THE ROAD AHEAD

[forrest craver]

THE ROAD AHEAD FOR TRANSITION COLORADO COMMUNITIES: ONE VIEWPOINT


Well, Rob Hopkins would be the first to admit that the Transition Handbook needs to be taken seriously because a lot of serious thought and life experience went into his writing it.

And at the same time, he admits that it must be fine tuned to local requirements. Life as we know is messy. And Hopkins issues his own “cheerful disclaimer” that what we are doing may not work.

I appreciate his humility, honesty and candor. All of us know that he is right on target here e --- because gives Life us no guarantees about anything – our health, our longevity, our jobs, the well being of our children, or the ultimate resilency of our troubled and suffering planet.

So anyway, I talk to a lot of transition folks in Boulder, Denver, Lyons, Arvada, and Bloomfield and more recently in my home state of Pennsylvania and in Virginia and Washington D.C. where I lived and worked for more than thirty years.

I am most excited about the power of social networking. And I want to acknowledge the genius and persistence and total dedication of Les Squires to the hundreds of transition towns. Les, you da man!

Because I am on old guy, I’ve recently been asked to address what I see as the best sequencing and emphasis of various elements critical to transition communities here in Colorado.

So please understand that my social analysis is limited to Transition Colorado communities. Here is a run-down of how I see the sequencing and emphasis. The four items are listed in priority attention – meaning that the higher the ranking, the more energy you need to invest in that arena.

1. AWAKENMENT STRATEGIES: Pot lucks, meet ups, one on ones. I’ve found from my own experience here and in other movements over decades and many different geographic setting is that the one on one is the single most important energetic element to building a movement. I go into topic at length in my Blog Essay “From Awakenment to Formation for more details on my experience and learnings.

And at the same time we know that openings close. The analogy of dating is appropriate. You can work that one through in your own mind as we all have lots of experience with dating. Frequency and recency are critical to the formation of an emotional relationship.

The same holds in transitions. Since we can’t date effectively by reliance on phone and email, we also cannot build a mission relationship relying on those tools.
Nothing beats face to face for moving forward and getting deeper in the relationship or the formation stage of a local transition community.

2. MAKE IT FUN AND FILLED WITH GOOD ENERGY: Again, recall dating as a life experience. If you are not having fun with your partner and exchanging energy, one of you soon heads for greener pastures. Same with transition folks.

So I feel from decades of experience with various social movements that ritual process and myth are key. Myth is our new story. For example, what will be the global metamorphosis of Earth Day? This may already be happening, but if not, we should be having global rituals and festivals happening on Summer Solstice and Winter solstice. These are the key axial energies of Mother Earth and she keeps inviting us to the party of your life!

Solstice ritual celebrations worked for hundreds of thousands of years for our ancestors -- so it is worth looking at this format once again tailored to the complexity of the times in which we live. I’ve written a lot about ritual process on my other Transition Blogs so if you have the interest, you can go there and check out how I see ritual process being used in transition communities.

3. FORGING COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIPS. Again I have blogs on this topic for you to explore. My key point in advocating this as an urgent priority is that the nonprofit world is shrinking rapidly. Hundreds of ngo’s close their doors each year across our country. This dynamic will increase and non profit and community groups will be contesting for the same donors and the limited pool of volunteers whose life situation allows them the time and energy to make a significant volunteer contribution.

My "heads up" is to be aware of the fact that our demographic base is vastly
different than the core energies we need to accelerate everything.

Long story short is look for men and women overr 60 because they have a stable life structure. Their children are out of college and their mortgage is close to being paid off. This is also an energetic and archetypal reality.

The issue in the last stage of life is “the challenge of generativity --- going stale and sitting it out or making a legacy to the future contribution. Keep in mind my learning from forty years of fund raising experience that the vast majority of donors to all causes are over sixty

And this brings up the issue of energy. I am consulting with several new nonprofit groups. And what I see is that they are not setting up their game in an energetic container that has high like hood of success.

What I mean is if you are trying to put demonstration projects on the ground you will need at least twelve to fifteen people and one third of that group should be elders for the reasons I just stated above.

4 BREAKING THROUGH THE SHADOWS AROUND FUND RAISING. I’ve said more than most transition folk want to hear on this topic. If you want to look at best practices, I have six blog posts on this topic. They are highly focused and focused on the how to do it dimension and they grounded in my 40 years of high performance fundraising for more than 100 causes. If you have time to read only one I recommend the blog entitled THE FOUR DYNAMICS.

To close this out where I began, notwithstanding Rob’s “cheerful disclaimer, I feel personally that we are doing is good work -- and I truly believe that it will work powerfully -- even beyond our expectations as the energy builds.

My caveat is that we have to walk our talk. For me, this means addressing these four arenas with great focus and intensity.Your comments are welcome. Send them to [e-mail]

[forrest craver]

"We need not trod this difficult path alone. The terrain ahead on the path of the Hero's Journey is well-defined by the many who have gone before us. Where we had thought to find a curse, we shall instead find only blessings. And where we had thought to find ourselves along, we shall discover we are one with all the world. --Joseph Campbell THE HERO'S JOURNEY