I've had some things up my sleeve.
Not necessarily intentionally. I just really struggle with how and when to share things going on with me, with people.
From an outsider's perspective, it probably seems pretty wacky, weird and alchemical what I actually "do." And, won't dispute that.
All the more reason why I need an insider's group—like you beloved bewitching subscription holders! 😃—to divulge my juicy details to. 💦
I'm feeling unseen lately, and little triggered by that. But the truth is: I'm the remedy. So it's time for me to step up and shine some light. 💡
Living Systems Institute
I'm here at Living Systems Institute in Golden, Colorado (map) practicing succession.
Succession describes the emergence of a new and reinvented system after a disruption event renders the old stable system no longer viable. This is applicable in ecology (as in the case of ecological succession) and in organizations (organizational succession).
I am here practicing succession of an organization, and of land stewardship.
The life-long land steward, David Braden, who grew up here, is now over 70 years of age. He founded the nonprofit Living Systems Institute (LSI) in 2013 and has acted as its primary leader and educator since then. David recently entered hospice care, meaning he discontinued treatment for cancer, although, luckily, his health seems to be faring well. David & I met through the permaculture community scene in the area in 2014 or 2015.
Seemingly out of the blue, David invited me to live next door to him at LSI last year; I moved in on May 1, 2023. Roughly six months later, David announced his decision to enter hospice and to transfer the role of executive director of LSI to me.
Many folks reading this will be aware I've started & led various types of organizations over the years. So I'm perhaps something of a shoe-in for handling an interrim executive director role.
It's the land stewardship piece and hands-on permaculture praxis that's even more truly important to me about this opportunity. An opportunity to deepen as a land steward is something I've been calling in for a long time. 🏡👩🌾🐣🥕
I chose these opportunities that were presented to me—to live here, and subsequently to take over leadership of the organization, all within one year—with a mindset of succession and social permaculture, yes, but also: on the basis of visions that I've had. 🔮
Synergy (The Big Vision)
It's a vision that's come through me—like waves, or emanations—gradually through me for many years. Gradually increasing in vividness and detail.
Visions of consensually networked integrated communities, families, and collaborators across the Front Range and Colorado.
It is big. I believe it probably belongs to the near (er, ever-nearer) future: a post-collapse circumstance. Unpredictable as to when and how, but let's say 10-20 years from now.
It is a complex system made up of trusting, consensual parts. Members are individuals, families, communes, small businesses, and communities. These are networked together to produce sustainable abundance and circulate wealth of goods, services, people, and culture. The setting is the Front Range and the surrounding regions of Colorado.
This big thing—in order to have something to call it—I call Synergy.
This dream is compelling, and I am a dream follower (a way I've trained in for many many years). So when I get "hits," like signals, of reality conforming to the contours of those seeming dreams... well, I respond constructively to those hits.
Living Systems Institute is an example of encountering an opportunity in reality that seems to align closely with the visions that have come through me. In other words, a "hit" on my lead! 📬
So I've responded as constructively as I can to this opportunity. Me & the LSI team are observing, interacting, responding to change. We are taking it slow to see what's really there. We are sussing out our next steps.
If you support this work, I really hope you will join us for the Living Systems Institute community celebration and potluck on May 4th. RSVP here. Or if you can't join but you feel moved to support this work, please make a donation to LSI.
The Incubator
All this said,
I am not only holding LSI at this time.
I am not only holding LSI and Fractal Praxis at this time.
The way I'm holding LSI is part of another venture, indeed.
A radical incubator.
You see: in the thrumming future of this place-based meta social-slash-economic system, there would be a little engine churning away in the center. A start-up incubator. Like a nebula where the new stars are born. New entities will emerge and be networked with one another in common culture of regenerative practices and pattern languages.*
*(Note: These Synergy visions appear to have some affinity with my colleague Jacki Saorsail's vision/venture that she calls Regenerative Federation. And Jacki just so happens to be a long-time board member of LSI!)
I'm laying the groundwork for just such an incubator today.
I haven't had this up my sleeve on purpose. I just wasn't sure how to share.
Family, friends, peers... erm, I know this is awkward, but I'd like to introduce (or re-introduce) you now to Coevolve.
Coevolve
Coevolve, LLC is the name for the professional co-op development consulting work that I've been doing for the past 13 years. The LLC was founded briefly as a five-person collaborative in March 2019, but just one year later became solely owned by me. (I'd started out as a sole proprietor eight years prior to that, at age 24.)
