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Maggie Kaplan, Founder and Executive Director of Invoking the Pause (ITP), recently was interviewed for the new Fall 2012 Issue Feature Section of ARCADE Magazine, exploring the theme of Global More=Global Less. "Having time for mulling and incubation is essential to finding truly integrated, innovative strategies". 

Maggie "has committed to supporting exploration through small grants that give recipients the freedom of time to explore intellectual and meaningful connections.  This generosity is essential in shifting profoundly embedded values and patterns."    » Read More

What a rich and fertile mix of 2012 Grant Partners (GPs) -- scientists, educators, filmmakers, documentarians, journalists, photographers, social activists, artists, and locavores.  Now six years into my vision for creating Invoking The Pause, I continue to be inspired by the variety of creative, collaborative projects GPs birth.

This year's crop run the gamut, including a look at how climate change is impacting our lives in "real time" - from indigenous tribes in Brazil's Amazon to California agriculture on both smaller, organic farms as well as larger agribusiness in the Central Valley.

One of my joys over the past 2 years has been to help amplify the GP's impact and enable greater connectivity -- with each other, myself, and the larger public. Recently, I heard from the current GPs on their "pauses" to date.  Here, in their own words, is the latest 'dirt':

C2C (Change 2 Climate) - Bodhi Garrett
Documentary Film "The Organic Life" -   Casey Beck
Science House Foundation - Joshua Fouts
Inner Transition - Trathen Heckman
Center For Investigative Reporting - Mark Schapiro
Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment - Nicole Heller

Invoking the Pause Founder and Executive Director, Maggie Kaplan, was recently featured in The Philanthropy Workshop (TPW) West May 2012 member newsletter.

TPW May 2012 Newsletter

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After completing the overhaul of the ITP Website and Blog platform this Spring and Summer, I found myself in need of my own “Pause.”

The seemingly endless cascade of technology details, project roadblocks and challenges left me feeling both depleted and overstimulated.

With the start-up phase of the new website completed, we gratefully reached a plateau in our vision. It was time again to let the ground of my being lie fallow. I needed to empty myself to make room for a new phase of life.

And so I traveled to a yoga retreat in Bali.

I took a “Technology Chastity Vow” to go off the grid, including my cell phone, internet and email. This enabled me to have the space to “Drop in, Drop Down, Drop Under, and Drop Through” to a new vision.

These are just some of the mental meanderings from my journey.

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by Maggie Kaplan

I would like to share a very personal commitment with you. I have been stepping into my “wise eldership” in the past few months, as I turned 60. I decided to create 60 adventures in this 60th year to celebrate this passage!

The Invoking the Pause Convening was one of the KEYSTONE adventures–as I step into my own “Maggieness” and the woman I want to be in the world. One might expect that this would be a relatively simple task, but opening myself up to expansion at this time in my life has its own set of challenges.

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by Maggie Kaplan

In our time together over three days of the 2010 Grant Partner Convening, we sought to invoke a communal pause in a few different formats.  We celebrated together.

We listened to and learned from each other. We reflected.

We were generative AND playful. We focused on cultivating many facets of our Return on Relationships.

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It was in October of 2006 that I was selected to participate in a program called The Philanthropy Workshop West (“TPW”).  The invitation came at a time in my life where I’d been on overdrive in many professional endeavors and my father recently had passed away–leaving me an “orphan in the universe.”

This crossroads called for a reassessment of my own commitments, as I needed to ferret out what truly mattered to me. It was time to pause and reflect on my life’s direction. For TPW’s final module, each of us were tasked to choose a non-profit organization we would become involved with as a participant, and prepare a 40 minute presentation incorporating our learnings from the nine-month TPW program in our engagement with this organization.
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Maggie Kaplan, Executive Director of Invoking the Pause is featured in this video where she shares the various mysteries that have unfolded both during the Convening and the initial startup phases of ITP.

“What surprises me about this experience is how it has taken to a level beyond which I could have anticipated. The level of professionalism, personality and opening, bearing of souls and essence as human beings has been inspiring. We had hoped in planning this Convening that people would bring their whole person. We wanted them to feel comfortable expressing the full range of their humanity.”

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