Gail Taylor

I think I was lucky to be a teacher of very young children as my first career. They taught me so much. We had wonderful fun together growing with and for each other. I asked myself, “Can adults still learn?” which I explored through founding The Learning Exchange (1972) for learners of all ages. And yes! Adults could indeed learn. I later created with my husband and design partner, MG Taylor Corporation (1981) and learned that CEO’s and other upper management took great joy in working with their employees at all levels of the organization. Tomorrow Makers (2002) was founded on my continual coming-to-knowing how starved people are to work and play together. If we are to create new healthy cultures, it will be with all of us intertwined, meshworking our way forward.

When I read your Manifesto, it was a no-brainer (or perhaps a real-brainer) for me to jump at the opportunity!  I call it togethering.  Currently, I am working with the LeCiel Community on a project called Good Living. The purpose of Good Living Stewards is to refine and evolve the Transitioning to Good Living vision (https://holisticvisions.life/) into a viable model for multigenerational, holistic action. We define "Good Living" as way of life that benefits ourselves, others, and all life for 7 generations to come. Our framework outlines design principles for organizing, building, and governing society based on primordial wisdom values. It has the potential to deeply transform our ways of living and collaborating with all life. 

I think this project works well with the Living cities work and world. 

I know that our collective next years are about dissolving the existing paradigm and maturing a new one. I feel that I am a doula, and like Doulas today, I go where ideas are coming into being and help where I can. Now, in my 80’s, I also have two additional ideas I want to bring to life: 1) my Second Womb project: All babies through their first seven years of life are born within Gaia’s nurturing Womb spending their first seven years as, for, and with nature.  This would not be a school for the privileged, but rather a curriculum for all families and communities with a special focus on these early years. This is the scaffolding that would support and give strength and value throughout the rest of life as we go forward on lifelong journeys of awe and wonder.  2) Tinkering with Stuart Kauffman’s self-organizing system of Patches and Nodes. Kauffman’s work supports my quest born out of this quote by Ilya Prigogine. “In assembling complexity, the bounty of increasing returns is won by multiple tries over time. As various parts reorganize to a new whole, the system escapes into a higher order.”

I feel blessed to step up when called to employ expertise that I supposedly have. I am no expert in anything. I have a knack for seeing where scaffoldings can help make connections, craft new ideas that need strong beginnings. I’m learning that timing matters as it does in any birth. I’ve found that trying to birth an idea before it’s time is difficult, if not impossible. 

I believe the timing is right for Living Cities to come into form. I’d like to take part but when, how, and where is yet to be seen. In the meantime, there is much I can learn from beginning to take part.  It’s all about meshworking and magically releasing a new order into the Universe.

Finally…

“We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.”

TS Eliot

From “Little Gidding”, the fourth and final poem from Four Quartets”