Help Make the Testament Society a Reality

Turning this vision into a working organization will require people willing to help make it a reality.  This is an opportunity to become involved at the ground floor - not to redefine the vision, but to help build the structures, resources, and programs needed to carry it forward.

There are many ways to participate.  Some involve creating or preserving a Testament.  Others involve helping another person discover what they want to leave behind.  Some require careful reading and reflection.  And some require skills, experience, time, or resources that can help move the Testament Society from vision to reality.

Perhaps the most important way to participate is simply to begin.  Consider what your life has taught you and what you would want someone in another generation to know.  Gather the writings, stories, photographs, recordings, questions, beliefs, discoveries, and experiences that you may someday want to preserve.  You do not need to know what your finished Testament will look like before you start.  Creating your own Testament can also help us understand what people need in order to complete one.  The experience can reveal what makes Testament creation meaningful, what makes it difficult, and what kinds of questions, tools, and assistance are most useful.

Begin with the Starter Guide

You may immediately think of someone whose reflections you wish you had - or someone still living whose thoughts you do not want to lose.  Ask them questions.  Encourage them to write or record their answers.  Help them gather things they have already written.  Sometimes the most important contribution we can make is simply letting another person know that what they have learned is worth preserving. Families can also begin creating their own tradition of Testaments.  Imagine parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and eventually children and grandchildren each leaving something of themselves in their own words.  A single Testament can preserve one person's reflections.  A family tradition can create an inheritance that grows from generation to generation.

Some people know they have something to leave behind but need another person to help them find a way to express it.  They may not consider themselves writers.  They may have difficulty organizing decades of memories and existing materials, or they may simply find it easier to think through conversation than through writing.  A Testament Guide would listen, ask thoughtful questions, help draw out memories and reflections, conduct and transcribe interviews when appropriate, and help an author organize what they want to preserve.  The Guide's purpose would never be to decide what another person's Testament should say.  The Testament must remain the author's own.  A good Guide helps someone discover and preserve their own words, thoughts, experiences, and conclusions. The Testament Society will eventually need people who are especially good at listening, asking questions, organizing material, interviewing, editing, transcription, and helping others communicate without taking over their story.  Developing the training and standards for Testament Guides is part of the work still ahead.

As the Testament Library grows, the Society will need people willing to do something equally important: read.  A Testament that is preserved perfectly but never encountered has saved its words but may still have lost its wisdom.  Testamentarians would accept a particular responsibility for reading Testaments carefully and helping ensure that writings entrusted to the Library do not simply disappear into an archive. Testamentarians could also create thoughtful commentary to accompany Testaments.  They might notice a question that deserves further consideration, recognize a connection between Testaments, identify relevant context, or direct a future reader toward another person who wrestled with the same question.  Their purpose would not be to tell readers what to think, but to help them see what they might otherwise have missed. Becoming a Testamentarian would carry responsibility.  Commentary intended to remain with a Testament for generations cannot function like an ordinary online comment section.  Testamentarians would need training, clear standards, and an understanding that the governing question is always: How might this help a future reader think more deeply?

The Testament Library is still a vision rather than an operating archive.  Turning it into something capable of preserving Testaments for generations will require expertise we do not yet have.  Questions of physical and digital preservation, archival standards, changing technologies, privacy, access, author instructions, distribution, redundancy, and long-term institutional stewardship all have to be worked through carefully. If you have experience in libraries, archives, records management, digital preservation, publishing, technology, law, nonprofit organizations, or other fields that could help put the Testament Library into operation, your knowledge and experience could be valuable.  The vision includes preserving print and digital copies in multiple locations so that long-term survival would not depend upon a single copy or repository.

The Society also envisions practical resources that help people move from thinking I should do this someday to actually beginning.  Ideas already under development include a Starter Guide, a Testament journal, writing prompts, organizational guidance, activities that help people identify important memories and values, guidance for families establishing a Testament tradition, and resources for people helping others create Testaments. Writers, editors, educators, interviewers, group facilitators, designers, researchers, and others may have skills that can help turn these ideas into useful resources.  There will be opportunities not only to use these materials, but also to help create, test, organize, edit, produce, and distribute them.

Building the Testament Society will require many kinds of practical help.  There will be organizational work, technology, archival planning, resource development, communication, administration, fundraising, and countless other tasks involved in moving from an idea to a functioning Society and eventually a permanent Testament Library.  You may have a particular skill, professional background, connection, resource, or simply time and enthusiasm that could help.  Getting involved at this early stage means helping take a vision that has existed for decades and doing the practical work necessary to make it real.

You do not need to know exactly where you fit before becoming involved.  Begin your Testament.  Ask someone you love a question you have always wanted answered.  Tell us about a Testament or collection of writings your family has already preserved.  Consider becoming a Testament Guide or Testamentarian.  Offer a skill that could help build the Library or the Society.  Or simply let us know that you would like to be involved.

The Testament Society began as one person's dream.  Now comes the work of making that dream a reality.