🌟 Essential Conversations: March 2020-March 2025
🎉 20th Anniversary of Art of Convening!
🌟 Essential Conversations: March 2020-March 2025 🎉 20th Anniversary of Art of Convening!
ALL TIMES LISTED ARE CENTRAL U.S.
The Community Hearth and some events are free to attend.
Join CPL Communities for access to all events.
Download CPL’s “Recipe Cards” for Great Meetings & Conversations
Upcoming Events
In an era where a
constant message tells
us we are a divided people, CPL is committed to convening opportunities to remember our shared humanity, and discover our common values of caring for one another, caring for all.
Join us at CPL Communities to become part of a vibrant community of purposeful leaders like you.
What to look for at each CPL Gathering? Structures of purposeful community;
Meet fellow change agents.
Find new friends/allies.
Deepen friendships and collaborations.
Explore new ways of thinking and being.
Be inspired by an awesome community.
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
Essential Conversations: Being, Becoming, Belonging: 3 Human Rights - Part 2
Being, Becoming, Belonging
An exploration of Our Three Human Rights:
Our right to Be. Our right to Become. Our right to Belong.
Pele Rouge Chadima
CoFounder, Timeless Earth Wisdom
David O’Fallon
Elder Patriot Warrior
Join us for a two-part conversation: March 12 and April 9.
In these Essential Conversations sessions we will explore:
Addressing Challenges and Finding Identity
Developing the Courage (even when I don’t “know”):
to embody… who I am, the right of Being
to discover… what is mine to do, the right of Becoming
to live into…who are My People, the right of Belonging
and from these Three Human Rightsto choose in each moment To Be Free
This is an ongoing Journey of Self-Discovery, Practice, Grounding, Self-Authority, and Collective Power.
Leadership in These Times: In these challenging times, the importance of self-reflection and authenticity, and the need for collective embodiment and experience, is crucial to include as a leadership imperative.
What is a map to follow in this journey of self-discovery? A focus on the need for a deeper transformation in society, the importance of learning and growing together, and the need to face and overcome fear. Community support is crucial: how to help each other and move together, rather than feeling alone.
The importance of learning and growing together, and how this process can lead to increased safety and understanding, is a way to face and overcome fear, and how this can lead to personal growth and strength.
What to consider for this session… A story of being, becoming and belonging (click on the image to hear)
PELE ROUGE CHADIMA
CoFounder, Timeless Earth Wisdom pelerouge@timelessearthwisdom.com
Pele Rouge is a carrier of an ancient body of Earth Wisdom Teaching. These powerful teachings are a design which foster wholeness and balance within the self, with others and all aspects of life. Working in tandem with her husband FireHawk, she has brought these teachings into a wide variety of individual and organizational settings in the U.S. and Europe. At the heart of Pele’s passionate journey is her love of co-creating sacred ceremonial space in which people can gather to “do their work”.
She is a contributing author to Community Building and author of the children’s story, Never Shout at a Bear. Her professional background includes service in the Peace Corps, a decade as a Continuing Education Specialist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and as the Senior Context Designer for the International Center for Organization Design. Her journey walk has taken her to more than 50 countries around the world.
Pele’s large family is of primary importance to her and continues to be a major source of joy, learning and nurturance.
“An example of Pele and FireHawk’s work”
https://www.centerfortimelessearthwisdom.org/2024,_2025_winter_dreaming_online
DAVID O’FALLON
davidof43@gmail.com
North of 80, https://davidofallon.substack.com/
Elder Patriot Warrior.
Life has always had three themes: education/learning; the arts/theater; and community, especially those on the margins, the edge. My titles and jobs and roles have changed many times. The three themes never. They are the themes in every life improvisation, from major federal programs, universities, to smallest NPO.
At this time I think we are in the second Axial Age; the depth and complexity of the changes in every system, and the cascade and convergence of crises, challenge us—me—in ways I struggle to admit and understand. It’s a compelling reason that I am part of CPL.
I have three adult kids, in Boston, Salt Lake City, and Minneapolis, and five grands! I live in Minneapolis just a mile or so from George Floyd Square. His murder ignited fires of change that are still burning, and that provoked a great destructive reaction.
We see the rise now in the USA of a racist, nationalist, party that desires control and flaunts law and civic norms. Our democracy is threatened.
I’m committed to do whatever I can, where I am, the best I can, to turn this time, turn the wheel around the axle, towards a creative, cooperative, sustainable culture.
Make a donation today to support the Essential Conversations and CPL’s work of creating a world that works for all.
Meeting with Purpose Monthly Member CoLab
Meeting with Purpose Monthly CoLab
Free for all CPL Community Members.
