The Sage-ing^® Guild

The Sage-ing® Guild's First Two Years
by Gary Carlson, member of the Coordinating Circle of the Guild

"Part of my work has been to take people from age-ing to sage-ing. To become wise, to do 'wisdom work,' to become elders and not just old folks."
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

On Thursday, October 28, 2004, about 90 Sage-ing® Leaders and others associated with the Spiritual Eldering® Institute gathered at Sunrise Ranch, in northern Colorado, for the "Getting It Together, Together" retreat. The goal for the meeting was for Spiritual Eldering teachers to meet and network and share ideas related to our Sage-ing work. On Friday, Reb Zalman addressed us and presented his vision that we should create a "Guild," an organization for the Sage-ing Leaders (SLs) that would allow us to work together and that would facilitate getting the message of Sage-ing out to the world.

As one of the SLs present who had been feeling deeply the need for closer connections with my fellow teachers, I immediately accepted Reb Zalman's challenge, and before the end of his address, had the bones of an organization in mind. Working the next day with Rosalie Muschal-Reinhardt (a very active SL from New York) and a group of about ten other SLs, we soon had a fairly well-defined organization outlined. Sunday morning, we were given an opportunity to present our vision to the conference. Within a half hour, the Sage-ing Guild was born, approved wholeheartedly by the attendees.^*

Since that time two years ago, the Sage-ing Guild has been developing its roots, while at the same time working on plans to spread its wings. Planning and operation of the Guild has been carried out by a core group of eight SLs, the Coordinating Circle. We all serve on a volunteer basis (we are highly sensitive to the financial difficulties that the SEI encountered and are committed to running a "lean and mean" organization). We communicate—a lot!!—by email and telephone, and have met by conference call on a twice-monthly (initially) or monthly basis, and once in a face-to-face meeting in South Bend, IN last year. Our next CC face-to-face meeting is scheduled for this January in Minneapolis. The current members of the CC are listed at the end of this report.

Our first order of business as a Guild was to invite all SLs to join us in membership. To date, about 110 SLs have joined the Guild from the total of over 280 persons who are eligible (all persons trained and certified either as CSLs or SCFs are eligible to join the Guild). We hope to see our membership grow even larger during the coming year.

Another early goal for the Guild was to establish regions so that SLs would have enhanced connections with other SLs living nearby. We defined 8 geographical regions across the United States and Canada that would include all of our SLs. Each region is served by one of the members of the CC, who facilitates and coordinates activities and communication within the region. There have been communications established among SLs in every region. Some of the regions have already had meetings, and our goal is that every region would have at least one yearly get-together.

Another goal for the Guild was to establish a way in which SLs could more easily network with each other and communicate with persons outside the Guild. We have now established a very fine web site for the Guild (www.sage-ingguild.org), with an open site that is accessible to anyone, and a password-protected site open just to Guild members. The open site allows us to highlight our members and the activities they have scheduled, as well as to give general information about Sage-ing and opportunities to participate with us (through membership as a friend, or by going through a training program to become a CSL). The password-protected site gives our members access to a wide variety of information on creating workshops, marketing techniques, presentation techniques and materials, and activities within the Guild.

In conjunction with the web, we have also established a ListServ that is open to all members. This listserv allows rapid sharing of information, ideas, questions and comments on Sage-ing and Sage-ing programs. Every Guild member is also a member of the ListServ community, unless they choose to opt out (being a member of the ListServ is creating new opportunities for all of us to learn communications etiquette, part of our learning curve for Guild operations!).

One of the most important activities of the former Spiritual Eldering Institute (SEI) was to train new Sage-ing Leaders. During the last days of the SEI in 2005, there was a substantial risk that a group of about 15 students that had begun SE training, and had paid fully for their training, might get stranded because no funds were left to pay for completion of the training program. Seeing this potential disaster, the CC stepped in and took over the remainder of the training program so that this final group could become Certified Sage-ing Leaders. This considerable work was done without charge by two CC members, Rosemary Cox and William Cox. This was a very generous contribution to the SEI, to the Guild and to those trainees, who are now SLs.

Over the past year, the Guild has begun to develop its own Sage-ing training program, which will be similar to the CSL program of SEI. Through a training committee, the CC has created a one-year training program that will begin next spring. Training brochures have been prepared. Training prerequisite workshops, similar to those in the original SEI program, have been given in six locations nationwide for over 60 participants, and at least two more prerequisite workshops are planned. The prerequisite workshops have been very successful, and we are looking forward to the Sage-ing training programs that will follow. One important aspect of the prerequisite workshops has been that part of the workshop fees have been earmarked for the Guild, and another part for the Regions where the prerequisites are held, thus providing some funding for additional local and national activities.

Recently, we have commissioned a Standards committee to look at professional standards for the Guild, the CC and our members. Initially, the Standards committee is considering issues around communications (the web site and appropriate links to like-minded groups), training (standards for training programs and prerequisite workshops) and membership categories (we are considering classes of membership for persons who are not SLs, such as Friends, Trainees and Wisdom Circle, comprised of esteemed colleagues from other Conscious Aging groups). They will also be considering professional practices guidelines and financial management issues in the near future.

In the future, the CC will be working on issues around non-profit status (we are currently not a 501c3 organization, which will require significant cost and effort to establish and maintain), bylaws to help define our purpose, structure, governance and leader succession policies, and other issues that may come up. We are also considering cooperative agreements with other groups with related goals. As we go forward, we encourage all SLs to support us with your ideas, your participation, your Sage-ing work, and your willingness to help us by taking on leadership roles. The work we are doing is some of the most important work that we can do in this world. We look forward to continuing to create together a new vision of eldering in the world!