Full Circle Associates

I'm hip deep in meetings for five days so am simply sharing stuff that has been thought provoking to me.

Cliff Figallo wrote a few days ago of how the net has reconnected him to an important community from his past. Communities don't die...:

"It's only been in the past 5 years that the Net has begun to serve as our reunion space. One of our email lists is called the Prayer List. On the Farm we lived as a spiritual community. That was what we called our first cause. We didn't have a codified religion; we simply believed that as humans we had a spiritual bond between us that deserved to be honored. Since we dispersed (most of the Farm's members left the Tennessee land and our collectivity in the early 80s) we've taken many different spiritual and religious paths.

The Prayer List is ecumenical, but it's a way to stay in touch to provide support for those of us who need it. And as we age, we find that we are naturally facing more illness, more suffering, more death. Our kids get sick, hurt and sometimes die. We want to know that people we trust are paying attention and praying for us, or at least projecting good wishes to us during our hard times.

It's amazingly powerful to know that hundreds of friends are aware when there is a crisis, and it's heartening to know that the Net can extend the loving relationships we worked so hard to build over 20 years ago. And to have it work through a simple email list is an illustration of how basic the tools can be to deliver the most essential messages of all."

This feeling that a community can be "there" for you, even though the "there" is dispersed, almost indescribable, rings true for me.