Prairie Star District Conference Down, Only 799,999 things on the to-do list now.

[featherynscale]

Back from Omaha, back to the grind. It was sort of refreshing to get to focus on the problems of the world and of my religious affiliation for a couple of days. By which I think I mean it was nice to only have to be responsible for one set of things that was right in front of me, rather than having to be responsible for all the divergent sets of things that I'm responsible for day in and day out, which include but by all the gods certainly are not limited to the problems of the world and of my religious affiliation.

And of course, there was the matter of the workshop. We were allegedly there to lead a workshop about creating and leading earth-based ritual. Despite the fact that many UUs are totally embarrassed about the pagans in the UU woodpile, our workshop was reasonably well-attended by people who actually were interested in the subject matter, who generally seemed to enjoy the experience, and who made copious notes and various exclamations of excitement over the take-home material.

We seemed to have one of the few workshops that wasn't selling something: a book, a DVD, a longer workshop for your congregation, a curriculum, or a visit by a specially-trained consultant. I'm not sure if that fact represents some sort of failure on the part of our denomination, or some sort of failure on the part of my congregation.

I have a lot more to say about the conference, and the district, and the denomination, but I don't want to bore you guys with it.

Comments

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't find it boring at all. Although I suppose the fact that everyone was selling something makes makes the UU not that much different from the rest of the religions out there.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I guess if I post it and it's boring, people don't have to read it. I'm sure people don't read some of my posts now, in fact. :)

And you're right about the second point. This stuff was at least all focused on an idea of "these are some resources that are available to your congregation". And there are a whole lot of things that various people in the organization have already developed 3-day workshops in, and there's no way you can get 3 days of material into an hour-long workshop. So I have some understanding of the phenomenon, but was for some reason not expecting that to be the norm of presentations. And here we are, just giving knowledge away! Madness.

[uberreiniger.livejournal.com]

If Mohammad can't go to the mountain, Mohammad will bring the mountain to him in just three easy installments of $19.99!

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

For a low, low additional fee of just $199.99, we'll also throw in our Total Enlightenment in Ten Minutes package!

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Well, in fairness, we do charge for EIR, so even we're not exempt...

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

That's true. But a)that $35 goes into the church budget rather than paying anybody for the class, and b)(which is more relevant to the question) we're not trying to sell it to other congregations.

But hell, maybe we should.

[celticwhistlin.livejournal.com]

I affirm and promote this...

[celticwhistlin.livejournal.com]

If you are up for typing, I would love to read what you guys saw/did.

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know nobody personally gets paid for it (those are the ones that bother me), but I've seen workshops/materials published by a church that are for sale, and don't really have a problem with it. And we did charge PVUUC, right?

I think if the EIR materials could be gathered into a satisfactory structure/presentation, it could easily be a $50+ Beacon Press item. And that would be To The Good for everyone involved, IMO...

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I don't really have any objection to Gaia making money off of EiR, if it ever gets to be a program that's useful outside of the congregation, and if it ever gets to be a program that's 100% internally generated.

I do have a problem with the idea of a) people outside of our congregation offering it as a workshop at conferences without understanding it, or b) us offering it as a workshop at conferences without actually giving people any practical information, and just making the whole hour about how Gaia Community developed this material and we think it would really help you if only you would buy it.

The second session that I went to was the one about Healthy Congregations, and they had some interesting and useful things to say, but the presenters were using a presentation that someone else had written and in several places they just sped through slides that contained information that didn't logically follow from the thesis, or that used language that was not easy to follow. I gathered from the way they were behaving that they didn't understand those pieces of the presentation and were hoping nobody would ask about them. This was sort of a bummer, because those were the only pieces that I didn't understand from having a basic understanding of systems thinking already, and those were the only pieces that I wanted to ask about. I'd hate to see people doing that with the EiR material, because there are a number of things in that curriculum that require a lot of thinking about in order to explain properly.

Well, I don't want that either. Maybe I'm being unclear.

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

What I want to see is the EIR material available to far-flung congregations/groups-in-general, as a workbook/manual for how GC thinks excellent ritual can be trained, written, and performed. It would probably still be structured in such a way that it would take several weeks of sessions, work best in a group (duh), and require an experienced (not necessarily GC-experienced) facilitator.

We're never going to be able to meet all of the demand that's out there in the way it deserves to be handled (unless we start our own training school), but I think we can do it better than most of the material that's out there now. Something like what we did this weekend has some valuable information, but obviously doesn't hold a candle to EIR proper.

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

Unrelated...still want to play Scrabble?
http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8078&start=75