“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves,
like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually,
without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
The Heart of Higher Education 2026, June 10-12.
Join us for three days of listening, learning, community and company for living into the questions: those that invite us, those that plaque us, those that won’t let us go and those we develop and pose for those we teach. Our first hour each day will be in conversation with Parker Palmer. Then you’ll move to a small group Circle of Trust experience of your choice. You’ll spend time in this small group each day, listening deeply to yourself and others, finding resource in solitary time and communal time for reflection.
June 10-12, 2026 10 am- 2 pm CT
Please return here for more information and a link to registration (March 20).
What is Circle of Trust®? https://couragerenewal.org/circle-of-trust-retreats/
A sample of themes to choose from for the Circle of Trust small group retreat experience:
Option 1:
Habits Offering Hope and Resilience in the Academy
In Habits Offering Hope and Resilience in the Academy, faculty and staff are invited into a Circle of Trust® to reflect on what sustains us in the midst of tension and change, particularly in polarized times. Drawing on the Habits of the Heart articulated by Parker J. Palmer, we will explore how holding tensions creatively can nurture both hope and resilience. The experience includes poetry, music, reflection, and small-group conversation where we will name the tensions participants carry in academia, explore the inner life needed to hold those tensions, and the power of community in doing so. Facilitated by Center for Courage & Renewal facilitators Nancy Edmundson and Mary Kaye Siebert.
Option 2:
Brokenness and Beauty in Complicated Times
It’s been a hard year. We’re exhausted, stretched, frayed. Many of us have been re-evaluating our lives, our relationships, our careers. We yearn for… healing, clarity, beauty – even in the midst of brokenness.
“Brokenness and Beauty in Complicated Times” is a rare opportunity to explore questions like: How might brokenness and beauty together help us to live more fully into who we’re called to be, and what we’re called to do? How might we live, work, and lead from a place that’s firmly grounded both in the realities of these challenging times and in our most authentic selves?
Karen Harding and Chris Johnson, Facilitators
Option 3:
Light in the Darkness
An invitation to explore themes of waiting and wondering, of doubting and hoping, and of turning, however uncertainly, towards the light.
How are you holding yourself amid the many challenges in our world today? How are you experiencing darkness, in the world around you or in yourself? The tragedy of conflict and violence continues to unfold in many parts of the globe; the words of politicians and leaders threaten to divide rather 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 to break apart? How do we find the courage to live with integrity, with purpose and with hope at this time?
We welcome participants from a diversity of geographical and cultural contexts, and our intention is that this will be a truly international circle. While the working language will be English, we invite participants to bring other languages into the space if they wish.
Facilitated by Michèle le Roux and Dominique Sarny
Option 4:
Rediscovering Wholeness: Crafting the Mosaic
“A mosaic is a conversation between what is broken.” ~ Terry Tempest Williams
A mosaic is by definition a combination of many different parts that are assembled to form a whole. They are most often crafted using many small pieces of colored stone, glass, or ceramic, arranged and positioned together to create patterns or pictures or structures. Mosaics are about bringing together materials that are misshapen, irregular, broken or random, to create something anew.
In our time together in circle, we follow the mosaic creation metaphor. We begin by exploring the theme of ‘tessera’, the old Latin word for one of these glass or ceramic fragments, and the starting point for mosaic building. We invite reflection on ourselves as ‘tesserae’. From here, we widen our perspective to include the connections between tesserae, and the patterns that are created by their connections and conjunctions: patterns we might create in our work, alongside others, as part of our institutions, in our different work settings. Then widening further, we take in the full scope of the mosaic landscapes of which we’re part and that we have a hand in shaping, exploring the opportunities they offer for agency.
In the words of Henri Nouwen: “Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence – priceless and irreplaceable.” Join us on this rich rediscovery of what motivates and sustains us in our work and daily lives.
Facilitated by Barbara Reid and Dennis Huffman
Option 5:
Writing Together – Connecting to Ourselves and Others
There is mystery and often magic, when pen touches page and we begin to write about
our past experiences, current musings, or thoughts and feelings we didn’t know we had
until the right question or prompt opened a door.
The Writing Together sessions are about connection not critique. Writing is a way to
connect to ourselves in ways that often surprise us. When writing is done and shared
with a partner, we can speak and hear each other into new realities and understandings.
Facilitators Penny Williamson and Darcy Shaw, authors of Writing Together – A Year of
Meaning Making and Friendship, will guide you with writing prompts crafted from poetry,
art, or music.
In these sessions you’ll experience:
♦ A trustworthy writing space using the principles and practices of the Courage & Renewal® Approach
♦ Exploration of poetry or other third things from which writing prompts are created
♦ Practice in how to create evocative writing prompts
♦ Opportunities for timed writing sessions
♦ Sharing writing with a writing partner
♦ Large group discussions and reflections on the writing together process and how it may be incorporated into retreat or other work.
Elderhood in the Academy: A Ripening Time
Psychologist Carl Rogers tells us what is most personal is also most universal. However, this truth regarding our experience of aging comes with a caveat. For each one of us, aging is universal, but how we choose to age is personal. Stephen Jenkinson, in his book, Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble provides the following admonition.
Something has happened to aging. Something has happened to what it does, to what it means, and to what it asks of us all. There are more old people than ever before, and it seems that there are fewer elders than ever before, and it seems there could be a causal connection between those two things. Something in the fabric of life in North America inveighs severely against limit and ambivalence and not firing on all cylinders all the time, and this something is being driven to panic by the daily news, and in the panic, you’ll find the refusal to age. This something robs age of elderhood.
This retreat is for anyone, from any season of life, who might be asking, what’s next?
Facilitated by John Smith and co-facilitator
Why would you want to join us?
Whatever personal or societal challenges we face, the resources we need to transform our lives and the world can always be found within us and between us – in the human heart and in community. When we fully embrace the genuine within ourselves and honor the inherent worth and dignity of every being, we unleash the power to build a better world.
The source of our integrity – the genuine within us – goes by many names: soul, true self, inner light, identity. When we connect with that part of ourselves and celebrate it in others, we gain a clearer understanding of who we truly are, why we’re here, and the gifts we bring to the world individually and collectively.
When we show up in our homes, relationships, workplaces, communities, and ecosystems rooted in our own integrity and with a deep bow to human dignity, we inspire hope in those around us and foster the relational trust and stamina we need to keep moving, step by step, toward a more loving, equitable, and healthy world.
Please direct any questions to heartof@couragerenewal.org
