The Circle Way is a lineage for me, reaching back to the 1990s when I first met Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea. It’s woven into all of the change work that I’ve been involved in for the last 20+ years. Yup, important. Yup, a foundation of skill and orientation for participative leadership.
I know that not everyone can make the journey to attend an in-person practicum. I’m aware that skilled practitioners are looking for an opportunity to refresh or deepen their circle practice.
Amanda Fenton and I invite you to consider this new online learning opportunity (or share with others who may be interested) – The Circle Way: A Four Week Online Class To Introduce and Nuance The Components Wheel. The class will be held on Tuesdays from February 13 to March 6, 2018, at 9am to 11am Pacific time, over video conference and a private online learning space.
I recently wrote an article for The Circle Way Newsletter about virtual circles. I’ve excerpted the headlines below. Check out the full article here.
Over the last twenty years, I’ve been with literally hundreds of people in face-to-face circles. Some circles as large as fifty of sixty people. More commonly, in groups of six to sixteen. Most of us have been moved to tears at times in these circles. Or deep convictions. Or delightful surprises. Some of us have even found life-time companions, friends, and colleagues in the container that is circle.
One of the most common questions I’m asked from those face-to-face circles is, “Is this possible online?” I love the hope in people’s eyes that is behind that question. And I can see a bit of the worry too — worry that often comes with the vulnerability inherent in hope.
My response is always the same, after a deliberate pause to hear the question. “Yes, of course.” That’s the simplest, and most honest response I can offer. It speaks directly to the hope and to the worry. Then I usually go on to share that online circles are related, but different from face-to-face circles. Both are important. Both are exciting. With intent for good hosting all around, it’s important to feel the similarity of depth and to acknowledge difference.
Over the years, particularly the last ten, in this explosion of virtual possibility and global community, I’ve come to rely on a few tips in hosting and participating in online circles. I think of these tips as practices and dispositions.
1. Arrive Early
2. Avoid Distractions
3. Virtual Environments Take Time Too
4. Get A Little Extra Tactile and Descriptive
5. Invite a Sequence for Speaking and Signal Your Completion with Extra Directness
I’m glad that so many of the virtual circles I’ve participated in and hosted have felt intimate and well connected. I love it when people express their appreciations. It’s the voice of hope. It’s the relief of released worry.
When at my best, whether face-to-face or online, I remind myself that I / we are not just leading meetings. We are holding space for a possibility. An honesty. A realness of connection. Presence is the common denominator across the mediums. Presence is the operating system. It just takes a little extra imagination and practice to bring it fully to make the virtual circle real.
I’m in the longest stretch I’ve had in the last two and one half years of not posting on this blog. It’s only a month, but I can feel the hunger in my fingers. I can feel the grown cue of ideas that have come, rested a while, and then left. Or of some that just cooked in me in a different way through oodles of conversations with people.
It’s been a full stretch of travel, working with groups, teaching, and learning in public. Wonderful bits with really amazing partners and participants that have occupied me from early mornings well past sun-setted evenings. I’ve been to Whidbey Island, teaching The Circle Way with Amanda Fenton. It’s one of my favorite places in the world. Then further with Amanda and Penny Hamilton to Australia to introduce more of The Circle Way to a community services organization and others so honest in their hunger for deliberate containers of connection. Then immediately upon my return to Minnesota to teach and offer Circle, Song, and Ceremony with Quanita Roberson and Barbara McAfee, bringing forward a new offering.
What great pairs and trios to be a part of! Sometimes in the profound and broad narratives of humanity — how we human beings are, after long drought, requenching our way back to story, context, voice, song, ritual, and wisdom together. Sometimes the satisfying moments with my teaching companions have been in the simple ahas that come over a bite of left over pad thai at the end of the day. “I loved the way that ____ came alive today.” Or, “Wasn’t that a great question that _____ asked!”
It is a gift to host. It is a gift to be hosted. It is a gift to reshape paradigms of teaching that encourage ourselves and others to go together.
Among the many bits that will no doubt continue to unfold within my awareness, or begged from within to be shared more broadly, here’s a gem from the gathering that concluded just yesterday. It is original song from Barbara McAfee, “I Wish That I Could Show You.” The group of 26 of us sang it a few times over the weekend. It’s quite a thing to be touched deeply, and dare to find any words to share moments of aliveness. Thanks Barbara — and all.
Amy Lenzo is a friend that goes two decades back into the World Cafe community. Most recently, Amy, along with another friend Rowan Simonsen, and I have been creating and offering the online course, The Circle Way: A Deep Dive.
To explore deep dive feels utterly essential. There are skills to be learned, mistakes to be made, and companions to be found. Deep dive also requires a lot of discerning. There are some things that are just too big to open up together in the time that we have — they require some overnight cooking and alchemy with one another that I relate to in a face to face way. Or, deep dive invokes a reference with hope that the mere reference will stay with people and work within them. Sometimes it is just sharing one imagination that can shape a months worth of dreaming. This is something I hope for in all of us. It is, I believe, a willingness to let an insight travel with you.
Amy does a lot of online work. She is smooth, thoughtful, and wise. I’ve really been glad to be in her abilities and skills over the course of this deep dive. Stirred by our last session on April 19th, and inspired to open it further, Amy posted this piece on Hosting Circle Online. It’s good tips. It is good grounding. From invoking images to lighting candles. All about challenging us to a belief of what is possible when present to oneself, to each other, and to the invisible yet ever so real fields that redefine time and space.
