There is nothing better than a go-ahead. Even if it is a partial go-ahead!

We have prepared the legal paperwork to make us owners of our current building, 408 S. Baldwin St, Madison, as of December 1st. All that is left to do is the actual closing and signing. Phew!

Now, things can always go a bit funky in closings, and we won’t have the details all nailed down until April (enter important but confusing legal mumbo jumbo here). So to be honest, in some ways, this is a bit like a restaurant’s “soft opening” – there won’t be a grand opening until spring.
However, the sellers and the sangha all agree on the terms and the building will be ours, bit by bit, starting with a December 1st closing.

Please keep the donations rolling in! Our fundraiser letter went out late due to a few flukes (some ours, some due to the printers) and so some of you are just getting them. Make sure to read it and contribute *whatever you can* – 100 people sending in $10 each means $1000! Of course, if you can help us out with a donation like $250 or more, that is the kind of support that will zoom us forward.

So far we have just over $1000, and we need $7000 by March (at the absolute latest – by January 1st would be best) to pay the entire down payment. Yes – that’s right – there’s not as much of a rush now – our lawyer has given us a cushion to give people time to get the money in, as well as take care of some other center business.
But certainly the sooner we have your donation, the sooner we can close.
If you can pay a bit more later, then do so, but if you can send in something now, then please do.

Many thanks to our core and building council members – in particular, Mark and Ann, Jim and Connie, and Miriam, who went through meeting after meeting (and will continue to go through meeting after meeting) to get this to happen. Ann and Suzanne have done great work with finances – keeping track of donations and taking care of number crunching – and without Jim and Connie’s generous legal help, we’d be up samsara creek without a paddle. The vision of long-term students like Mark and Kathy and Lora has been wonderful, and Olivia’s letter-writing and fundraising skills have raised the roof for sure.

And for all of you who have contributed, will contribute and are contributing – through physical labor, mental labor, emails, mailings, financial help or all of the above – a sincere and total thanks to you as well. With a sangha like this, Enlightened Society feels all the more possible in this lifetime.

-Miriam
Your Shambhala Meditation Center of Madison Director

Contemporary Ikebana

with Keiko Kubo

Saturday, December 4, 10:00—5:00

Price $100 ($50 material fee included in price)

Give the gift of flowers this holiday season.

Keiko makes Ikebana as a three-dimensional sculptural form, using flowers and other materials as her medium of expression. Her Ikebana is a freestyle approach. It is also influenced by Western-style floral design and her background in the fine arts.

Location:

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church (2nd floor)

1004 Greenwood Street

(Corner of Maple and Greenwood)

Evanston, IL 60201

To Register: http://chicago.shambhala.org

Contact: Julieeinstein@comcast.net

As of last week, Shambhala now has 8,000 members total from all of its centers and groups.

If you haven’t become a member of our center, please consider doing so. You can see from the below email from Shambhala News Service that joining our center also joins you to a very wide mandala of Shambhala Community.

Click Here for more information on membership. It can take the form of volunteering and/or paying a monthly stipend to help support the center. Don’t hesitate to email us at madisonshambhala@gmail.com or call at 608-441-8868 to ask more questions or to join up.

Thanks to all current members for supporting us – AND the larger Shambhala world.

-Miriam Hall
Madison Center Director

From Shambhala News Service:
22 Oct 2010 – Shambhala membership now 8,000 in 47 countries

Shambhala’s recorded membership worldwide reached 8,000 this month. The 8,000 Shambhala members recorded on the Shambhala database are spread across 47 countries, in addition to many more “friends of Shambhala”. There are currently 214 Shambhala centres and groups (including our major practice centres) worldwide.

Three new members brought us to this new global total: Corinne Lemieux of the Montreal Shambhala Centre, Kevin Curtis of the Boulder Shambhala Centre and Jane Noble of the London Shambhala Centre. This latest member in London brought the total membership of Shambhala Europe to 1,500.

Thanks go to the many people who maintain Shambhala’s membership records throughout the mandala and to Ed Keizer in Amsterdam who helps administer the Shambhala Database and spotted the fact that we had just reached the 8,000 mark.

This new blog will replace our email newsletter, which would go out over email every few months. Thanks to Shambhala Times and Shambhala International for making these blogs happen for Centers all over the Shambhala Mandala.

This is our shrine room now. A happy, calm place where many of us have sat looking out over linoleum tiles and up at a hanging ceiling for years. Our huge news is that all of this is about to change!

We are buying the building we are currently in – 408 S. Baldwin St – the whole thing. For the short term, we will keep on the renters upstairs, but over time, we will redo the first and then second floor to expand our center. This way we can have two programs at once (we won’t have to have dharma classes only after sitting on Monday or Thursday night, for instance), we’ll have more space for cooking and eventually, even an accessible bathroom. Finally, we will uplift the space we do have, right away.

For now, though, our focus is on acquiring the building (we are 75% there, with fundraising mostly done, and negotiations figured out with current owners). We need funds to finish gathering our downpayment – we still need about $5,000, before the end of the year.

Our first steps in remodeling will be to this shrine room, once it is ours to change. The ceiling under those hanging ceilings is tin – beautiful hand work from the Labor Temple days of the building. We will expose those and cover the old lino with new wood floor. Join in our efforts – through labor and donations – to make the space that has long been part ours into a space that is all ours!

For donations or questions, please contact center director, Miriam Hall
madisonshambhala@gmail.com
608-441-8868