4. Serendipity for some… "Someone sitting next to me on a plane told me about it" "I was hiking up a mountain in Peru and met someone who said I had to go to a Wednesday" "A Berkeley rhetoric major said that wherever she traveled in India and spoke of living in the Bay-Area, people kept telling her about Wednesday"
5. What is Wednesday Vision? ∞ INFINITE 0 ZERO No agendas Circle What goes around, comes around OR Connect with our infinite potential
6. What Values Are We Tuning Up? Awareness Generosity Selfless Service Supportive Community 1 st Hour 2 nd Hour Gratitude Purified Intellect Love 3 rd Hour Participant’s Perspective Servant Leadership After hours
7. What Values Are We Tuning Up? Awareness Generosity Supportive Community “ Tuesday is Wednesday, so is Thursday, Friday, Sat, Sun, Mon – it’s Wednesday style service everyday. It becomes a way of being.” - CFMom Gratitude Purified Intellect Love Host’s Perspective Selfless Service Servant Leadership
8. Guest speakers Les Kaye Karma Lekshe Satish Kumar Dr. Ariyaratne Mahendra Meghani Krishnammal Jagannathan The list goes on…
9. The Wednesday Timeline 190 readings, 131,056 downloads, avg 689 downloads per reading 676 weeks (13 yrs), 25,000 people served at Santa Clara 5-10 people carpool each week Min 20/month In 2010, most weeks>30
12. Does “No Agendas” mean “Anything goes?” Counterintuitive Wisdom Research shows that facilitating brainstorms is a skill that takes a long time to develop. Brainstorming is also a skill. Facilitating a Wednesday that focuses on openness is no different. The constraints (or structure) keep us mindful of the values we want to embody.
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14. What do people get out of Wednesdays? “ Truly, I have never in my life felt such pleasant love and joy given so freely to people you know and to people like me that you don't know." - from someone after their first Wednesday "Love, laughter, positive energy, forgiveness, acceptance, its all given and received at the same time. I love it, there's nothing else like it." - Someone who dropped in on a Wednesday after a long time...
15. Soul Food “ I am reminded that in the Middle East, when people share food, they are making those with whom they share the food their family,” Padma Aunty (Smita’s mother) "And the quality of the food itself is astounding.I can say I experience the food as having a kind of impeccable goodness. That means it is good on all levels, which is a quality I don't think there is any word for. Maybe this is the meaning of 'virtue'"
16. The Cup Overflows A mother of two young children, for whom this is only evening "off", brings mindfully cut oranges for everyone. On the kitchen counter is a box of hand-made sweets, offered by a doctor who had a couple days off during her rotations. A visitor from out of the country goes to three separate shops to bring fifty of her favorite cupcakes for the circle. An envelope with a check for a large sum of money is slipped under the door as an anonymous offering to a guest speaker's cause.
17. How do Wednesdays get started? We don’t know, but, here is Sachi’s story… For the last two weeks, I have been home on a break, once again standing at a crossroad in life trying to figure out which path to take next. I was struggling with my daily sits and was being very irregular. And then I came across Viral’s article: ‘ A Heart of Patience ’. Reading that, two things particularly really stood out for me. First that when we think we know, we expect to find a solution in the direction in which we are looking; when we don't know where to look, we remain open to all directions. Second that it's best to let go of our tendency to fixate on outcomes we'd like to see, and in time-frames in which we'd like to see them, because we don't always know what is best. And then the final push came when I read a notification from iJourney.org that read: "A volunteer has expressed interest in joining your local 'Mumbai' meditation group. If you are already hosting a group, do send them more information; otherwise, perhaps you could explore starting one." :) Read full story
18. Wednesdays once a month Planning and cooking the meal energizes me and fills me with joy. Its very early, but I've already seen people whom I hardly know coming to sit in silence in our living room, and expressing how much the time was like a sanctuary. Rahul Brown, Orange County Wednesdays
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20. Wednesdays -> Sundays Yes, that also happens, and here is Arathi’s story If I could think of one thing that Sundays has really helped me with though, I think it would be with humility. I think that humility is one of those qualities that sort of just floats in the air and is so hard to practice. I have woken up many a morning saying to myself "okay arathi, you are going to work on deepening your humility, come on, work on it, be diligent about it" and the effort is there but the results are not. And then Sundays came around and the Universe was like "alright woman, if you wanna learn humility, you gotta live it! here you go!!!". Read More
21. The Evolution Revolution Continues Toiletpaper note: “The heart that grows in your home grows around me each week. Many people are graced by love from you and your Divine Heart. Love.” Santhosh and Anya
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Editor's Notes
What values are we tuning up on?
What values are we tuning up on?
Les Kaye pic: http://kannondo.org/about-us Karma Lekshe pic: http://home.sandiego.edu/~ktsomo/ Satish Kumar pic: http://www.enviromantics.com/tag/satish-kumar/ Dr. Ari pic: http://permaculture.org.au/2009/09/13/letters-from-sri-lanka-does-sarvodaya-hold-the-secrets-to-systemic-change/
http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=2056 Last time Rev. Heng Sure spoke at our event, he brought the illustrated meditation handbooks (above) as gifts for everyone. Santosh picked up a copy, but being a mother of two, it stayed on her bookshelf. Until yesterday, when her 2 year old Anya picks it up and ask her mom to read it to her! At the end of the reading, Anya asks her mom if they can try it. So they meditate ... for 40 seconds. After a slight pause, Anya concludes, "We should try it again another time."
