The Mother Grove is the Board of Directors of Ar nDraoicht Fein. The Board is not appointed: it is elected by the membership of ADF. There are nine voting members of the Mother Grove and they all come from diverse backgrounds and they all may have their ideas about how the Mother Grove and ADF should be run. The responsibility of the Board, from where I sit, is to work together for the support and betterment of the organisation first and foremost and use their own backgrounds and points of view to help shape their opinions, but doing the work of the Mother Grove comes first.

Last night, we had our quarterly Mother Grove meeting and it was held on line as are two out of our four meetings. One of our meetings is held at our Annual Meeting in May at Tredara in Ohio and one is currently held at my home in Toledo in December. I think it is important to see the directors face-to-face and we have been fortunate enough to do so at a very reasonable cost to ADF.

As we gathered for our meeting last night, two of our members were ill and they reached out - on their own - to announce that they were not well and to proxy their votes to another Mother Grove member. I was highly impressed by this professionalism and it is representative of how people from diverse backgrounds and agendas can come together for the Greater Good and through one of our most important virtues: the virtue of Hospitality. We treat others as guests because we too want to be treated as guests and the interchange of information and energy is much greater and much more efficient when this approach is taken. Right Practice is what our orthopraxy is all about.

I realise that this is a sensitive topic because ADF is now entering its election cycle. I have named no names because I do not want to endorse any one person or group of people over any other. I DO want to endorse the notion of civility and good communications as a paradigm for any group endeavour and especially for the ADF Mother Grove.

We had a very long and full agenda last night to work through and the people of the Mother Grove were able to address each item and get the process done in the allotted time. I consider this a wonderful accomplishment and I thank the Mother Grove for working together in such a Way.

In our everyday lives, we are constantly met by blessings and when common purpose intertwines with right action, wonderful things happen. Many years ago, we planted some trees, trees of the "Speeding Oak" variety. I just wanted you to know that those trees grew up and formed a Grove, a Mother Grove. Let me add the waters of thanks to those trees.