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Christopher Alexander in The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and The Nature of the Universe, Book Three: A Vision of a Living World, p 438, says something about a room which applies also to meeting. Permit me to rework his words just a little, to say something we all knew before, but had not yet put into words:

A meeting is the sanctification and illumination of the lives of those meeting, of life. It is life made manifest. The meeting, like a cradle or a gathering together of life, is, in its essence, the place of a thousand joys and sorrows, the receptacle of our lives and our children’s lives, the embodiment, in physical order, of what our spirit has been and is becoming.

That is, perhaps, the true purpose of a meeting. It is comfort, but true comfort, an inner spiritual comfort. A comfort of action as well as solitude.

:- Doug.

How might we make nursing homes fun?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 993

Much of what I long for in the world is summarized in the garden first example: We want and need to belong to the world. We want to be at home in the world. And to do that our buildings need to be at home in the world. So we must first find them a home, a garden, in which to sit and look over the valley and the mountains. If we try to construct a house first, it is ego-filled, and stands in front of the garden, blocking its sunlight, and then we have a garden that is sickly, and a house lacking soul, and a view we care not to see.

So what is the shape of the space we care to see?

Please pass it on.

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Our task is making wonderful.

:- Doug.

What big thing is your small group doing? What big thing are we about in this group? If it is merely gathering money so someone else will do something, what good is that? Luke warm is to be spit out.

:- Doug.

We have the ability, with our tools and technologies, to make the world more human and more supportive of living. Let us do so.

:- Doug.