<To be filed under the category of “More Shameless Self Promotion.”> 
My wonderful friend Kevin Beck (@transmillennial) writes a weekly newsletter for Presence International, an organization dedicated to personal, organizational, and societal transformation. Kevin is the COO of Presence, and a true social visionary, having a broad grasp of not only matters of faith, but social entrepreneurship, economics, environmentalism, human emergence, social justice, and -yes – even some strategic foresight. In this week’s newsletter, Kevin not only points out a powerful truth about building a positive future from the perspective of faith drivers, but also gave some newsletter “love” to yours truly. Thanks again Kevin, it’s great to partner with someone with such a multi-disciplined and integral view of life!
In Kevin’s own words:
We’re already through the first quarter of the ninth year of the first decade of the first century of the millennium.
How’s that for a combination of time markers?
It serves to show several realizations. First, time is fairly arbitrary. What we call minutes, days, weeks, years, decades, and centuries are constructs. They are inventions to help us frame events.
Second, it indicates how quickly events unfold. You may recall the apocalyptic anxiety of the Y2K crisis. That was a decade ago. To others it may be more like ancient history, yet for many people Y2K was a symbol of existential and/or religious dread. Now it is nothing but a memory.
Third, we can only live in the present. The past is nothing but a story. The present is an ever-unfolding reality, a constantly emerging evolution of what is and who we are.
The awareness of this blesses us with the realization that we share in the creative process. We are not passive victims of circumstance. The unseen forces of history do not dictate how your world will develop. Instead, you have the God-given power as a co-creator to consciously shape the the future as you shape the present.
Since our inception, Presence has affirmed the “the end” spoken of by Jesus was just the beginning. We’ve transformed “eschatology” (last things”) into “archonology” (first things). First, not only in terms of time but in terms of importance. What is first — or primary — in the ordering of our lives and world? What do we value the most?
If humanity is holding out for God to magically change the physical structure of the universe, we are abdicating our position and work of creating first things here and now.
To help people understand the dynamics of first things, Presence has given people tools such as the Transformations course so they can shape first things in their lives, family, and vocation.
This is one reason why Presence partners with experts in the professional field of strategic foresight. People like Frank Spencer are preparing individuals, organizations, and society for the conscious construction of humanity’s long-term presence.
After all, when we realize that Jesus isn’t literally coming to earth any day now to set up a literal throne in Jerusalem or to blow up the planet, we might start asking, “Well, how should a Christ-shaped spirituality work itself out in our world today?”
Frank describes strategic foresight very simply.“Professional Futurists help individuals, organizations, and social institutions anticipate trends and envision positive outcomes allowing them to operate in confident participation of the future.”
In other words, if you want society and individuals to avoid the existential angst similar to Y2K, you need to envision and implement positive action that will bring about the outcomes you desire.
Put another way . . . If God isn’t planning on wiping earth out of the space-time universe, we need to take conscious steps in creating the long-term world we want our future generations to live in.
There is a lot of anxiety these days over the tremendous uncertainty in the world economy. Instead of giving in to the doom or burying our heads in the sand, we can learn how to surf the waves of change through wise use of the tools of strategic foresight.
In the upcoming, we’ll have more to say about how all of this works together. Meanwhile, Frank will be just one of the featured speakers at Transmillennial 2009 in Little Rock, Arkansas on June 10-13.
You can read Frank’s blog, Forward.
You can follow Frank on Twitter.
Thanks again Kevin! I look forward to attending Transmillennial 2009, where I will be speaking on topics such as human collaborative creativity through the practice of transdisciplinarity, human emergence and social evolution, and the shift toward a new global economic system of resilience and conscientious equality. As the dates get closer, I’ll be sure to post the Twitter hashtag for the conference, as well as the hashtags for my particular topics. Hope to see you there!
In a nod to the ever-intrusive nature of Twitter on this blog (and maybe a sign of the “blogocalypse,” brought about by the rapidly evolving nature and effect of microblogging in Social Media), I’m writing today about, well, somebody writing about me. (How’s that for shameless promotion?) 
So, no way does this take the place of an actual blog post, though many are starting to speculate that the traditional form of blogging is already on the way out: blog posts are usually more than people want to read when gathering info – believe it or not, and it’s often just another form of navel-gazing. (Has blogging been around long enough to categorize the practice as “traditional?” And in this age of “high-speed” everything, how fast is the “traditional” turn-around time?) Regardless, I will continue blogging @ Forward!, but I thought it interesting (more of an experiment and social capture than actually useful) to aggregate my “Tweets” here on a daily basis, as “micro-blogging” is rapidly replacing it’s older sibling (or cousin, all in how you view it I guess). Nonetheless, you can find some great links by my “following/followers” in these lists, and it’s fun to see the stream of thought, the collaborative ideas, and the environmental scanning that takes place each and every day! (Yes, EACH AND EVERY DAY, I’m Twitter-addicted!)
It’s been awhile… I hope everyone is having a fantastic 2009 so far. With the current global economic situation, I think we would all do well to think more in terms of transformation and aspirations rather than automatically reverting to a “doom and gloom” attitude. The latter is much too easy to do, and certainly does nothing to change the circumstances or create developmental dynamics that lead to those “better days ahead.” (By now, we should have all learned that our individual and collective mentalities are more than half the battle!)
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