At the moment we are on text 4 of the Nectar of Instruction in the morning class. Alison gave the first class in the series this morning. We go alphabetically: Alison, Channell, Elliot, Param Satya, Sita-pati, Sukhanti Radha, Vrajadhama, then we go on to the next verse.
The theme for this week is “The Community of Servants”. That’s going to be the program on Sunday as part of the current series there, “Friendship, Community, and Love“.
Today we used the digital projector for the first time. Now everyone has the option to prepare slides as part of their class preparation, or they can just use this slide set, which is my slide set from last Sunday’s program.
In 10 Secrets of Effective Communicators Alan Nelson explains that in seminary the rule of thumb is one hour of preparation for every minute of presentation. In other words, if you are going to speak for 30 minutes, you should do 30 hours of prep. He admits that this may not be practical, but he exhorts readers to begin preparing their messages 6-9 months ahead in order to really percolate them.
The challenge at the moment is getting on top of the week to week situation first, then looking ahead with that sort of long range vision. Previously, I have been asked to deliver the message at the Sunday Feast with 15 minutes notice. We’re working on extending that….
By developing the themes at the ashram we can apply more than one person to the task. If each of us gives three or four hours a week to message preparation, then that represents a potential 21 - 28 hours. Naturally it’s not the same as one person working the message for that long, but it has pluses and minuses. Those people all bring different perspectives to the message preparation, and they all also work on it relatively freshly, rather than in a marathon.
Sunday Feast is about the only thing I can handle outside of work at the moment. I’m focusing on my work situation to bring things back into alignment. Over the past year things have gradually drifted out of alignment and require some attention to adjust them. All my associates there have been steadily advancing around me, and I need to look at where I am going. If you don’t swim, you sink.
