I just finished reading Glenn Beck’s article, The $53 Trillion Dollar Astroid, calling Americans to take a stand and do something to protect their prospects of future prosperity in the face of the looming potentiality of financial collapse in the decade to come.

This, after just getting off the phone with Nancy Polend, Director of Prosperous Communities, Prosperous Nation, and a “What If” conversation that ended up with this: What if she, I and other inspired members of the VisionForce community initiated a call for 50 individuals from around the world to unite in Austin, Texas this June 10-15, 2008 to face everything, avoid nothing and stand for PROSPERITY FOR ALL in our lifetime!

I added the “in our lifetime” since talking to Nancy, and we are still in the process of refining our call. Is it to stand for prosperity, prosperity for all, prosperity in our lifetime, prosperity for all in our lifetime, or something else?

Those who answer the call, whatever we (including you–please post your comments below!) come together to decide it should be, will unite inside of our iStand Experience, a week-long retreat structured in a way that brings forth the best within us as we find access to new levels of courage, compassion, vision, wisdom and power in standing for prosperity for all. We will form alliances and discover powerful new tools for alliance building and sharing our individual visions.

Just before speaking one on one with Nancy, an alumnus of our last iStand Experience, I was on a conference call with Nancy, and Marvin Weisbord & Sandra Janoff, founders of Future Search and authors of a book by the same title. Their lastest book, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There, illuminates ten of the principles by which their whole systems conferences, called future searches, operate.

Nancy’s Prosperous Communities, Prosperous Nation is an issue-focussed initiative of the Future Search Network, which would employ the Future Search method to activate individuals, organizations and communities in standing for and creating prosperity for all.

From the Future Search web site: Future Search, the method, is an interactive planning process used world-wide in diverse cultures to achieve shared goals and fast action. Future search leads to cooperative planning that lasts for years. Future Search, the network, is a voluntary world-wide Network offering public, non-profit and NGO future search processes and training for whatever people can afford. Those who join the Future Search Network help make a more open, inclusive and sustainable world.

There is no official alliance between Future Search and VisionForce, yet there are some very inspiring synergies emerging. Nancy has been the catalyst, and is the one who, in alliance with me, is standing for calling forth 50 inspired individuals from around the world, who are inspired to stand for prosperity for all. And, of course, whatever initiatives and alliances are formed at such an iStand Experience, the work of standing for prosperity for all begins with standing for prosperity for ourselves individually, for our families, our organizations, our communities.

If you’re inspired by this call to stand, please leave your comments below. If you have suggestions to revise the wording of the call, we’d like to hear that too!