Thanks to the Red Sox play-off game, there were only eight of us, just the tight core-group minus one, who couldn’t make it. We did a fun round circle, sharing our moods as weather reports. I introduced group culture and its two domains, vision/mission/goal and process (how meetings are run, decisions taken, etc.), and asked: Are you happy with our group culture? Is it transparent to you?
We talked freely about what we already do. We feel that build trust in our community, by simply walking the trails, for instance, and that gives meaning to our place for everyone in it. We make connections, all the time, like fingers of a hand reaching into the community, and we have to trust that the spaces in between the fingers fill up in unexpected ways often unknown by us. We model compassionate living, friendliness and everyday courage. We counter the dominant culture of fear and distrust. We are more organic and “opportunistic” than prepared and “on track”…
We talked about Wayland Walks, our most successful program running, which had just lead a walk to which twenty people came: twenty people deeply present in the landscape, in search of wild edibles. We gathered around the Master Map that will come out of all this walking for the town’s 375th Anniversary.