I work with lots of colleagues and in general the flow of money is pretty straightforward.   With some fiends though, we often sit with each other and think about what else we could do with the economy.   Being clear about money is a life practice – in North American culture money holds all kinds of traps for energy between people.

My friend Tenneson Woolf has just blogged on this and he and his colleagues from a recent workshop worked these principles:

• Whereas the old model for these decisions is more transactional, the new model is energetic. It is not about who did what work. It is about how we collectively invite, create, hold a field to work in before, during, and after the event.
• As with design, work on logistics with open heart, enaged conversation, and clarity of action — beautiful.
• Agree to this as a conversation each time, not a formula, to listen with attention and act with love.

And in a coincidental post, Jack Ricchiuto offers this wisdom:

Interesting chat yesterday with my friend Jean Russell of nurturegirl.net and the new blog, thriveability.net. She suggests that thriving communities practice a sense of “currency” that embraces both economic and social capital. Currency is anything that “flows.” A community’s flow experience then can include all forms of purchase, barter, and gifts.

What’s interesting is that anonymous monetary currency doesn’t build community. It only, as Jean suggests, “outsources connections.” When I trade my time helping someone start a wiki website for their business for their time doing plumbing or editing for me, a relationship builds. When I hand someone ten dollars for an item at Target or Whole Foods, no relationship builds in that transaction. In a monetary currency economy, flow occurs without the building of relationship. In a gift and barter economy, relationship is formed.

[tags]tenneson woolf, jack ricchiuto, money[/tags]