There are so many noises going on inside of you. So many echoes of all sorts….I wonder if you can get still enough– not quiet enough– still enough to hear rumbling up from your unique and essential idiom, the sound of the genuine in you. -Howard Thurman, excerpts from Baccalaureate Address at Spelman College, May 4, 1980
Where to begin, in this moment on our planet, in our communities, our own personal lives? What is it that compels us to keep going, to start again, to try something different? How do we know that the work we are doing is ours to do, and how do we know when enough is enough?
There are so many voices telling us what we “should” do or be in a time such as this, but very little that helps us to get in touch with our own soul. We are so pressured to build our skills, carefully curate an image, and respond to external cues, that we can miss out on chances for genuine connection with ourselves and with our neighbors.
We invite leaders and activists to this Courage to Lead retreat outside of Washington, DC, to reconnect with what grounds and sustains you in your life and work. A Circle of Trust® is an intentionally established space in which we do inner work in community. We are given a gracious invitation–with plenty of tools and practices–to hear from our own inner teacher, while feeling held and witnessed by the circle around us. In a rhythm of large-group gathering, individual reflection time, and structured time in smaller groups, you will have space to explore questions and ideas that hold meaning for you in this season.
Our retreat format resists the dominant cultural forces surrounding us that create divisions within us and among us, and instead offers:
1) a deliberately un-rushed pace;
2) a structured way in which we share, listen, and respond to one another; and,
3) an insistent uplifting of both/and thinking to move us towards wholeness, individually and collectively.
An opportunity to take part in Clearness Committees will be included as part of this retreat. If you are not familiar, the Clearness Committee stems from Quaker tradition, and is a unique process of individual and communal discernment; a collective holding of safe space to support the inner journey and listen to what the soul has to say. “Behind the Clearness Committee is a simple but crucial conviction: each of us has an inner teacher, a voice of truth, that offers the guidance and power we need to deal with our problems. But that inner voice is often garbled by various kinds of inward and outward interference. The function of the Clearness Committee is not to give advice or “fix” people from the outside in but rather to help people remove the interference so that they can discover their own wisdom from the inside out.” Excerpt from The Clearness Committee in Retreats A Communal Approach To Discernment by Parker J. Palmer
We invite you to a retreat where you don’t have to make a presentation, cultivate an image, or strategically network, but where you are encouraged to do what your own soul needs most in any given moment. We offer an expanse that is wide enough for new thoughts to emerge from within you; wide enough to rest, to connect, to breathe deeply. A Circle of Trust® is a trustworthy and brave space, a space in which all of who you are is welcome and regarded as worthy. In gathering with others who also identify as young leaders and activists, we hope to find life-giving ways of being in community that spark a sense of possibility and hope for when we return to our lives and work.
This retreat is informed by the Courage & Renewal® approach, which was developed by Parker J. Palmer and the Center for Courage & Renewal and informed by centuries of wisdom traditions from around the world. The Center for Courage & Renewal and its facilitators do not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, height, weight, physical or mental ability, veteran status, military obligations, and marital status.
The Center for Courage & Renewal and its facilitators do not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, height, weight, physical or mental ability, veteran status, military obligations, and marital status.
