threshold reflective – decisions to be made

some of our discussion touched on practical decisions which need to be made, rather than philosophical questions which may never be answered. the main issues like this were:

• dropping our official social. people felt that it was artificial to have a fixed social, and it was an unneccesary drain on capacity (someone having to turn up in case a new person came even if everyone else was away etc). opinion seemed to be mixed about what we should do instead: just have one meeting a month/ have a book group/ have an unofficial/unfixed social time at least once a month.
• making the group more parent friendly. this is becoming an increasing issue and is also likely to be an issue for newcomers.

could these two issues be resolved by having our reflective once a month on a sunday afternoon for three hours (instead of meeting twice for 2 hour sessions)? we should pick somewhere central and child friendly (whilst also taking into account our many other preferences such as real ale, nice wine, proper gingerbeer and some food).

if we go with this idea, should we also resolve to meet up as friends inbetween? or should we have some type of philosophy/book group which could feed ideas into our reflectives?

threshold reflective – up in the air

as well as agreeing some points there were other issues which needed further thought and discussion. there may never be a clear answer to these dilemnas:

• is threshold post-christian or post-secular? how does this question effect the content of our reflectives? is there a value in always assuming that someone from a different religious culture will be present? how do we react emotionally to references to scripture? is it best to assume diversity even if we seem similar? we would like to include people from any religion (or none), but so far we have all been post/christian, is it more realistic to ask guest speakers from other perspectives?
• initially we conceptualised threshold as a point of exit or entry in terms of organised religion, but we all seem to be standing on the threshold for a long time! we now feel that there is much to explore in this state of being.
• threshold meets in public, but the nature of english pub culture means that people will never join in with what we’re doing (unless our reflective was officially recognised by the venue). we talked about the difference between meeting in public and meeting for the public. at some point we would like to do something which engages more people, but this also seemed to raise some anxiety in terms of capacity issues. we also talked about trying to become a recognised event in a venue’s publicity (e.g. like start the bus or cafe kino).

threshold reflective – consensus reached?

we talked about a lot of different topics in our may 2009 reflective and so i’m going to use a few posts to summarise the discussion so far and to enable further online discussion.

this post is to cover points on which we seemed to have consensus:

• we like the imperfect creativeness of our reflectives and wouldn’t want to lose this aspect of threshold.
• we all like the outlook of a group which doesn’t require commitment and we want to keep this, even though we are actually committed to the group.
• we agreed that there was a difference between the emotive use of the word ‘commitment’ and a more pragmatic understanding of our capacity to do things. all of us are committed to the group but our capacity to contribute may be limited by various things (childcare, geography, work pressures, health issues etc).
• we thought that there are two ways to respond to limited capacity: attract new people to increase capacity or do less so we are functioning within our capacity (which leads to discussion about our meetings, for a separate post, as well as:)
• revisiting the dilemna of non-evangelism vs sign-posting. it seemed to be agreed that we needed to do more effective sign-posting and that we weren’t in danger of becoming evangelical about threshold! we decided to try to improve the website, update our description on spirited exchanges and explore opportunities for targetted advertising (such as facebook advertising vouchers). we gave each other permission to use our initiative in terms of promoting the group as long as we clearly wrote from our own perspective or using standard text. we discussed designing a new poster/flier that could be understood outside of a greenbelt context.
• we agreed to keep the decision making structure of consensus and no leadership, but this didn’t mean that we couldn’t take leadership in an initiative sense (suggesting new ideas, doing some publicity for the group).

reflection on threshold

I’ve been wondering about what it means to be part of a fluid, non-institutionalised group or community. When we started thinking about threshold roughly a year and a half ago we had lots of ideas about what being part of such a group might be, and lots of aspirations. We had lots of good ideas such as no commitment, no leaders, consensus, and numbers should not be a measure of success. However at that point I don’t think any of us had been in such a fragmented or de-centred group before, but now we have.

So I’d like to use my reflective as a reflection on Threshold itself. For example, I’ve been wondering if maybe always being under threat of collapse is inherently part of the nature of a non-institutionalised group? Are our difficulties also our strengths, or can we eliminate difficulties without losing our positive points?

It would be great if you could bring your questions and thoughts on Monday. If you can’t make it, add your comments here:

Lindsey

april reflective added

I have added a description of the april reflective (at last) to the reflectives page. I also moved the lyrics from the description of the march reflective to a separate (linked) page to reclaim space.

