Evolutions at Resonance, and the Wisdom in Water

Beautiful people, we’ve missed you.

As we’ve lived into this month of Pride, it’s with the kind of relish from bodies and spirits craving joy and togetherness. There is some sparkle in the air and we are here for it.

2023 has been a year of transition — a sense of quickening, of feeling the earth shifting under our feet as we move. Grounding in this shifting landscape is easier done when our roots are interconnected. And we are here for that too.

As the Resonance team emerged from our period of harvest last year, we have been grounding together. And building.

Our new website went live with the New Moon in Aries.

We re-shaped our worldbuilding strategy and developed 4 goals to orient our work for the coming years:

• Increase interconnectivity, shared learning, and collective action by reconfiguring our network infrastructure to meet the ever-evolving context of our world,
• Seed and support local collective governance projects across the US and beyond,
• Seed broad scale narrative change toward collective governance by sharing the stories of transformation and possibility inside Resonance Network’s practices, and
• Build capacity — of community organizations, philanthropic partners, networks, and movements to practice collective governance — while strengthening Resonance’s sustainability.

In short, we are deepening our worldbuilding — leveraging the content we have developed, relationships we have built, and learnings we have integrated — into this next phase of localizing.

As the world shifts into this new phase of pandemic life, the need and desire for community is resounding. At the same time, we know that liberation happens in community — and we are being called to practice governance in place, and support participants in applying what they’re learning and practicing in virtual spaces…in their families, tribes, organizations, and communities. We exist as a network so that we can be in a practice of emergence, and we look forward to this next phase of our shared evolution.

Hello to new team members, farewell to Ariel

As our worldbuilding strategy evolves to meet the needs of the collective, our staff team is also changing shape. This month, we are thrilled to welcome LaToya Wesley-Colm and Cristiana Kyung-Hye Baik to Resonance’s fundraising team. LaToya is a social science researcher and Resonance’s Director of Resource Mobilization; she comes to us with a depth of experience evaluating, developing, and resourcing justice programs. Cristiana, Resonance’s Director of Strategic Partnerships, brings a rich background in fundraising and long-term sustainability planning in community. You can learn more about LaToya and Cristiana on our staff page, here.

At the same time, we say a bittersweet goodbye to Resonance family member, Ariel Jacobson. Her light and wisdom have been a Resonance mainstay since 2017 — so much of our work has been touched by her spark and leadership, though many of you know her best through Mending the Arc, which has been her labor of love. And it shows. Mending the Arc has become a core tenet of Resonance’s worldbuilding, and will remain a reflection of Ariel’s Resonance legacy. Of course, she’ll always be with us in spirit — but for the time being she’ll be devoting her time to applying liberatory ways of being to another sector where it’s much needed — philanthropy.

“It has been an immeasurable blessing to be a part of the Resonance core team over the past six years,” says Ariel. “I have learned so much that I hope to continue practicing in other contexts. I’ve been so honored to call this network my people, and to call our shared vision my purpose work. I will see you on the continued path of mending together.”

Wisdom in Water

Finally, as we deepen into our first program season of the year, we are in practice alongside participants in the WeGovern Learning Community and Mending the Arc, in a new offering called Mending the Arc with People and Place: Art + Story as a Pathway Toward Collective Governance. As the name suggests, participants are connecting through story and art practice — to the embodied ways of knowing that collective governance asks of us — and rooting their practice in place.

Right now, we are drawing inspiration from water. In our last gathering, Norma Wong (Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong Roshi) invoked the reminder: He ola ka wai, he wai ke ola. Water is life. Life is water.

There is much wisdom in these words, though as Norma shared, they are ultimately a reminder of our role as stewards: we cannot say that water is life without holding the responsibility that comes with it — namely, being a steward of a place where water flows and sustains life. By affirming that water is life, we also affirm our responsibility to it, and to place — and the people and beings of that place.

We look forward to sharing more as our practice evolves — and as participants continue to anchor their stories of collective governance for our people, places, and beings.