Sunday, August 30, 2015

Talking About Politics, Race and Religion – Happily


How New Horizons programs and projects moved from snags to synergy in a span of weeks.

Never have I noticed and tracked so much rapid transition and integration at New Horizons as I have over the past few weeks.  Apparently our day has come, or has it?

Now getting ready to move into our ninth month since launching our Coffee House Conversations On Race Relations – and -- with the force of another election year already looming over us, imposing itself in our daily fare of incoming news, we are seemingly ripe for the change to which these past few weeks have drawn our attention.

But the awareness of major headway, sitting now on the threshold of our New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” Project, is only the beginning of this next phase. It is not the potentialities realized. For that much discipline, focus, determination, hard work and creativity are demanded and a great and good deal of community collaboration.  I must say, nonetheless, that I am ready for it all to happen, or nearly so.

The front story was a Coffee House Conversation by Conference Call forum Jack and I led, following our Possible Society In Motion Radio Show titled, “What if….?” That program’s design was intended to take the sumptuousness of the previous show, titled “Wild, Weird, Wonderful Ways To Rebuild Our Society,” to the next level of conversation;  awesomeness in human affairs. That program had left me soaring with inspiration on how to bring both science and mysticism into the applications of daily living,

But the conference call forum portion following “What if….?” did not come off. Instead we managed, by a hair, to only just avoid the pitfalls of a nasty polarized debate. Budding relationships potentially endangered by a tangle, not at all what we were after.

Thank goodness my longheld motto of Plan A, win-win, or Plan B, win-learn, got me through; win-learn it was!

The back story, for me, as the four blog articles linked below suggest, was that I, once again, wrote my way through the snag, built upon a range of personal contemplation as well as fruitful behind-the-scenes discussions, engaging others in helping me to define a more refined direction for our two conjoined programs, The Possible Society In Motion Radio Show and Coffee House Conversations by Conference Call.

The four articles that emerged, in chronological order, which might aid the interested reader in following the process that evolved are …
All this that is now unfolding day-by-day is such a wonderful opportunity for growing beyond one’s personal comfort zones in the midst of talking about politics, race and religion, incredibly challenging and potentially awe-inspiring.

You might just want to get yourself involved in this ongoing community development adventure that we are creating.  Take a next step by listening to last Thursday’s Possible Society In Motion Radio Show…..
Then join us for… 
bi-weekly on Thursday evenings at 7:00 p.m.

In both of these programs we will be introducing – and practicing the application of -- the New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” way to talk about Politics, Race and Religion, a non-polarizing and a “feel good” way to converse about sensitive topics, or, at least, a “feel better” way.  

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