The Gathering is a safe place.  That’s what all the surveys tell us.  In fact we’ve used the phrase ourselves for so long to describe The Gathering that we’ve stopped considering what it means.  That’s dangerous – not safe.  Last year we commissioned Dave Goetz and CZ Strategy (www.czstrategy.com) to do interviews and research to find out (among other things) what our participants meant by safe.  Four things rose to the top of the list. 

(1)   We are cause agnostic.  We are not pushing an agenda for giving.

(2)    People sense they are with peers.  It’s okay to be open with peers.

(3)    We are nonsectarian.  There is no “right” way of thinking about giving.

(4)    Personal renewal. People are free to let down their guard.
 

All that is good.  I do not want to lose that.  Still I worry sometimes that “safe” will become the same as “sterile” or it will come to mean we are predictable and our people can assume everyone will be on the same page about everything.  I worry that being safe will mean we stop stretching people and lose our edge or we find a formula that works and stay with it all the way to obsolescence.  I read a good article this morning by Nick Schultz on Steve Jobs and his extensive record of failures.  “All those successes were made possible by failure after failure after failure and the lessons learned from those failures.  

There’s a moral here for a Washington culture that fears failure too much. In today’s Washington large banks aren’t permitted to fail; nor are large auto firms. Next up will be too-big-to-fail hospital systems. Steve Jobs is a reminder that failure is a good and necessary thing. And that sometimes the greatest glories are born of catastrophe.”

I probably don’t want to throw out the word “safe” just yet… but I am looking for options.  In chapter eight of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe as Mr. Beaver is trying to describe what Aslan is like Susan jumps in to ask “Is he—quite safe?”

“Who said anything about safe”?  Mr. Beaver replies.  “Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good.”

Maybe that’s the word I’m looking for.  We’re not a safe place.  We’re a good place.  We’re home.  We’re the house that trust built.