Blue Deer Center Summer Business Meetings

Keiko Cronin

BDC Summer Business Meetings

Summer Business Meetings

This summer the Blue Deer Center team gathered at Rockaway Beach, Oregon for our business meetings. Camp Magruder provided a spectacular setting – forested mountains on one side, the sound of Grandmother Ocean all around us, and the guiding wisdom of Grandfather Fire. These meetings are a time of intense work and joyful inspiration for all of us in bringing forth the gifts that the Center offers to the world.

The Sacred Fire Foundation and Sacred Fire Community held their meetings at the same time. One of the outcomes of our time together was the realization that it is time for the three organizations to choose a project that we can mutually support. We have made a commitment to join together in support of the 2010 Interspiritual Conference (ISC), which will be held next spring. The ISC is a natural place for us to come together – the Conference has featured many of the elders who have taught at the BDC in recent years, as well as elders we hope to bring to the Center in the future.

In addition to identifying this joint project, our team spent time re-working the format of the Wisdom Keepers series. For those new to this newsletter, the Wisdom Keepers is a series that invites elders to the Center so that we can begin to build a relationship with them and offer them an opportunity to experience the sacredness of the Land. It also provides shorter introductory programs to the community so that they can experience the wisdom of a variety of ancestral traditions.

We spent time delving into possibilities for grant funding for the Center and avenues for funding capital improvements to our facilities. The Center has made a big investment in Public Relations and Marketing this year, so we had conversations about the best way to continue this momentum into the coming year. We will begin social networking through Facebook and My Space this autumn, and will invite those on our email list to become ‘fans’ of the BDC through these sites to help us share news and information about programs and special events.

There is a lot of energy and excitement about all that is happening now. We will continue to share this with you and hope that you can join us at the Center for a program in the near future.