Over the years we've rather accidentally developed the role of a "guide" for our 90 minute Wednesday meditation sessions. The guide was responsible for selecting a topic, doing a 10 minute presentation on that idea, facilitating the discussion, starting and stopping meditation, moving into our casual conversation time after the discussion, and bringing our session to a close -- while welcoming and managing every other aspect of our time together.I think it is too much and too intimidating for too many of us. Let's make it easier and more inviting to present an idea to the group.
Here is my breakdown of the roles we need to replace the notion of a guide. There are 3 that appeal to me:
Presenter: presents the topic for the day, an idea they've created, something they've found to read or summarize, or they might play a video or audio offering. Usually stimulates discussion by asking some leading questions. Might facilitate ensuing discussion or might choose to defer to the person in the facilitator role.
Facilitator: starts & stops things, helps ensure everyone has a chance to speak and no one talks too much, helps the group stay together. Save others from having to watch the clock.
Host: I like the idea of having someone explicitly play the host role to ensure that we, as a group, are always being good hosts for everyone who chooses to join us. To me, this is the person whose primary purpose is looking after the general welfare of the group and the people in it, ensuring people are introduced and welcomed, helping to ensure everyone is cared for. While this is a role that can and should be played by everyone simultaneously (in a sense it is the very raison d'etre of mindfulness practice), I think it will be helpful to explicitly fill this role each week.
In a subsequent post, I'll present some ideas from our previous discussion on how we might pick topics for presentation and discussion so that the presenter is well supported and the group retains some consistency.
I'll note here that I think we could pick a facilitator and host at the beginning of each meeting since there is no real prep necessary. It's just a relatively straightforward task. Meanwhile, scheduling presenters becomes easier (I hope), and maybe so easy no one has to be responsible for it. Here's the online form we are now using. (Estelle was going to do it on the 14th @ 10:30, then we changed our meeting time to 4pm so I'm filling in that day.)
Every email reminder of our Wednesday meeting @ 4pm will include a link to that scheduling spreadsheet and a comment about what it means and how to use it. It will be up to us, collectively, to ensure we use it appropriately. I'm volunteering to substitute for anyone who signs up and finds they cannot make it or any date that gets no joy.
This spreadsheet is way easier to work with than you might fear. It is part of Google Docs which is the ecosystem I chose to work with nearly 20 years ago because of it being based in the cloud and its simplicity and reliability. You do not have to explicitly "save" anything. It is automatic. It is also under version control so if you mess something up, it is easy to roll back to the way it was. All you have to do to become a presenter is click the link and write your name in a blank cell. Period. Or write a message to me and I'll do the data entry.