What we learned during Leaven's 2023 Listening Season

To watch the video, visit this link and enter the passcode: ds4KxE!D

Key Takeaways

  • Leaven is alive! Lots of folks participated and articulated the same values and dreams we remember from years ago.

  • We are longing for connection. We want to be seen, to belong, and to be together in milestone moments and in daily life.

  • We are experiencing the pressures of capitalism. Folks shared about being busy, overstimulated, and stressed, and named longings for sharing resources and labor.

  • We focused on inner and community change - but less so systemic change. Few of us pointed to systems change or community organizing as a means to addressing the pressures we’re facing in our lives.

  • Now is the time to act on our longings. We have lots of ideas and energy - but no one is going to create what we’re longing for except ourselves!

Recommendations for Next Steps

Start organizing at Leaven! If there’s something any Leaven member wants to do with others at Leaven, find 1-2 other people, organize it, and invite the community! Get it on the calendar and in the enews (via Ali and Alison) and go for it. Don’t worry if it’s not in the building - it can still be a “Little Leaven.” No one is going to do it for us - it’s time to get started!

Recommit to a culture of community organizing and systems change through practices such as: offering regular Sacred Organizing trainings at Leaven; sending Leaven members to community organizing trainings such as those offered by the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF); integrating community organizing into new member orientation and materials; re-establishing a Leaven Community Core Team

Consider becoming a Community Resilience Hub - Leaven becoming a Community Resilience Hub would combine many of the longings people have named for climate action, mutual aid, and community building in one overarching project that the community could organize around and engage our neighbors in.

Follow the leadership of BIPOC communities organizing for climate justice and anti-capitalism. Show up at events and actions, build relationships, amplify their work and voices, support the movement with our bodies and our resources, and organize others to join us.

Experiment with cultivating secular sacred community spaces at Leaven, to mark big life milestones and make meaning of the world around us.

Read the Report

Curious for more? Read the written report the Listening Season Team drafted and approved together.

Leaven Listening Season Team

Sam Yerke
Fumi Tosu
Matt Smith
John Rodgers
Nancy Phelps
Cheryl Lohrmann
Derek Fenwick
Jules Nielsen
Jane Keating

Be, Love, Act: Seeing Leaven as a Sacred Spiral

In this video:

  • Alison offers the second of two frameworks for thinking about Leaven today: the Sacred Spiral.

  • Fractals, the natural world, and biomimicry help us to understand that how we are at the smallest scale is how we are at the larger scale.

  • Leaven engages in inner change (spiritual work), outer change (local community work), and collective change work (community organizing). 

  • Leaven Community is connected through our relationships and our shared values, vision, and worldview. 

What do you think of all this? Attend a House Meeting to share your thoughts.

Resources:

How the "Two Loops" theory helps us think about Leaven

In this video:

  • Leaven’s Director-Organizer Alison Killeen offers the first of two frameworks for thinking about Leaven: the Two Loops theory of how systems change (via the Berkana Institute)

  • Leaven emerges out of the dominant system of American Christianity - to create something new, different, and liberating

  • Leaven has the potential to build community that is secular, communical and spiritually grounded, and which moves us toward inner, outer and collective change

Resources:

Secular-Spiritual Communities of Practice: