Planning our Center schedule for 2016

In the first 5 days of January the Shambhala Center’s schedule has a Learn to Meditate on Saturday morning, a Werma Feast on Saturday night, open community practice with Maitri Bhavana on Sunday morning, Queer Dharma on Sunday afternoon, Meditation in Everyday Life and the Bodhisattva Path Study Group on Monday night, and Meditation Warriors book study Group meets on Tuesday after Open House sitting.  With a start like that, we’ll be lucky if the guardians of Portland slacker culture don’t picket the building out front.

Even though the calendar has to be updated and adjusted throughout the year, the Council reviewed and bravely approved the whole year’s schedule at their November meeting.  Setting the schedule out for a year is important for our organization and our community because it allows people to plan their schedules,  to make their way through the curriculum, to gather regularly, and to connect without having collisions or conflicts over our limited space. And it helps us meet our budget goals to break even.

Calendar planning for 2016 began last summer as the Calendar Group got down to work: the group consists of Center Director Lisa Stanley, Practice and Education Director Michaela McCormick, Social Health and Wellbeing Director Jason Bray, with assistance and continuity provided by David Engelbrecht as the Calendar Group Secretary and calendar editor. At different points in the process, Chagdzö Jack Bodner, all the teachers, Office Manager Abbey Pleviak, and individuals proposing specific programs get involved in the process.  After the Council approves the Calendar, it’s added to the Shambhala Database — our official calendar that provides program pages where people can register for events. More questions and details are negotiated as the calendar is entered in the SDB. The Publications Group generates publicity from the calendar and then event organizers, coordinators, participants take it from there.

Is the Calendar too crowded? Are we taking on too much as a community? Is it enough? Is it just right?  The council discussed whether there were more events than in previous years. There were Concerns about teacher workload, staffing, and especially program coordinators. Indeed 2016 looks busier because we dropped one Sunday Morning sit, which has opened up more possibilities such more Nyinthuns – full day sits such as the one on December 27.

In addition to our space limitations, we have a limited number of authorized teachers, so the Center has been working to increase the number of teachers by sending people to a course leader program,  to balance teacher workloads, and to train program coordinators along the lines of Umdze and shrine-room coordinator trainings that have been offered recently.  Way of Shambhala programs are designed to meet the needs of a cohort that is going through a series of classes together. We are offering more Learn to Meditate programs and Shambhala Level Level I retreats that help establish a group of people seeking to go through the curriculum.

There is a huge amount of structure in our calendar. (See a study that we did of how calendaring is done at other Shambhala Centers.)  Calendaring has to balance a huge amount of detail with a longer-term overview. For example, teachers of “In Everyday Life” classes this year will all be mentoring the newly trained Course Leaders. When we recruit out of town teachers we have them teach here in Portland as well as offer classes at the Oregon State Prison (we send the most highly regarded and trained teachers to teach there).  We’ve established a committee to plan Nyida Days (our quarterly community celebrations). As of this writing, the schedule is set up in the calendar for the the first six months, and details are still being worked out for many programs.

The calendar, of course,  has budget implications. We know that some classes and programs don’t pay for themselves and that others will have to subsidize the loss-making programs.  (Our offerings at the Oregon State Prison, for example, can’t generate tuition, but we are delivering them anyway.)  So the budget is yet another facet of the whole planning process.

Some highlights for this year’s calendar:

• Our annual weekthun has moved to June.
• Basic Goodness classes are scheduled as weekend classes rather than 6 weekday evenings.
• We are sponsoring a regional Kasung gathering that coincides with the beginning of Dön Season Mamo Chants in January.
• We are celebrating Shambhala Day on a Saturday so people with regular jobs can attend without missing work. (Moving Shambhala Day didn’t change the Mamos Chants schedule, which ends on February 7th — the day before the new moon.) Town Halls will be folded into the Harvest of Peace celebration in September and Shambhala Day as we’ve been doing.
• Midsummer Day will be celebrated with the Shambhala Study Group from Eugene.

 

And with all that planning, the updates have already begun.  Abbey Pleviak submitted two events on behalf of the Arts Council recently.   Even though she provided an amazing amount of very carefully prepared information in our new Event proposal and publicity request for an event (in the Members Only area of our website), it has taken dozens of emails and many, many text messages in the back channel to get them on the Calendar.  So that’s just a reminder — stay tuned!