A SEED PAPER is a piece of writing crafted to invite response and exchange. It declares a point of view based on personal experience and study of the writer but stated in ways that invite and welcome a reader to extend, elaborate, clarify or further the ideas of the writing.

The form of these invitational SEED PAPERS will vary from writer to writer, but some of the elements likely to appear are: questions of inquiry, statements of curiosity and wonder, statements of not knowing along side those of greater certainty. Somewhere in the writing, at least in an introduction or closing, the SEED PAPER will explicitly invite response.

Whatever forms that SEED PAPERS take as part of the Collective Wisdom Initiative, they are intended to scatter key ideas and generate further thinking, just as tangible seeds function to scatter and germinate into living vegetation wherever the conditions are right. We can envision, from the image of David Bohm, that "the unfolding of ideas proceeds from that which is already enfolded". Each SEED PAPER then offer clues or glimmerings of what we are yet to uncover or see more clearly.

We invite writers of SEED PAPERS to hold these images in mind and to write with a reverence and humility for a larger inquiry that will be furthered by their participation. At the same time, we encourage writers to seek a wholeness and coherence to their work that will enable their piece to stand on its own, and to move hand-to-hand with a life of its own.

We honor and call blessings to the writers of SEED PAPERS.