Words of EnCOURAGEment #10
Circles of Trust and "Habits of the Heart"
A conversation between Parker J. Palmer, Founder/Senior Partner, and Marcy Jackson, Co-Director —Zora Neale Hurston
Marcy: Parker, this has been one of the most challenging years in my memory, at home and abroad, a year with many more questions than answers. It’s been a year of real suffering for some, with people losing jobs and homes at a terrible pace. All of that has shaken me, and yet there is something focusing, maybe even liberating, in having been brought “down to ground” in our assumptions and habits, our appetites and aspirations. There seems to be an invitation here for some of us to contemplate new possibilities for our lives in renewed relationships and the deeper connections of community, to expand our ways of thinking about “the pursuit of happiness” and living a purposeful life.
On a more personal note, you have just turned 70—not yet a ripe old age, but one that allows a certain vantage point, as well as the right to pontificate, at least a little. What do you see as the important questions that we need to be asking ourselves right now?
Parker: Marcy, don’t you know that “Friends don’t let friends pontificate, even a little?“ I’m beyond shocked, but relieved to know that I’m not yet ”ripe!“ Still, you’ve asked a vital question, so I’ll share what I’ve been asking myself, given the ways this crisis has hit me. I’m not likely to lose my home or my job. But I’ve lost a fair chunk of my retirement savings, and am committed to financing college for a promising young person over the next four years.
My questions went something like this: What are you feeling about all this? The answer was fear and anger: fear for myself and the people and projects close to me, and anger at the fact that a few people have profited from the losses of the many. In hard times, I find it helpful to be honest about my emotions so I can “ride” them somewhere rather than let them pull me down.
Going to Walden
by Circle of Trust Facilitator Lisa Sankowski
In the summer of 1845, Henry David Thoreau built a tiny cabin and set up housekeeping in the woods near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. In his recounting of the experience, Walden, or Life in the Woods, he writes, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
He also wanted to be alone so he could get a little writing done!
I’m glad he succeeded, because his writing offers wisdom that speaks to our greatest challenges one hundred and sixty-four summers later. These challenges, though different in degree, would be familiar to Thoreau: the urgent need to halt and reverse environmental degradation; the growing imperative to live more simply and sustainably; the importance of honoring the voice of our inner teacher (our “different drummer”) and of opposing injustice; the longing to be fully awake to our life and the understanding that it is too easy to sleepwalk through most of it. Each generation faces these challenges in its own way, and I find Thoreau’s words good company as I take my turn.
A few weeks ago, on a lovely Saturday when the woods were full of pink lady’s slippers, I went to Walden with a group of teachers as part of a seasonal arts, nature and renewal series that Courage & Renewal Northeast is offering in partnership with The Walden Woods Project. In honor of Thoreau’s love of “botanizing,” and with the help of a naturalist and artist, we spent the morning exploring botanical drawing. Inspired by Thoreau’s observation that “nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain,” we focused on a particular leaf or insect or stone or flower and endeavored to give it our full attention by faithfully depicting what we saw. For me, this was a demanding exercise, not because drawing was hard, but because I kept forgetting to see and draw the leaf right in front of me, rather than the idea of “a leaf” that I had in my mind. I caught myself drawing this imaginary leaf each time my attention wandered (which it did continually), and I had to bring myself back, over and over, to the reality of THIS leaf, in its unique beauty and imperfection. I was reminded of how I sometimes see only what I expect to see—or worse yet, I don’t even bother to look—and miss the reality that is accessible to me if I would only quiet myself and give some thing, some situation, some person my full and open-hearted attention.
Leadership, Community, and Courage
An interview with Dr. Janice Brown, Executive Director of The Kalamazoo Promise, by Circle of Trust Facilitator Marianne Houston
Marianne: Please tell us about your experience with Courage to Teach® and Courage to Lead®, Janice.
Janice: I feel very fortunate. I’ve actually had four or five different experiences with Courage to Teach and Courage to Lead. The first one was an introductory retreat when the Fetzer Institute invited a group of educational leaders for a three-day gathering where we experienced a “Courage retreat.” Shortly after that I signed up with others from Kalamazoo Public Schools and Western Michigan University to go through a series of retreats called Courage to Teach. There were teachers and administrators and teacher educators and might better have been called “Educators’ Courage” because there were lots of different positions represented. That’s where I began my journey and was very meaningful for me. The next experience I had was a Courage to Lead series, which brought together leaders from Kalamazoo and Comstock Public Schools, Western Michigan University, and civic leaders from Kalamazoo. I remain close today to the participants from these two series, each of which took place over a two-year period. We think of ourselves as “The Courage Community” here. I also had an opportunity to go to Bainbridge Island at the national headquarters and go to a retreat with Parker Palmer and a lot of the national leaders. All of this was extraordinarily meaningful to me.
Marianne: In that first experience, which you’ve called “Educators’ Courage”, you had a unique experience: you were the superintendent of KPS, and in that group were teachers and others from your district. What was that like to have a circle experience, in which vulnerability is high, with members of your school community?
Beauty and Banality in Washington, DC
by Parker J. Palmer
I spent the evening of June 25 at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. It was a beautiful night in the nation’s capitol. As the setting sun bathed the monuments of American democracy in a soft golden glow it would have taken a hardened cynic not to be moved by the promise of a government of, by and for the people.
I went there to speak at a gathering sponsored by our friends at The Faith & Politics Institute. With an engaged audience of about one-hundred fifty people, I talked about the renewal of democracy, focusing on a key ”habit of the heart“ that every would-be citizen needs to develop: the capacity to stand and act creatively in the gap between what is and what could be without flipping out into corrosive cynicism or irrelevant idealism.
Developing the ”habits of the heart“ that make democracy possible (a phrase coined by Alexis de Tocqueville), requires inner work, of course. I came away from this visit to D.C. with new energy for the Center’s work, and two stories that remind me of how critical it is to keep opening up the inner life agenda in our curiously twisted culture.
Creating Safe Spaces for the Soul
by Marcy Jackson, Co-Director The soul is generous: it takes in the needs of the world. The soul is wise: it suffers without shutting down. The soul is hopeful: it engages the world in ways that keep opening our hearts. The soul is creative: it finds its way between realities that might defeat us and fantasies that are mere escapes. All we need to do is to bring down the wall that separates us from our own souls and deprives the world of the soul’s regenerative powers.
—Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life
A circle of trust is the kind of carefully created space that invites the soul to make itself known—the kind of space where we can practice the paradox of “being alone together,” a space that welcomes our inwardness even as it connects us to the gifts and challenges of community, and to the larger world.
Circle of Trust® facilitators have led retreats in a variety of settings with different constituencies. For example, two facilitators are leading a Courage to Lead® program for non-profit leaders in southern California. These leaders are not only finding ways to live and work more wholeheartedly, they’re also forming a strong bond of support for the demanding work they are doing in their communities. Two Michigan facilitators have been leading a program called “Nurturing the Heart of the Leader” that involves PreK-12 school leaders, education professors, business leaders in the community, the city manager and others who contribute to supporting education in this mid-sized town in Michigan (see interview with Janice Brown, a participant, above).
A Hidden Wholeness now available in paperback
Parker Palmer's A Hidden Wholeness is now available in paperback, with two wonderful additions: a DVD with footage of Parker Palmer discussing the principles and practices of Circles of Trust, as well as a readers' and leaders' guide by Circle of Trust Facilitators Caryl Hurtig Casbon and Sally Z. Hare. Click on the image at left to purchase.