Fri, April 11
9:00am - 10:00am CST
Repeats monthly on the 2nd Friday
We'll use this time to explore different features, answer technical questions, and share general tips and creative ways to use convenings for your offerings.
Do you have any questions about setting up your convening or conversations?
Are you running into any challenges?
Or maybe you are looking for some inspiration for a project?
Free for all CPL Community Members.
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
CPL Connect
CPL Communities Connect (aka Office Hours)
What is CPL Communities? What are all the features of your CPL community?
Free for all CPL Community Members.
CPL Members, join Patricia Neal, CPL Executive Director.
Updates on all things CPL and Community Builder Community of Practice!
Whether you are new to CPL Communities or have been here a while, do you know how to navigate the network, the platform, events, find people, connect?
We'll use this time to explore different features, answer technical questions.
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
CPL Connect
CPL Communities Connect (aka Office Hours)
What is CPL Communities? What are all the features of your CPL community?
Free for all CPL Community Members.
CPL Members, join Patricia Neal, CPL Executive Director.
Updates on all things CPL and Community Builder Community of Practice!
Whether you are new to CPL Communities or have been here a while, do you know how to navigate the network, the platform, events, find people, connect?
We'll use this time to explore different features, answer technical questions.
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
Meeting with Purpose Monthly Member CoLab
Meeting with Purpose Monthly CoLab
Free for all CPL Community Members.
Fri, March 14
9:00am - 10:00am CST
Repeats monthly on the 2nd Friday
We'll use this time to explore different features, answer technical questions, and share general tips and creative ways to use convenings for your offerings.
Do you have any questions about setting up your convening or conversations?
Are you running into any challenges?
Or maybe you are looking for some inspiration for a project?
Free for all CPL Community Members.
Essential Conversations: Being, Becoming, Belonging: 3 Human Rights - Part 1
Being, Becoming, Belonging
An exploration of Our Three Human Rights:
Our right to Be. Our right to Become. Our right to Belong.
Pele Rouge Chadima
CoFounder, Timeless Earth Wisdom
David O’Fallon
Elder Patriot Warrior
Join us for a two-part conversation: March 12 and April 9.
In these Essential Conversations sessions we will explore:
Addressing Challenges and Finding Identity
Developing the Courage (even when I don’t “know”):
to embody… who I am, the right of Being
to discover… what is mine to do, the right of Becoming
to live into…who are My People, the right of Belonging
and from these Three Human Rightsto choose in each moment To Be Free
This is an ongoing Journey of Self-Discovery, Practice, Grounding, Self-Authority, and Collective Power.
Leadership in These Times: In these challenging times, the importance of self-reflection and authenticity, and the need for collective embodiment and experience, is crucial to include as a leadership imperative.
What is a map to follow in this journey of self-discovery? A focus on the need for a deeper transformation in society, the importance of learning and growing together, and the need to face and overcome fear. Community support is crucial: how to help each other and move together, rather than feeling alone.
The importance of learning and growing together, and how this process can lead to increased safety and understanding, is a way to face and overcome fear, and how this can lead to personal growth and strength.
What to consider for this session… A story of being, becoming and belonging (click on the image to hear)
PELE ROUGE CHADIMA
CoFounder, Timeless Earth Wisdom pelerouge@timelessearthwisdom.com
Pele Rouge is a carrier of an ancient body of Earth Wisdom Teaching. These powerful teachings are a design which foster wholeness and balance within the self, with others and all aspects of life. Working in tandem with her husband FireHawk, she has brought these teachings into a wide variety of individual and organizational settings in the U.S. and Europe. At the heart of Pele’s passionate journey is her love of co-creating sacred ceremonial space in which people can gather to “do their work”.
She is a contributing author to Community Building and author of the children’s story, Never Shout at a Bear. Her professional background includes service in the Peace Corps, a decade as a Continuing Education Specialist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and as the Senior Context Designer for the International Center for Organization Design. Her journey walk has taken her to more than 50 countries around the world.
Pele’s large family is of primary importance to her and continues to be a major source of joy, learning and nurturance.
“An example of Pele and FireHawk’s work”
https://www.centerfortimelessearthwisdom.org/2024,_2025_winter_dreaming_online
DAVID O’FALLON
davidof43@gmail.com
North of 80, https://davidofallon.substack.com/
Elder Patriot Warrior.
Life has always had three themes: education/learning; the arts/theater; and community, especially those on the margins, the edge. My titles and jobs and roles have changed many times. The three themes never. They are the themes in every life improvisation, from major federal programs, universities, to smallest NPO.
At this time I think we are in the second Axial Age; the depth and complexity of the changes in every system, and the cascade and convergence of crises, challenge us—me—in ways I struggle to admit and understand. It’s a compelling reason that I am part of CPL.
