The Monthly Synthesis

Once a month, step back from the running of the work and ask three questions: are the Quests healthy, is the Circle healthy, are the agreements honored?

A body has a weekly beat and a seasonal one. The weekly Turn runs the work — commitments checked, issues worked, the next steps named — and it is very good at that and almost blind to itself. The seasonal turning is honest and deep and comes only four times a year, which is long enough for a slow rot to set. The Monthly Synthesis sits between them, and it is short.

Its three questions are chosen so that none of them is about the task list.

Are the Quests healthy? Not are they on track — the weekly beat already answers that — but whether they are still the right few, still owned, still finishable in what remains of the season, still an act of goodwill rather than a habit.

Is the Circle healthy? Who has gone quiet. Who is carrying too much. Whether people are still glad to come. This is the question a weekly agenda never quite reaches, and the one that most often explains everything else.

Are the agreements honored? The Field of Agreements was spoken aloud once and is now being lived, or is quietly not being lived. A month is about the right interval for the drift between what was agreed and what is done to become visible while it is still small.

It is a synthesis rather than a review because the work is to put together — to hold the month's turns, tensions and stories in one view and see what they are jointly saying, which no single week can show.

Also called: the monthly step-back · the monthly beat Stands on: The Turn · Rhythm · Field of Agreements · Retrospective · Circle Coherence Opens onto: OmniSpection · Season · The Annual Deep Review · Quest · Issue · The Circle's Scorecard · Look-back · Drift · Green, yellow, red In play: table, once a month Sources: LIØNSBERG Wiki Books/The LIØNSBERG Community Guidebook/Toolkit/The Rhythm of Gatherings.md (draft — the cadence table) · …/Step 4 — Learning to Play The New Game.md (draft) · THE DNA OF HEAVEN, Part V (Fable synthesis — each month, a synthesis) Open: No page gives the Monthly Synthesis a shape — how long it runs, who convenes it, whether it replaces a weekly gathering or sits beside one. Only its three questions are written. · Its relationship to the Scorecard, which reports monthly-ish signals weekly, is unstated.