Announcing DSCo Conference June 2008!!

We're hoping that June 13-15 is still an open weekend on your calendar because DSCO folks from all over the country will be gathering in Charlottesville, VA with the theme of Is Christianity Optional? as a central focus for the weekend. This is an issue that appears more and more relevant to our spiritual journeys. Members of our community will be presenting perspectives on this question and the time will be used to open discussion and share insights.

Jesus, Religion and Culture Summit:
Following Jesus: Is Christianity Optional?

What it's about: We keep running into people who are wholehearted followers of Jesus who are using spiritual practices from other religions (meditation, prayer cycles, etc), or are following Christ in different cultural context (rather than converting people to the Christian religion). 2000 years ago the early followers of Jesus wrestled with the question of whether they had to be Jewish to follow Christ -- we're wrestling with whether we have to be a Christian. We see Jesus as central. We commit our lives and worship to Him alone as we look for new insight into what that means about our connections to religion and culture. The goal -- to come out of the weekend more in love with and committed to Christ, free to follow him and serve Him wherever he calls us.

The format of this conference is a bit different than we are accustomed to in that we will be using a local church facility (Charlottesville Mennonite) for our meetings. It is available Friday evening and Saturday all day. Sunday morning we will be gathering in a local park. The church is located downtown in Charlottesville. Lodging and meals will not be included in the conference registration so individuals are responsible to make their own arrangements. We are hoping to share a few meals together--more to come soon. Charlottesville's downtown features many great shops, venues and restaurants and will provide an urban background to our time together. For those who are interested, there may also be an informal pre-gathering on Thursday the 12th.


Lodging suggestions:

Local community members may be willing to open their homes to guests, but all space is on first come, first served basis. Jon and Christa Reuel have also offered their large yard outside of town as a space for people to camp if they are interested in that type of accommodations. Otherwise, information on lodging in the Charlottesville region can be found at www.pursuecharlottesville.com


We'll post more details as we have them--but consider this blog a space where we can collaborate and coordinate while preparing for the conference. The official signup will come soon, we hope you will be able to come. Start thinking about whether there is anyone else you want to invite as well.

Arts & Business

One area that DSC focuses on becoming a resource to its members is in the intersection between art and business. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle details the stories of several artists who are coming to view themselves as entrepreneurs, but still struggle with the balance between the creative side and business side of their work. As we are on this journey ourselves, hearing a little more of how others are doing it can provide crucial encouragement at an important moment along the way.

Christopher Knab, a music business consultant, also has a great article encouraging artists to feed both their creative self and business self in order to experience true growth.

If you're just getting started with the idea of your art as a business, Arts Business Management gives a nice overview of several areas to start thinking about. And if you've already gotten started, this site may remind you of things you've overlooked.

DSC has attracted both artists and entrepreneurs to our ranks. While each of us may feel stronger in one area or another.. we'll find that both activities pull on our creative energies and are closer to each other than we first realize.

Feedback:

What are your latest triumphs or pitfalls with art and business? Any tips? What are you trying?

Seeds in the Wind

On occasion we want to share the work of those in our midst. This week take in a recent poem by Amber Butler. Other submissions to share (word, image, etc) may find their way to our inbox at dandelionseedco@gmail.com.


Stuck in the Middle with You

March shafts of ice like sticks
over spring’s budding twigs;
lost in transition
from somewhere to nowhere;
uptown and downtown,
nowhere’s looking pretty slim—
but somewhere to begin again.

Where did agony begin
and does her tail have an end,
or is it lounging from this
end of time to the next
and the next after?
Switching swick,
switching swick,
swiping with swiveling nicks.

Do I make my story a travesty?
A tragedy told to myself
and no one else,
a berating for a farthing
and far I never get;
stuck in my corner with a stick,
switching swick,
switching swick.
In a maze I might better find my way
and stop to contemplate,
than I do with the open road,
the unknown, the peculiar moments of choice
propelling me upon them.

