Hey folks – I hope this finds you having at least a few moments to be outdoors, enjoying the deep suffusion of green that is Manitoba in the summer. One of the things I’ve always loved about this city is how many trees there are and how that changes the landscape both inside and beyond the city. It’s beautiful, and we could all use some reminders that there is beauty in the world as well as challenges and suffering.

This week we’ll meet online here at 10:45 a.m. for some music and Community Time, followed by the Talky Bit. (An aside – a huge shout out to the people in our community that have kept our online times alive with music and the making of welcoming spaces for sharing our lives. This has been one of the notable joys in my life this past year and a half, and I expect in the lives of many others. THANK YOU!!) This week we’ll be exploring the movement from Stage Zero into Stage One, including an organic metaphor that might help some of us mitigate our built-in objections to the idea of “stages”. Less linearity, please.