An impressive thing is happening with The Circle Way. It took place in this home over four days last week, Marty’s Place overlooking a part of the Puget Sound on Whidbey Island, Washington.
It may not sound like much, but this impressive thing is a layered and multi-nuanced change that is happening to consciously shift from an effort centered and stewarded by two founders for 20+ years, to a movement stewarded and grown by a network of people for the next, perhaps 20+ years. From the two to the many. It’s about succession, sure. It’s about evolution, yes. It’s about essential attention to integrity and form, yes that too. Make that a double yes. It is about daring to let go, so as to let come.
The founders in this story are Ann Linnea and Christina Baldwin. They are as wise of humans as there are. For 20+ years they have been working to bring the form of meeting that is Circle to contemporary use. Yes, that means remembering an old form that is arguably in our DNA. It is true that at one point in human history, we gathered around the fire because it was essential. For community. For safety. And yes, it also means that in contemporary meeting culture there are more choices for people than information dumping.
The Circle Way is about activating a spirit of purpose together. It is a form to do this, a methodology. I would suggest an essential form.
For four days some of the key people in the network met, those helping to make the essential shift. Twelve of us. In sense-making, and in project planning and accountabilities. To carry us for the next six months. So that we can now go out to our respective places in the world, do our next steps having been lifted together momentarily, and then return again in six months to check-in and make sense of the next steps again.
I love it that we met in the home pictured here. Cooked food together. Tended a fire together. Rolled up our sleeves together. Held each other and this work in much laughter and in a few tears.
It’s impressive to feel and honor home. It’s massively impressive to me to release home into the broader territory on the horizon.
