Preparing for the Shambhala Day Roll Call

Many years ago the Shambhala Day roll call involved all centers calling a phone operator who then called on each center in more or less alphabetical order.  At that point each center could speak into a microphone and be heard by everyone else on the call.  Each center would offer some kind of cheer that was characteristic.  In Portland, we’d always sing something like, “We’re singin’, singin, in the rain!” or something cheerful and rain-oriented like that.  As the international hookup became Internet-mediated, the roll call was a video cheers with everyone waving.  The challenge at that point became that there were many more centers and that centers had to un-mute and then re-mute themselves and turn their video cameras on and off at just the right time.  For a lively and distributed group like Shambhala all around the world and the technologies that are available today, that became just too clumsy.

So now roll-call has morphed into a “year in review” video where each center submits four second video greeting or an appropriate image.  Here’s what we’ve submitted for Portland for this year’s Shambhala Day roll call is:

The mosaic is made up of a picture from Tryon State Park, from the Spring 2013 arts festival, of the grain elevators in North Portland (with the Steele Bridge in the background), of the family campout in the summer of 2013, of a gathering of meditation instructors and guides in the summer, and of Shambhala Day 2013.