I have three adult kids, in Boston, Salt Lake City, and Minneapolis, and five grands! I live in Minneapolis just a mile or so from George Floyd Square. His murder ignited fires of change that are still burning, and that provoked a great destructive reaction.
We see the rise now in the USA of a racist, nationalist, party that desires control and flaunts law and civic norms. Our democracy is threatened.
I’m committed to do whatever I can, where I am, the best I can, to turn this time, turn the wheel around the axle, towards a creative, cooperative, sustainable culture.
Make a donation today to support the Essential Conversations and CPL’s work of creating a world that works for all.
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
CPL Connect
CPL Communities Connect (aka Office Hours)
What is CPL Communities? What are all the features of your CPL community?
Free for all CPL Community Members.
CPL Members, join Patricia Neal, CPL Executive Director.
Updates on all things CPL and Community Builder Community of Practice!
Whether you are new to CPL Communities or have been here a while, do you know how to navigate the network, the platform, events, find people, connect?
We'll use this time to explore different features, answer technical questions.
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
Meeting with Purpose Monthly Member CoLab
Meeting with Purpose Monthly CoLab
Free for all CPL Community Members.
Next Event: Valentine’s Day
Fri, February 14
9:00am - 10:00am CST
Repeats monthly on the 2nd Friday
We'll use this time to explore different features, answer technical questions, and share general tips and creative ways to use convenings for your offerings.
Do you have any questions about setting up your convening or conversations?
Are you running into any challenges?
Or maybe you are looking for some inspiration for a project?
Free for all CPL Community Members.
Whole Person Leadership: What's Life Asking of You Now? TQ & EQ
Back by popular demand!
What's Life Asking of You Now? TQ & EQ
with Whole Person Leadership Faculty member, Kim Kristenson-Lee, MAIR, ACC, TICC, CCL
☀️FREE TO ATTEND☀️
Knowing how to healthfully navigate transitions is a key capability of generative human beings.
We live a nonlinear life with regular disruptors. There are “life quakes”- major disruptions that cause us to need to re-craft our entire storyline. Our ability to recognize, navigate, and make meaning of life transitions keeps us healthy and keeps our stories coherent.
A lens that allows us to understand what is happening: we are almost always in some transition state—and that transition is normal—is transformational.
A special conversation and a taste of Whole Person Leadership & leading the Whole Person Way. Find community, inspiration, and resources for leading during uncertain and disruptive times. Explore with us becoming and being a whole person leader.
Essential Conversations: Unearthing US: Poems and Practices for Discovering Our Fullest Selves
Make a donation today to support the Essential Conversations and CPL’s work of creating a world that works for all.
Unearthing US: Poems and Practices for Discovering Our Fullest Selves
Unearthing Us: Poems and Practices for Discovering Our Fullest Selves is a collection of 21 poems and practices inviting readers to envision a world planted with possibility, growth, and flourishing. Each poem includes an Unearthing Practice that draws wisdom from the poet's visits to his ancestral land of Jamaica. These poems and practices beckon readers to dig deeper into ourselves and our communities to grow more joy and beauty within and around us.
In this Essential Conversations session, we will explore 3 stages of Unearthing:
Plant: Poems for planting seeds
Grow: Poems for growth
Flourish: Poems for cultivating abundance
What inspired you to start writing poetry, and how has your background growing up in Minnesota influenced your work?
I had a lot of creative energy as a kid and I needed somewhere to put it. Art was always my outlet. At first it was playful and I would write poems to my schoolyard crush, but it became therapeutic when I got severely sick and began writing as a way to process my childhood trauma. Being immersed in the artist and activist communities throughout the Twin Cities taught me how to elevate the art as a catalyst for social and cultural transformation. Now I tour the country using poetry to power possibility, inviting the practice of envisioning and embodying a world beyond the status quo.
Your poetry often explores themes of identity and social justice. Can you share some of the experiences or events that have shaped your perspective on these issues?
Encountering the work of Langston Hughes and Maya Angeluo at a young age is what first ignited my imagination and showed me what's possible for Black folks in spite of our circumstances. There was joy, there was hope, there was the unconditional love and affirmation of my humanity and the humanity of others like me. Although I was further called into action by my community's response to police violence, I'm grateful to have been given a deep-rootedness of joy, hope, and love as initiating forces.
Joe Davis is an award-winning spoken word artist and bestselling author who uses poetry to power possibility.
He is the founder and director of Finding Your Freedom Practice, teaching holistic health and wellness practices through spoken word, writing, music, theater, and dance. Joe holds a Master of Arts degree in Theology of the Arts and also heads a multimedia production company, a soul funk band, and a racial justice education program. His work has been featured on BET, CNN, and VH1.
