Cedar Moon

Groups grow in strength, joy, and energy by paying attention to relationships.
consult@cedarmoon.us

Philosophy

Healthy groups change us.

When we feel connected with others in a group; when a group holds us accountable to core intentions and agreements; when our feelings and our ideas are honored as we take tangible steps together: we taste the power of cooperation as more than a sum of parts. And we discover in ourselves the motivation to share, to listen, to care.

Healthy groups change the world.

When people trust each other, autonomy and agility thrive. When people know they matter, they follow-through. When people listen to each other, their collective decisions and actions carry a wisdom beyond any of them individually. They make change.

Your group can embody this health.

Create space for feelings. Plan agendas well. Focus on deepening relationships. Make communication agreements -- and be accountable to them. Speak the hard things. Trust your intuition. Take small steps. Honor failure. Celebrate success.

We'll help you get there

We embody our values in our presence and practice.

Services

Facilitation

Meetings, retreats, conferences. Three days, three hours, 30 minutes. Your time is valuable, especially when multiplied by everyone in the room. Let's make every minute count, and feel spacious at the same time.

How?

Our specialty is in building consensus that draws on the unique perspective of everyone in the room -- even if your formal decisionmaking is Robert's Rules of Order.

Mediation

Sometimes a relationship needs special care. Whether a profound disagreement that has built over years into bitterness and acrimony, or a recent misunderstanding that brings up more than you expected: having a caring, respected third party can make all the difference.

Our approach uses various tools to support people in taking responsibility for their own feelings and needs, and building their ability to hear and feel heard. We encourage you not to compete over whose story is "right", but rather to discover ways to bring your stories into closer relationship.

Pay attention to your goals: to negotiate a settlement? collaborate on a project? return to deep trust and care for each other? What will help you get there?

Mediations generally start with one-on-one interviews between the mediator and each of the parties. You'll have full opportunity to share your experiences and needs, confident that the mediator will take them into account during the session.

Training

Working well with others is a skill, and it grows by leaps and bounds with experience. A focused training can rapidly increase your confidence and toolset as you continue to grow in groups. We provide an array of trainings, each one tailored to the needs of your group or community. The following are merely examples:

Organizational consulting

We also support new and long-established organizations looking at legal and financial structures as they seek to embody the values and practices of a new world, while remaining rock solid in the existing legal system. Whether you're looking to shift a corp. to a coop., buy a house as a community, or set up basic agreements that scale over time, we have experience and ideas to share. Contact us for details.

Bios

While a variety of members of Cedar Moon provide group process skills, only John Brush (who prefers to be called "brush") is currently seeking new client/collaborators. He can be reached directly at brush@cedarmoon.us or 503-245-0484.

brush has been an activist and organizer in portland for more than a decade, spanning environmental, labor, global justice, and democratic economics movements. For the last five years he has been legal and financial coordinator for TLC Farm, a sustainability education center combining intentional community, permaculture design, and public benefit using innovative land use and legal tenure structures. He works with Recode Portland, focused on performance zoning and how city policy can support citizen-led innovation towards sustainability. He has consulted for a variety of communities and collectives, with a particular focus on skills and structures that support long-term cooperation.

He is also a skilled facilitator and mediator with 15 years of experience supporting healthy process in activist organizations, cooperatives, non-profits, intentional communities, and other kinds of groups. His active approach is rooted in attention to the ongoing patterns and relationships that grow consensus into living reality rather than formal procedure. He brings to his practice relevant experience as a co-founder of the residential worker collective Cedar Moon, the non-profit TLC Farm, and the group process collective Cascadia Center. brush offers trainings in consensus, facilitation, and social permaculture.

Fees?

No, gifts.

brush A gift culture can help us grow stronger, more reciprocal relationships, and our primary consultant (brush) prefers to work that way. In other words, he chooses to offer his services based on what feels important and joyful to him and his relations, and invites others to offer their gifts in turn. This kind of work can be expensive in the corporate sphere, costing $100 to $300/hr, and sometimes brush gets gifts on the high end; other times, he works with groups that are cash-poor and can only offer their own time and thanks as a gift.

So far, it evens out enough that he's able to make ends meet.

Now, for some potential collaborators familiar with fixed hourly rates this approach can be confusing, even stressful. So we make it as easy as possible: when the work is done, we'll send you something like an invoice (you can call it that for your records) which details the hours worked, and includes some comparison hourly rates and/or in-kind gift suggestions.

Then you make the choice. Give what you can so that you feel generous, joyful, and responsible. That's what we're trying to do!

References

The following provides a selection of feedback on brush's work; additional references available, and all welcome your call. Email us for contact details.
Group Work Growing