FocalPoint Alliance
Mission
Values
Dialogue
Optics
Mission
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The FocalPoint Alliance is an inclusive community circle network. It is intended to support the economic vitalization of its community and participants. The Alliance works to build trust and understanding across traditional borders and boundaries, and invites participation and involvement from all sectors and groups in our region.
Initial draft - under co-creative development
As we contemplate those aspects of community that enhance sustainability, near the top of the list – along with creating a safe space for all community members to flourish and deciding how members are given their voice within the communal structure -- is maintaining financial viability in a way that balances freedom for each individual with responsible actions regarding the group.
Within the overarching scope of the Interspirit and SharedPurpose networks, many varying objectives are realized. The purpose of FocalPoint is to create an economic platform for these communities. There are two major branches of this support model: the first is to provide a place in which those who have great ideas about revitalizing the economy (on either a micro or macro scale) can blog about their visions. The second is to create functions to enable people who want to buy and sell, trade and barter to find each other.
On the FocalPoint website it is easy to navigate to the two branches. To get to the blogs, simply click “Blogs” on the sidebar menu. To participate in community commerce, click “Economic Community”. Within the Economic Community, one of the sites you will see is The FocalPoint Market Square. That is a good place to begin your journey if you are interested in buying and selling your products. The Market Square is a lively bazaar where people buy and sell their personal and household goods. All the products in the market are listed there.
We invite you to join FocalPoint in whatever capacity you are able to offer your services to the community. Put your website up here if you like, and list the items that you would like to buy or sell on The Market Square.
~ L.M.
1/8/2012
Ideals and Values
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- Community
- Unity in diversity
- Personal relationships and mutual respect
- Co-creativity
- Dialogue
- Inclusion
- The creative power of diversity
- Listening, honesty and humility
Dialogue and Centerpoint
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"Dialogue is a conversation with a center, not sides"
~ William Isaacs, Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together
http://cct.wikispaces.umb.edu/Dialogue
FocalPoint is about the universal center of community dialogue and the creative vitalization of community that can emerge through good connections, good relationships and good co-creativity.
Dialogue is creative
Dialogue is a conversation with a center, not sides. It is a way of taking the energy of our differences and channeling it toward something that has never been created before.
Dialogue addresses the problem of fragmentation
by uncovering and shifting the organic underlying structures that produce it.
Dialogue can lead people past their natural defenses into genuine contact with one another and a more invisible, implicate reality.
Discussion reviews what is known
Discussion leads us to look at those parts of problems that are already known.
Dialogue uncovers the new and previously unknown
Dialogue, in contrast, asks us to consider the context or field in which the problem arises, to open ourselves to new options and the thinking underlying our assumptions, revealing new possibilities and new interpretations.
Fundamental principle of co-creative community circle
- The center of the community circle remains empty.
- This emptiness at the center opens the channel for collective creativity and the emergence of new insights and the previously unknown.
- This does create uncertainty, and is one reason the bond of trust within the circle is essential.
The Optical Science of FocalPoint
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We are exploring analogies with ideas from the science of optics.
We'll add more detail regarding these analogies as time and co-creative inspiration inform our insight. For now -- think of multiple independent stream of thinking and understanding that have arisen separately around the world beginning to converge, as they are viewed through the common lens of spirit and globalization.
We are witnessing a broad and universal kind of convergence in the world today -- between cultural groups and interdependent ideas. We are beginning to suppose that the point towards which all of this convergence is directed can be understood as a focal point. The analogy seems very instructive and inspiring.
One objective, as expressed in this language, is to "reduce the size of the circle of least confusion". It's a fascinating possibility...
The optical axis is an imaginary line that defines the path along which light propagates through the system.
Circle of Least Confusion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E85FZ7WLvao&feature=related
Focal Axis
