We pick the theme for the next year’s conference before the con every year. We started out with Prosperity and Healing because those seemed like positive themes to explore. We have sometimes picked more challenging themes. The themes often seem oddly appropriate to what’s going on, as in 2015 when we chose to explore the Forces of Nature, and Hurricane Sandy struck a few weeks before the conference. This year we chose Holding Space as a calming, gentle concept. It didn’t occur to us that as plans progressed we would be turning to a virtual conference because many of us are required by the restrictions of dealing with the COVID-19 virus.

At the time we were discussing it, Wildfires were blazing across much of Australia, the arctic, California, Brazil, and other places. Last year our theme was Change, which certainly resonates with the element of Fire, and it made a bit of ‘chilling’ with Ice sound a better. As we continue to explore the various ways of looking at quiet, peace, calm, ‘chilling’, and how ‘not doing anything’ is in many ways, allowing us to do something profound, the outer world once again illustrates the CTCW theme in ways we didn’t expect.

We are still working out the ways to put together a conference on line. A couple of months into the “stay-at-home” we are learning many ways to use technology to maintain contact with those we love and need to deal with. We are learning much about what is “essential” and what is not as critical as we’d thought. I expect by November we will have learned more.

We know that for many, this year will be one of austerity, and we hope that having the conference on line will allow us to cut the cost, and perhaps maybe even let many for whom distance or expense was keeping them away join us. We’ll be discussing options over on the facebook page, and adding ways to share our wisdom and talents with each other even under “lock-down”.

Once again we will learn the lessons from our Theme beyond which we anticipated when we chose it. I have often thought that after an intense lifetime, souls may decide to incarnate as a Redwood or other long living tree, just to be able to take a life to sloooowly process all the previous lessons. Let us learn from the wisdom of Stillness this year, but still let our “roots” communicate with each other. Living at a slower pace can teach us much if we are open to it.