A Fresh Start: An Invitation to Reflect
by Courage & Renewal Facilitator Lisa Sankowski
For so many of us—as educators, as students, as parents, or by the calendars of our faith traditions—autumn marks the start of a new year and speaks to us of beginnings. Paradoxically in our contemporary culture, as the natural world enters a period of decline and rest, our human world begins to gear up!
For me, fall always feels like a fresh start, and a feeling of anticipation that was part of my life as a school child on the cusp of learning or trying something new has become a deep body-memory, returning each year as soon as I notice the evening air turn cool and the first hint of autumn color appear on the hillsides.
In honor of this particular quality of the season, we are going to try something new together. As with all new beginnings, I experience anticipation, excitement, curiosity, as well as a hint of my all-too-human resistance to change and the inevitable anxiety that joins me on every foray into unfamiliar territory.
In the first issue of Words of EnCOURAGEment, we expressed our desire to create a “virtual circle of trust,” a community that sustains and challenges each of us on our journey toward an undivided life. In pursuit of this goal, we made a commitment to keep faith with our Courage & Renewal touchstones, in particular to “extend and receive welcome,” setting the tone for the kind of generous space we are trying to create together.
And each of our newsletters have included an invitation from a Courage & Renewal facilitator to go on-retreat in the midst of our off-retreat lives, offering a meditation on the season, a poem, and questions to consider for personal reflection. For many of us who have experienced circles of trust in the “real world,” this “virtual world” experience has been a welcome gift of mindfulness and inspiration. But at the same time, it has lacked the tangible experience of being “alone together” that comes when we are invited to speak to the center of a circle of fellow travelers.
Now with the introduction of The Center’s new blog, we have an opportunity not only to go on-retreat ourselves, but also to benefit from speaking into and listening deeply to the online circle of trust we can now share together.
Of course this may require some adaptations to our touchstones. “No fixing, no saving, no advising, no setting each other straight” now needs to include “no flaming, no spamming, no hijacking the thread, no correcting each
other’s spelling!”
Technology also allows us to expand the repertoire of “third things” that provide a focus for our reflection, and so in this season of new beginnings, I’d like to offer you an audio recording to consider, a collaboration of Courage & Renewal Northeast and StoryCorps (of National Public Radio fame). This recording brings together excerpts from a much longer conversation between a mother and daughter, Ruth Ellen and Robin, and it concerns Robin’s decision to make a huge change: to leave the successful practice of law and to become a high school teacher. Birthright gifts clamor for expression; seeds planted in spring come to harvest.
And so I invite you to carve out some quiet time to be in-retreat with us and to listen to Robin’s story here. As you listen, and in reflection afterwards, you may want to consider these questions:
• What ideas, images, feelings, questions arise for you?
• Do you recall a time when you were about to take a big next step? What did you experience? What are some of the feelings you were aware of as you made the change?
• Robin acknowledges that her mom has been a guide—a trail marker of sorts—along her way, gently raising up her talents and pointing out the path of her loves. Has someone or some thing served as a trail marker along your path?
Once you’ve spent some time with this story and your own responses to it, I can now invite you to take a next step and “speak from your own center to the center of the circle” about anything you would like to share of your reflections on Robin’s story and your own.
True to our countercultural ways, we want to create together a blog that encourages a different type of conversation than we typically encounter online. We are invited to respond in the same way here that we do when gathered in each other’s physical presence—to speak our own truth and listen receptively to the truth of others; to endeavor to speak from our soul rather than from our intellect or ego; to listen and respond without affirmations, counterarguments, or efforts to influence. The asynchronous nature of this kind of online community also creates its own “silences”—the spaces between our visits to the blog when the voice of our inner teacher may come to us in unexpected moments and ways.
Together we will make this online circle of trust safe for shy soul and habitual messageboard-chatroom-listserve “lurker” alike! Thank you for joining us on our big next step as an online community. We look forward to seeing what it has to offer us all. Please join us over on the blog to share your comments!