Poetic Diaspora: Journeying through the sonically diverse realms of old school and new school hip hop, R&B, funk, and soul, Joe Davis & The Poetic Diaspora seamlessly blend melodic harmonies, smooth instrumentation, and raw, poetic energy to tell stories of struggle, resilience, and celebration.
Formed in the heart of the Twin Cities, Minnesota, the collective is dedicated to crafting vibrant soundscapes around honest narratives that reflect their community's sacred humanity. Each song is an ancestral echo, a battle cry calling for freedom, an unending dance for justice and joy, welcoming all of the diaspora HOME.
The New Renaissance: Ancestors Rising: Ascension. The New Renaissance presents ANCESTORS RISING: ASCENSION theater production! If you'd like to experience the magic, save the date for bigger and better at the Northrop Auditorium on Saturday, February 22 2025.
Based in Minneapolis, Joe tours internationally to join schools, faith spaces, nonprofits, and businesses to practice envisioning and embodying a world of collective liberation and human flourishing. His work employs poetry, music, theater and dance to shape culture. Connecting with audiences as a keynote speaker, facilitator, and teaching artist, Joe also heads a multimedia production company, a soul funk band, and a racial justice education program. He holds a Master's degree in Theology of the Arts.
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
CPL Connect
CPL Communities Connect (aka Office Hours)
What is CPL Communities? What are all the features of your CPL community?
Free for all CPL Community Members.
CPL Members, join Patricia Neal, CPL Executive Director.
Updates on all things CPL and Community Builder Community of Practice!
Whether you are new to CPL Communities or have been here a while, do you know how to navigate the network, the platform, events, find people, connect?
We'll use this time to explore different features, answer technical questions.
Whole Person Leadership: What's Life Asking of You Now? TQ & EQ
What's Life Asking of You Now? TQ & EQ
with Whole Person Leadership Faculty member, Kim Kristenson-Lee, MAIR, ACC, TICC, CCL
☀️FREE TO ATTEND☀️
Knowing how to healthfully navigate transitions is a key capability of generative human beings.
We live a nonlinear life with regular disruptors. There are “life quakes”- major disruptions that cause us to need to re-craft our entire storyline. Our ability to recognize, navigate, and make meaning of life transitions keeps us healthy and keeps our stories coherent.
A lens that allows us to understand what is happening: we are almost always in some transition state—and that transition is normal—is transformational.
A special conversation and a taste of Whole Person Leadership & leading the Whole Person Way. Find community, inspiration, and resources for leading during uncertain and disruptive times. Explore with us becoming and being a whole person leader.
Community Hearth: 9-10am + 15-minute After-party
https://www.cplcommunities.org/spaces/13037179/content
A CPL Mid-Winter Celebration (free to attend)
Free to attend.
Saturday, January 18, 2025
6:30 pm - 9:00 pm
A CPL Mid-Winter Celebration with Terry Chapman
Host: Brian Mogren
Terry Chapman is in town--let's gather to celebrate with CPL friends @ St. Jane House for an evening of warmth and great conversation.
Join us on 1/18 at the St. Jane House. All are welcome!
You may know Terry from CPL’s weekly Hearth, or as a senior Convening Leader, or Illuman convening leader, or CPL Retreat leader. Terry being in town is a great reason to gather and the St. Jane House is the perfect place for a mid-winter celebration.
All CPL gatherings bring a diversity of people together for great conversation, food, drink, and joyful connection.
What will we do? We will Hear All the Voices in many ways, and have a lot of fun.
Light appetizers, desserts, and beverages will be provided.
If you're inspired to create something to add to the table, that would be great.
St. Jane House, 1403 Emerson Ave N, Minneapolis, MN 55411
Street parking.
A free-will offering will be accepted to help cover event costs.
We look forward to being with you!
Brian, Stephanie, Terry
St. Jane House
2023 CPL Retreat
CPLC Connect
CPLC Connect:
What is CPL Communities? What are all the features of your CPL community?
Free for all CPL Community Members.
Updates on all things CPL and Community Member Community of Practice!
Whether you are new to CPL Communities or have been here a while, do you know how to navigate the network, the platform, events, find people, connect?
Join Terry Chapman and Patricia Neal to learn more about this Community of Practice.
#ConveningBestPractices
Free for all CPL Community Members.
Meeting with Purpose Monthly Member CoLab
Meeting with Purpose Monthly CoLab
Free for all CPL Community Members.
Next Event: Fri, January 10
9:00am - 10:00am CST
Repeats monthly on the 2nd Friday
We'll use this time to explore different features, answer technical questions, and share general tips and creative ways to use convenings for your offerings.
Do you have any questions about setting up your convening or conversations?
Are you running into any challenges?
Or maybe you are looking for some inspiration for a project?
Free for all CPL Community Members.