house, just getting together for a chat about the 9-sec. We have formed a warm and cozy yet open-minded and inviting community. And remarkably, we have done so without sectarianism or bureaucracy. I find this truly amazing.  We accomodate any form of religious and spiritual practice, including purely humanist approaches, yet we go deeply into each practice, with a spirit of respect and exploration. And we have avoided any hierarchical structure: all our decisions are based on consensus arrived at through SL PaB sessions and email group discussions.

Pema went on to talk about the retreat in California and the decision to hold four reterats a year. There would be one in Princeton on November 5-8, Malta in January,  and tentatively: California in April and Hawaii in July. In addition Piet mentioned the new Retreat Village and the Village Hall. Then Pema made the folowing proposals:

1) to hold a weekly guardian meeting in SL, where all of us can give our input, expressing our wishes and offering our contributions in  terms of time and skills, while discussing together how to let PaB   grow organically through all the new transitions.

2) to establish a working group of half a dozen individuals who will  help coordinate the main PaB activities, taking over some of the   roles that I have been playing so far in keeping everything moving behind the scenes.

Working Group

Pema announced the members of a new working group on October 10. The initial members were: Eliza, Eos, Genesis, Maxine, Pema, and Storm. Pema noted the following purposes of the group:

"The main reason to have a working group is to make sure that all the great new ideas proposed and decided upon are also actually carried out; it is all too easy for a volunteer organization to come up with plenty of brilliant ideas, only to see things peter out for lack of follow-up.  Of course, the flip-side of coordination is that it can become a bit heavy-handed and/or it can create a kind of insider track.  We want to do what we can to avoid either danger, and we count on all of you to help us in that respect!"

Resumption of Guardian Meetings

The following day, October 11, was the first meeting of the guardians since summer 2008 in the new Village Hall provided to us by Storm. It was a lovely space that felt intimate although it had seating for 78 guardians. In the first meeting we began to talk about what we could do to make our PaB sessions more meaningful. This topis was the main one for subsequennt sessions in the month.

Book Club

On October Eliza and Eos began a book club on Eliza's plot in the Retreat Village. The first book discussed was Ethical Know-How (Action, Wisdom, and Cognition) by Fancisco J. Varela.

October Guardians

Bolonath Crystal, Vendy Walpole and Widget Whiteberry became Guardians in October.

October Scribes

The scribes for October were Hana Furlough, Mickorod Renard, Fox Monacular, Genesis Zhangsun, Gaya Ethaniel, Arisia Vita, SophiaSharon Larnia, Eos Amaterasu, Corvuscorva Nightfire, and Eliza Madrigal