One of the topics discussed at our last meeting for The Sunny Way last Saturday was the focus of the site, which is admittedly wide-ranging. While this makes perfect sense to us, in our discussion we wondered if it might not be clear how it all fits together. From my article on The Wire and organizational hierarchy to Victoria’s concise record of the trash she’s diverted by composting to Stella’s account of the simple and lovely 4th birthday party she threw for her daughter, we cover a lot of ground.

But there is a method to our madness: we’re aiming to talk both about big new ideas and also how those big new ideas look in action.

One part of our mission here is to talk about the big picture—ideas that will help us to create the just, clean, awesome future we want. Our essays aim to take apart the threads of our current worldviews, show where they are frayed, and propose suggestions that are healthier and more accurate. This new kind of thinking represents the framework on which the future we want will be built.

Another part of our mission is to bring those big picture ideas to life in our actions, and to tell the stories of others who are doing the same. We talk about holacracy; then we talk about how holacratic practices worked in our last meeting. We discuss thinking of ourselves as conductors of nature rather than masters of it; then we begin a classic nature-conducting activity, worm composting. We talk about adopting The Sunny Way as an attitude, a code, and a path—then we do it.

So when we write about things we are doing as individuals, things folks are doing together, and things that need to change in the culture at large, it’s all related. Everything is connected.

We need to talk about personal development, saving money, talking to people with different points of view, technological and political victories, thought-provoking movies, growing food, the power of beauty to save the world, and lots of other stuff. Because everything, on every level from individual to infrastructure, needs to be rethought.

In our upcoming redesign, we’ll be adding some features to the site to make our intentions plain. And in our articles we intend to share the big picture ideas behind the actions we cover.

If you have any questions or suggestions about what we are up to, we’d love to hear them in the comments.

(image by ccgd via flickr)