Gathering

We will have more info on our annual (x2) gatherings planned for this summer very soon. Jon is marshaling all our forces to make some decisions, after which we will be able to send out the news to you--

What we can tell you is that we are planning two DSC conferences this summer, to give more options for travel and to cover a wider breadth of topics. June in Charlottesville, VA; August in Asheville, NC. More to come soon.. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm ready to see your faces again. It's been too long.

As we'd like this blogspace to become more and more of a hub for our far flung DSC network, we will be offering ways to connect and prepare for the conference in the months ahead. Discussions, reading lists, introductions, etc. We look forward to seeing you here, and seeing you there.

Blogs, RSS, subscribing and the like

We thought we'd spend a moment pointing out the hand dandy links at the top right of our webpage. One of the most important developments with content online is the ability to set up feeds that bring the content to you rather than you having to go to the content. We have two options for subscribing to the blog: one is by email delivery (mainly, when we post, you will get an email with said post), the other is by using RSS, which feeds into a reader (like this one) where you can access many feeds at the same time. If you aren't familiar with the concept of feeds, check out Feed 101 a Google guide that explains it better than we could.

Speaking of blogs, one of our own, Joel Wassinger, has started a blog and occasionally gives us the inside look at his thoughts towards God, faith, doubt and all the rest. Most recently:

"I have been troubled–deeply troubled–by the Crucifixion from when I first perceived it. I am, I confess, still puzzled and disturbed to think that Justice and Wrath and a Father God could require it. At some level, faith compels me to understand the Father’s love in this awful, ugly moment–this cruel silence at the center of history–but it is a thin strand of faith, blind, indeed, and confused and frustrated. But nothing so consistently moves me as Christ’s sacrifice and, I suppose, in the final analysis, that the willing Son convinces me of His Father’s goodness."

We're often uncomfortable and wrestling with that cruel silence. We've got words to speak into it, and Joel is one person leading the way in that regard. Thanks Joel!

A Place Apart

This week on JRL's blog Jonathan featured his new meditation cards which were inspired by the similar work of Paul Grout, someone who has been an influential presence and speaker at the last several Dandelion Seed Conferences. Thinking about Jon's cards got us thinking about Paul and we rediscovered the A Place Apart website (where Paul is director). For those of you who know Paul or want to get to know him, visiting their website is a good place to start.

A Place Apart defines itself as: "a teaching community where all types of people can come for a time to break from the world and rediscover the new way of living introduced by Jesus Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit."

In the last year A Place Apart has been fortunate in acquiring further property to host a modern day "monastery" and also completed significant renovations at the property. They have a new virtual tour of the place hosted on their site and it's worth taking a look.

Some DSC folks have been out to Putney, VT and have experienced A Place Apart's hospitality first-hand. In particular, a group from DSC partnered with A Place Apart to record the Vermont Project in July 2006.

A Place Apart also keeps a blog where you can keep up and join in on their news as well. If you aren't familiar with A Place Apart, or you'd like to spend time with Paul Grout and his crew again, they are hosting several retreats in the coming months.

Sharing Resources: contributed by Amber Butler

I often troll the Internet for information and advice regarding the business of music. Last week I stumbled across an excellent little e-book that I immediately felt I wanted to share with the DSC community. The book is targeted directly at the music business but I agree with the author that it shares principles about online presence and marketing strategy that are applicable to all businesses, particularly for small businesses in the arts industries.

Andrew Dubber, a music industry professor at Birmingham City University in the UK wrote “The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online” as a series of posts in 2007 that turned into an e-book which you can download and share for free. I found his advice very insightful and timely. It’s a challenge to take our selves seriously and take the online medium of marketing seriously.

For example, one of the things I love about this book (besides all the very practical organizational and technical advice) is thing number 1: "Don't believe the hype." Dugger tells us not to buy into the idea that you can just post stuff online and become an overnight success. The Internet is one of several avenues to market your product and you'll make the most of it when online strategies are paired with the offline, more "traditional" ones. This is an important introduction to a book that is all about how to best leverage your online presence.

Check out his blog, New Music Strategies, for other cool ideas.