Continuing on from my previous blog  Time to Retreat, I have further refined the group of 25 individuals who would participate in the five-day national community visioning process.  As I stated, the characteristics of the people is based on Gallup polls and the US Census data.  I have now added religious identity.  I have also attempted to match up the religious identity with the distribution of age, race, regional location, ideological identity and party affiliation as detailed in the previous blog. 

Looking at the make-up of the diverse group, the challenge to the facilitator is obvious:  how to design the process to not only increase the likelihood common ground can be discovered, but also to develop a vision that will provide guidance to real change.

Run away! Run away! No, not that kind of retreat.

*

I was thinking we as a nation needed to take some time to withdraw from the bustle of the day to day and engage in a period of reflection and study...together.  I mean, it seems, regardless of one's socio-political stripes,  everyone is disgruntled with the way things are.  Something's gotta change.  But we also seem as a nation to be divided about where we need to go and how to get there (and where we have been).  A push me-pull you nation, unable to retreat from the scene even if we wanted to.

So a little notion crossed my mind.  What if we had a little retreat to do some strategic visioning.  Individuals from across the country would be randomly selected to participate in groups of 25 people.  Each group would spend five days in some secluded location and attempt to generate a plan of action for the country.  Afterwards, the groups would meet to fuse the plans together in some fashion.  The question would be, how would I conduct the five-day retreat if I was to facilitate the retreat.

Talk bout hoist on his own petard!

So vain is Newt about his intellectual aspirations, he actually committed a moment of intellectual honesty.

Once the logjam was broken by his consideration that perhaps 90 instead of 180 million skimmed off the bust out would have been "enough", Newt has gone full tilt Socialist, talking about "common"  goals, and "common" good.

Romney takes umbrage at the idea that under him Bain  Capital took the money and ran, so to speak.

His pearl-clutching conveniently ellides the many ways in which leveraged buy outs and mob bust outs are similar business models.

In an exclusive interview outside a Manchester polling place, Ron Paul lashed out at fellow Republicans for making unfair and ignorant attacks on Mitt Romney's business record.  "I think they're wrong. I think they're totally misunderstanding the way the market works," Paul told me. "They are either just demagoguing or they don't have the vaguest idea how the market works"...."I think they're way overboard on saying that he wants to fire people, he doesn't care, Paul said.  "You save companies, you save jobs when you reorganize companies that are going to go bankrupt.

The spouse of someone I know very well passed away today as a result of complications due to cancer. In writing about his struggle to overcome the cancer, someone wrote in tribute

He never stops being positive! It also never ceases to amaze me how genuine and authentic he naturally is....But we need more people like him in the world. There isn't time to waste not being a mirror of God's love for others with patience, kindness and grace.

The impression he made on me the few times we crossed path was pretty much similar.  Needless to say, today has been a somber one.  The demands of life, however, continue and we push forward while trying to come to terms with something like the passing of someone in this fashion. We all deal with these things in our own way, and as is my proclivity, I retreated into my head, thinking it out.  The wish for people still here to be a mirror stuck with me.  Other thoughts of which I have blogged about and have been swirling around in my mind gravitated to it.  The aspiration to be a mirror of God's love for others with patience, kindness and grace is one path for what I like to call the struggle to appear.

Dispatch from the siege and fall of the Patriarchy

Ever since human females, alone among mammals, evolved the ability to hide from their reproductive partners the onset of estrus, human males have responded with varying levels of paternity insecurity syndrome.

Crank yankers strike again.

Does everybody remember the time "David H Koch" called Wisconsin Governor (for now) Scott Walker?

You do?  Good.

"As long as the mind keeps silent in the motionless world of its hopes, everything is reflected and arranged in the unity of its nostalgia. But with its first move, the world cracks and tumbles: an infinite number of shimmering fragments is offered to its understanding." - Albert Camus

The campaign season is now in full swing as the Republicans seek to find the man who will challenge Obama, and then things will really heat up on the blogosphere. This brings to mind a general topic of interest: discussing how we discuss things.  A particular incident on a recent thread when admonished advice of KISS: Keep it Simple, Stupid. 

This general rule of thumb can serve one well.  Some of us do have the tendency to complicate matters more than they need be.  Keeping things simple can be a more effective means to a successful outcome, no less true when we get enmeshed in political discussions.  Yet...if we are to actually have productive and meaningful political discussions in the coming year, we would also benefit from heeding the principle of KICS, or Keep it Complex, Sillyhead.