2014-2015 CFG Calendar

Thanks so much to everyone who joined us for lunch or gave feedback about calendar dates.  It looks like a Wednesday-Thursday rotation will again allow the maximum number of participants this year.  I had to switch one date due to a HAC retreat, so you'll notice a break in the pattern early in the school year, but most of the year will follow a Wednesday-Thursday pattern.  Please add these dates to your calendar!  All meetings are scheduled for 3:30-5:30.  Locations are unconfirmed and may change--I'll update you as I learn more.  Janet, Colesie and Erin have offered alternative spaces, so we may have some meetings in their cozy spots!

To all meetings please bring a journal or paper, pencil or pen, your CFG binder if you have one.  If you're a new member, you may want to obtain a binder for keeping protocols and articles. Our dates are now as follows after receiving some date change requests from Lyn:

Thursday, September 25th in Morris House Conference Room
Thursday, October 16th in Morris House Conference Room
Wednesday, November 12th in the DVR November 5th in Morris House Conference Room
Thursday, December 11th in the DVR
Wednesday, January 14th in the DVR
Thursday, February 19th, location TBA
Wednesday, March 11th in the DVR March 18th, location TBA
Thursday, April 16th, location TBA
Wednesday, May 27th, location TBA

Our September meeting is open to all faculty/staff, whether exploring to see if the CFG meets your professional development needs or committed member.  Please join us!

Welcome Back!

Ah, friends, it's good to be together again!  Please join us on Thursday, August 28th for our annual back-to-school lunch gathering. This will be a time for us to welcome interested faculty/staff who want more information about the CFG and to set our calendars for the year! Grab your lunches and meet us in the outdoor seating outside the Dining Hall (on the south side).  Not quite as beautiful as the garden near Morris House, but easier to get your lunch to!  Please bring your calendars so we can find the most inclusive dates and times possible.

I'm reading a wonderful book by Terry Tempest Williams called When Women Were Birds:  Fifty-four Variations on Voice.  It's a book of reflections by the author after her mother had, in a long tradition of Mormon women, willed her daughter all of her journals when she died.  When the author opened them, she found each and every one blank.  When Women Were Birds is the author's reflection on all the myriad of possibilities those empty journals might say and mean about her mother's voice.   A few passages in this book remind me of all of you:

'The stars are our ancestors,' write Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Swimme in The Journey of the Universe. 'Out of them, everything comes forth...For stars, creativity depends on maintaining a state of disequilibrium...It is the dynamic tension between gravity and fusion...outward expansion and contraction...Stars are wombs of immense creativity.

***

Conversation is the vehicle for change.  We test our ideas.  We hear our own voice in concert with one another.  And inside those pauses of listening, we approach new territories of thought.  A good argument, call it a discussion, frees us.  Words fly out of our mouths like threatened birds.  Once released, they may never return.  If they do, they have chosen a home and the bird-words are calmed into an ars poetic.  The [members of] my family didn't always agree, but it was in their company I felt inspired and safe.

Thanks to all of you for being that family of safety and inspiration. I can't wait to see what ideas we test, what new territories of thought we explore this year together.