I've pretty much always worked as a freelance consultant.
Today, Coevolve is ready to grow. I've finally got the skills, knowledge, competencies, methods and tools under my belt to not just consult, but to build things.
Little things and lightweight things—not skyscrapers. Mom & pop shops. Modest small businesses, micro social enterprises, flexible semi-autonomous convergences of collaborators. 👥
I would essentially act like a midwife or business "doula" to support the birth of an organization (or "rebirth" in the case of leadership transition or succession). 👩🍼
I will typically step up as a head steward, and may take on a formal role of CEO or executive director, but in the spirit of an "interim" version of these. I will help steer each of these ventures until they're equipped to reach the next stage of growth to be self-supporting.
What defines the necessary "next stage of growth" for an organization is going to be different for each entity. In general, it has to do with gaining a kind of critical mass of one or more of the following: community support (people), benefit (value), processes (systems), and resources... and, the appropriate distribution of these.
In general, each venture will likely be under "stewardship" for its first 1-2 years. Once important threshholds of growth are reached, the organization would be optioned into cooperative ownership, or some other kind of new leadership/ownership.
I'm taking Coevolve to the next level by setting up who/how/what I work on toward an incubator. Select ventures would be aligned (or point in the direction of) the big future vision (Synergy). These will typically look like micro-businesses at first. Social enterprises. Co-ops and collectives. Collaborator masterminds, circles—heck, even covens. Flash mobs. Underground events. Splashy anarchist productions. Serendipitous happenings. Juicy conversations.
A surely mad / rad / glad menagerie of magical somethings!
These, I incubate.
Through Coevolve as a vehicle:
I have a lot of wisdom, accumulated over years of experience, study and practice, about the patterns that work in cooperative systems (including communities and organizations).
I am looking for even more adaptive and adept ways of sharing these gifts / wisdom / resources.
The incubator is what this looks like next. I will be directly nurturing ventures.
In the next email I will be sharing about the first original, directly incubated venture coming out of the Coevolve pipeline. It is called Priceless Ceremonies, and it is dreamed of as a plant medicine facilitator collective operating from a strictly gift economics framework, toward radical solidarity with people's liberation and healing.
✨ As Fractal Praxis newsletter subscribers, you alone are invited into this first sneak preview of Priceless Ceremonies. ✨
I'll be announcing and sharing more about Priceless Ceremonies in the next newsletter to come out. Please feel free to share this email with friends if you like what you're reading and you think they'd want "in" on these adventures in hyperlocal anarchist speculative non-fiction. 😜💼
I'm feeling good about where my investments of time, energy, and of course, money, lately are going. I'm still a curmudgeonly marketer, but I'm working on it. 📈
Once more, I'd love to feel your support for this work, which right now, looks like: coming to attend the community gathering at LSI on May 4th, and/or making a donation to LSI. 🙏🙏🙏
On the distinction between Coevolve and Fractal Praxis
Finally, a brief word on this, which I feel a duty to clarify.
Coevolve is the "seed" enterprise, representing a crucial function or organ in a future complex cooperative bioregional network (Synergy). It is a bridge between my past karma as a fervent co-op developer, this ✨wild✨ present, and our future (I hope) of a thriving, place-based and relationship-centering socioeconomic living system.
I will be offering business plan development, meeting/event design & facilitation services, and business leader coaching under "Coevolve."
Contact me about working together.
Fractal Praxis is the hub for my creative and thoughtleadership brand. It centers on the philosophy of well-functioning living systems (and Life itself, as a pattern in the universe.) I will be publishing books, courses, media, and indeed, these newsletters, under that label. I will offer spiritual coaching, ceremonies, and events under this brand.
Fractal Praxis will eventually become something of a "mystery school" (so to speak). It will provide practitioners a direct, self-initiatory path toward greater liberation through group experiences, circling practices, and personal study/application.
I will be offering spiritual coaching, ceremonies, events, courses, and media publications under the name Fractal Praxis.
Contact me about working together.
Now please share this newsletter with any of your intrigue-able friends and have them subscribe to stay in the loop of such emergences!
💃💃💃
OK, I feel complete with my share. ✔️
Hello, emergence. 👋 Thanks, dear ones, for witnessing! 🙏
From this point on, I'll try not to clam up and go quiet quite so often, like my neurodivergent dad would when he became overwhelmed.
I'll do my best to share in flow.
And feel free to poke me to do so if you haven't heard from me in a while. Poking the bear in this case is most welcome. 😄 🐻
In love & blessings,
C.