“Hope involves staying acutely aware of the difference between what is and what could and should be,
and each day doing something – whatever that might be – to try and narrow the gap,
and to value tiny steps and to value what’s within reach of you and your life as the place to take those tiny steps.”
– Parker J. Palmer in Zoom conversation with Kazu Haga,
“Inner Work for Societal Change: Healing Individually and Collectively to Create a More Just World,”
Center for Courage & Renewal event, June 23, 2025
So much is shifting and changing in our volatile world. How about in your world? What questions won’t let you go? In what directions is your heart pulling you? What is expanding your heart? Where do you feel stuck? What tiny steps are you taking to “narrow the gap” toward “what could and should be”? These can and will take many forms as we move in that direction – personal, cultural, political, spiritual. What are you valuing? If any of these or similar questions live in you, please join us for a five-session online series.
We are calling an intergenerational, diverse group of people, longing to savor living questions and renew hope, heart-strength, and stamina. In this retreat, based on the work of Parker J. Palmer and the Center for Courage & Renewal, we work with trauma-informed practices that support our relationships with self, each other, and community, including the Living Earth. Guided by the Courage & Renewal® approach, we create a sacred, confidential, courageous space in which to do our own inner work in solitude and community. What is my true voice? Can I hear it? Can I listen deeply enough to hear yours, the circle’s, Earth’s?
This retreat will include Clearness Committees, a powerful discernment process from the Quaker tradition, where one person who wishes to think more deeply about an issue or question has an opportunity to be the “focus person” while a “committee” of four to six others listen and ask open, honest questions. Both focus person and committee members share a profound experience in this unique way of supporting another human being, one of those “tiny steps” we can take.
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.
