Loomio
Mon 8 Jun 2020 10:54PM

Microsolidarity Community Starting in Seattle

JL Jordan Lyon Public Seen by 68

Greetings fellow community building nerds!

I am right at the beginnings of starting a wonderful new community in Seattle and thrilled to share this journey with whoever wants to follow along. This community doesn't even have a name yet, but is something I've been dreaming about for years. It's purpose is to support our individual pursuits to express our gifts, do meaningful work, and live a life of aliveness and wholeness.

Using microsolidarity's framework, the entire goal of this community is to guide the formation of transformative "Co-Motion" crews for members to deepen in relationship, grow towards personal goals related to the above three purposes, and find deep belonging in a small fractal of a bigger whole.

For the last few weeks, I have personally reached out and recruited 6 other initiators (I'm calling the Co-Design Crew or Magnificent Seven) to join me in this foundational phase. Each invitee brought a unique, diverse perspective and was both energy-aligned and value-aligned (Curious, Honest, Courageous, and Loving).

Here is the email I sent to introduce them all to each other this past Sunday:

Alex, Seth, Cora, Rachel, André, and Neecole,

We have our Magnificent Seven!

Some of you already know one another, but it is my absolute pleasure to introduce you all to each other in this context.

I've now had the opportunity to share a bit about this community vision to each of you, which is basically to build a fun and loving community that guides small crews of wholehearted connection to support our individual pursuits to express our gifts, do meaningful work, and live a life of aliveness and wholeness.

If you'd like to read a bit more about the vision (which is all subject to change as we dream and collaborate together), feel free to look through this.

As I've mentioned, we will be taking this process one step at a time. First, we'll gather for dinner to just get to know each other. If we feel some chemistry and we want to take the next step in this community journey, we'll plan another dinner to get deeper into dreaming what kind of community we want to manifest into the world.

But before all that, I'd love it if you would all share a quick introduction to each other. Here's a structure for that introduction:

  • Share your story in 3 sentences

  • Share one gift of yours that you try to offer to the world

  • Share what meaningful work you find yourself called to at the moment

We all have had a special paths to get to where we each are today, and have amazing futures ahead. I hope this community can be a part of that future. I believe in each of you and am deeply grateful, inspired, and excited to have you all take this first step with me.

In community and love,
Jordan

This Co-Design Crew will take this journey one step at a time -- deepening in relationships and trust, aligning visions and goals, and co-designing how our community gathers (annually, quarterly, and monthly), co-creates, shares stories, crews together, makes decisions, etc.

Once we, as a team, feel solid about the vision and plan our first annual gathering, we will invite 40 members to join us in our congregation by attending this first experience. To learn more:

I'm basically going to just use this as a journal so I'll keep adding things to this thread as they happen. Please reach out if you have any questions and feel free to use anything you like -- I've erred on the side of over-documenting these plans for that reason.

I am hoping this eventually can be a template for others to run with and make into their own. So please follow along as we gloriously experiment and fail, stumble forward, and emerge with something beautiful.

In community,

Jordan
[email protected]

PH

Preston Hegel Tue 16 Jun 2020 7:05AM

Kia Ora! (hello!)
Excellent! Following with smiles.
I'm working with collectives (mostly creatives/artists/activists) across Australia & New Zealand. Our communities have formed around mixing counter-culture (i.e. Cacophony Society) with immersive art/experiences (Meow Wolf). Creativity is key to learning/playing and developing skills relevant to change. And, makes it fun ;) Excited to see what comes of your mahi!(work)