Richard

reflectives theme?

lindsey and jenny asked whether we would like to do reflectives on a theme, which we could then turn into an art installation/exhibit to engage other people/let people know what threshold is.

what do you think? if you like the idea, do you have any suggestions for possible themes?

we could have a really loose theme, like ‘thresholds’. richard suggested ‘twilight spirituality’. it could be a spiritually or culturally relevant theme (e.g. community/isolation could be cultural and spiritual).

technical help – show/hide

i think it would help our reflectives page if we could show/hide resources or instructions. does anyone know how to do this? i think it’s probably quite simple html but i don’t know it. does anyone else have any ideas about improving the site (not involving heavy time commitment)?

greenbelt flier update

sunday 3rd august: finished (?) flier design:

if this isn’t working properly look at: http://flickr.com/photos/lindseyandjenny/2727962501/

back:

what do you think? this needs to be moreorless the final design due to time constraints. small ammendments can be made though, so constructive criticism sought. it would be great if someone could bring a printed copy tomorrow.

 july 18th:

we had a chat today about various things to do with greenbelt. we made a few provisional decisions, with the proviso that everyone had 10 days to comment or object (seeing as we operate by consensus). those of us there tonight agreed that:

• we will print A6, double sided postcards. the front will be a better version of the above (so long as it isn’t perfect!). the back will look like an actual postcard, so that people can post it to someone who maybe interested in joining threshold. we will also include some more info on the postcard side, such as the first paragraph on the front page of this website (bea to email jenny).
• next time (august’s reflective on the 4th) we will bring whatever contribution we want to put towards printing in an envelope. people can also email (threshold@infinitarian.com) to leave an iou, if they can’t make the 4th. there is no pressure to contribute anything, and if you do feel pressurised bring an empty envelope! whatever money is contributed will effect the number and quality/ recycledness of the fliers we produce (with a sensible limit if much money is contributed…).
• our august social is cancelled, but we will replace it with a meeting at greenbelt. our greenbelt get-together will be on Sunday at 7:30pm in the organic beer tent. we agreed to provide an optional reflective activity based on the jigsaw session. people will do this in their own time, while we chat to those who want to find out more. at the end we will construct a big jigsaw. we will need jigsaw templates, instructions, pens and scissors. those on table saving duty will cut out jigsaw shapes, so that they are not drunk by the time people arrive…

please comment:

social, reflective … and discussion?

One of the things that I enjoyed about the cool wall game was that it engendered discussion about what various aspects of God-stuff meant to us. Reflecting on that, I wonder whether we should try to increase our discussion quotient a bit. The social meetings have been good to get to know each other a little better and the the reflective sessions have been good for acting reflectively in a public setting (indeed a public house). But I wonder if there is also space for an occasional deeper discussion about some aspect of religious belief or practice, such as prayer or the kingdom or inter-faith commonalities/conflicts or omnipotence/weakness or … whatever. Maybe we could try something like that in the second half of the social meeting?

Richard

May reflection added to taster page

I have added a brief description of the May reflective active to the taster page, including a composite image of the final layout of the cards. The image is a bit blurred because of the low light levels in the pub that evening but it’s ok.

I also uploaded an image of the passover table to the April write-up. Again it is a bit blurred but it shows the overall effect at the end of the activity.

Richard

Monday 5th May 2008 Meeting at Llandoger Trow

Just to let you know that because of the Bank Holiday our usual pub for reflective sessions is closed. So we have decided to meet in the Llandoger Trow instead. Sorry for any confusion.

where and when to meet

We’ve just come back from the Cornubia for a social. This was a good pub according to most of our criteria, but they shut at 6pm on Sunday. They seem open to staying open slightly later for us, but at the moment we’re really too small to ask such a big favour. However, they did say that Mondays there are quite quiet. Is this somewhere we’d like to go for our reflective sessions? Also, should we be thinking about having our social session on a Monday too? It seems to be really difficult to find a city centre pub that’s suitable and open on a Sunday. An argument for this is that everything could be simpler if we end up meeting in the same place, on the same day of the week. I’m sure there are reasons against this, so please comment.

We did commit to exploring different pubs for a few sessions. Please suggest where we should go for the next reflective session. This will need to be a relatively quiet pub, in the city centre, with real ale! This is the minimum requirement…

one hour preparation – rule or guideline?

jenny wrote: On my sick bed (I got a virus for Christmas) I have been designing a spiritual adventure game for the next reflective meeting (first Monday in January, which I think is the 6th). The only problem is I have exceeded the one hour preparation time we decided upon, so that it didn’t become a chore to plan meetings.Is this a rule or a guideline? Can we individually choose to ignore this, or will this put pressure on people in the future to do bigger and better things, leading to us all disappearing down the exhausted-alt-worship plug-hole?!

john wrote: From the totally theoretical view of someone who is only a virtual hanger-on to this enterprise…I’d prefer it to be a guideline, because sometimes I really get into something and spend hours on it. When this happens, the preparation is actually a lot of fun, and it’s wrong to place arbitrary limits on having fun However, if one does this, it’s probably a good idea to apologise to the group for breaking the guideline, and promise to do something simpler next time.

bea wrote: What John Said – I think its OK as a guideline, and should be taken as an average over time, so that a particular person can spend more than an hour if they really want to, but should try to do something much simpler that takes only 20-30mins prep next time, to make up for it.