How you stand here is important: a Circle of Trust® retreat on Zoom: five-session series with Clearness Committee

How you stand here is important: a Circle of Trust^® retreat on Zoom

Five-session series with Clearness Committee

(You are asked to commit to attending at least four sessions, including Session 1)

Space is limited to 20.

“How you stand here is important. How you
listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe.”

William Stafford

“A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me… granting me
honour and a task”

Denise Levertov (after Rilke)

As the spring begins to turn towards summer, or as autumn advances towards winter, depending on the hemisphere in which you live, what are you experiencing both inwardly and outwardly? How do hold yourself amidst the many challenges in our world today? In this year 2025, the tragedy of conflict and violence continues to unfold in many parts of the globe; the political discourse both within and between nations is increasingly confrontational and serves more often to divide than to unite; escalating climate change continues to impact our planet and its inhabitants, the most vulnerable suffering the most. How do we resist turning away from this suffering; with what frame of heart do we turn towards it? How can we allow our hearts to break open instead of breaking apart? How do we find the courage to live with integrity, with purpose and with hope in these challenging times?

The theme of this retreat – How you stand here is important – is offered as an invitation for you to reflect on some of the questions you may be holding at this time. How am I experiencing or perhaps reimagining my place within my community, my workplace, my environment? How do I choose to show up in the world? How do I listen and how am I present to others?  What does it mean to be here in authenticity and vulnerability, with my doubts, fears and failings as well as my convictions, joys and successes? What tensions am I holding in my life, and how might I transform this experience from one of predicament to one of creative paradox? To what inner work or to what work in the world am I being called? Even if I am not sure of the nature of this call, or of what is being asked of me, how can I respond with my own particular and wholehearted trust that “How I stand here is important”?

Michèle invites you to join this Circle of Trust on Zoom for five sessions with screen-free breaks. We will embark on a journey, guided by the Courage & Renewal^® approach, and together create a sacred, confidential space in which to do our own inner work in solitude and community. In the first four sessions, we will have the opportunity to listen generously to our inner teacher (soul, spirit, still small voice, inner voice, identity and integrity) and to one another in small groups and the whole group, speaking from the heart. Since a Circle of Trust is enriched by metaphors, we will reflect on “third things”: poetry, prose, images, video, and song. 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. Instead listening generously and learning to ask open, honest questions open new doors in our relationships with self and others as we journey toward wholeness.  The timing of the retreat, as we move towards, through and beyond the summer or winter solstice, will support us in this work of transformation.

In the culminating session, we will experience Clearness Committees, a powerful 1.5-hour discernment process from the Quaker tradition, adapted for Circle of Trust retreats. One person who wishes to think more deeply about an issue – transitional, vocational, relational, or spiritual – has an opportunity to be the “focus person” while a “committee” of three to six others listens and asks open, honest questions for an hour and a half. Both focus person and committee members alike have a profound experience in this unique way of supporting another human being together in community.

This retreat is based on the work of Parker J. Palmer and the Center for Courage & Renewal. The Courage & Renewal approach, described in 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, brave space with our attention, imagination, and confidential conversations. Over the course of five sessions, we are able to create a Circle of Trust.