Manifestos and Adventures

Well, it's been a while... During the off blogging season I wrote "Clairvaux Manifesto: a personal odyssey of prayer and work" - which may or not be a total disaster. I hope not. The book is now in talks with a publisher, creative team, and agency. So at least there's a glimmer of hope. Each one will have it's own contract and price tag. So, now we go about raising money for something I've written and unwritten many times over. Every time I worked on the Manifesto I thought it was going to end up a total waste of time.

Then some curious things started happening. I was editing a paragraph about a First Nations Chief I havn't seen in ten years, then completely out of the blue, he emailed me saying he was overjoyed to find me again after all this time. Another day, I was editing a paragraph about the Lausanne Covenant of 1974, and that same day got an email recommending me to attend the Lausanne Gathering happening in Cape Town, South Africa in 2010. Another day, I was editing a paragraph with a historical figure's name in it, and later that same day got an email from someone asking if I'd put my name forward to potentially sit on the board of an organization named after that very historical figure. Another day, I was editing a paragraph which contained a French explorer, and at the same time a friend from Montreal emailed me in French about that very explorer sitting on a certain mountain near Montreal 400 years ago.

A few days ago, on May 1st, our sixteenth wedding anniversary (three years to the day that Dar and I first built an altar of twelve stones in Three Sisters Mountain Village here in Canmore), I registered our first company Clairvaux Ventures Ltd. One little step at a time...

I thought launching a company was an insane idea as well. Then curious things started happening, like a guy sending me all these boxes in the mail full of an incredible computer he built from scratch with a handmade card attached saying he really believes in this endeavor, and the computer is a gift to Clairvaux and investment in me. I didn't put the computer together for days. I just sat there staring at all the boxes like sacred artifacts. Then, people here and there started telling me they were in on this thing, that they'd work for me. Little gifts have come in from here and there to raise our spirits and keep us afloat. A friend in Asia tapped many paragraphs into his iPhone at 1:30 a.m. about ideas around the crazy dream of a Clairvaux Ventures office half way round the world.

I guess I'll start documenting this journey.

To be honest, I'm afraid I'll fail. But, I'm going for it.

With my God, I can scale one wall in order to rebuild another.