Do you hold space for prayer groups or quiet days or retreats within your faith community? Are you involved in group spiritual accompaniment, or in the supervision of spiritual directors? Do you identify as a soul worker within a particular faith tradition, or do you tend to the life of the spirit in other contexts? Are you engaged in fostering the capacity for mutual tending of our spiritual needs within your community? This learning retreat will introduce some of the key elements of Circle of Trust® work and will offer opportunities to explore how these practices can support those who lead and facilitate groups to create a vessel – a welcoming, invitational and safe space – in their own soul work context.
The Courage & Renewal approach, described in Parker J. Palmer’s book A Hidden Wholeness, focuses on cultivating our inner capacity to live a more authentic, meaningful, and engaged life. Informed by Courage & Renewal Principles, Practices, and Touchstones, we can create a trustworthy and intentional space to do our own soul work in community with others. Circle of Trust® experiences help us to slow down, to listen to the wisdom of our inner teacher, to honor each person’s identity and integrity, and to renew our courageous spirit as we journey towards personal and societal wholeness.
This learning retreat will invite participants to enter into and experience the reflective and inner, but also communal, practices of the circle, within which openness, integrity and confidentiality are honored. The quality of the space is shaped by the practices that everything we do is invitational, and there is no fixing, advising, saving, or correcting. The retreat will offer safe space for you to explore your practice as a soul worker, working in the large group, in small groups, and in solitary settings. We will draw on the wisdom of spiritual traditions, and also on stories from your own journey, on insights from poets, storytellers, artists and the natural world. We will practice the skills of being present to ourselves and to others, of deep listening and of offering open honest questions. In this way, we create a sacred vessel for the shy soul and we help “hear each other into deeper speech”.
As you experience the rhythm and practices of a Circle of Trust®, you will have the opportunity to reflect on how you might apply these practices in your own context, and how you might adapt or cross-fertilize in order to meet the needs of those you work with. The first three sessions of the retreat will support your experiential learning and reflection. In the final two sessions, participants will apply what they have learned to create resources and plan a session for use in their own contexts. Participants will facilitate a short practice session for their peers and will receive feedback on their work. The invitation is for participants to try out new ideas and to experiment bravely within the protected and supportive space of the learning community we will co-create.
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.
