Tag: #thecircleway

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Center

I count on center a lot these days, though I think it’s always been true for me, even before learning about The Circle Way. A center in self, a source from which the rivers of perception and wonder might flow. A center for a group, a third space accessible to all, a lake, figuratively, for the the mixing of the tributary waters of experience and important questions. Center holds us. Center connects us. Lately, I’ve been involved with big, and needed big, centers.

The photo above is from co-hosting Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC) this week with Quanita Roberson in OOC’s All Staff Retreat. This center has been growing over the days together. It is my experience generally, and specifically this week, that the center transform a room from “just a room” to a hearth from which a pile of important things can happen.

Included above:

In preparation: The cloth, brought by Quanita. Gives it beauty. And some history with stories of other circles — if cloths could talk (which perhaps they do). The plant, a “work with what you’ve got” center. It’s living. I needed something to center my arranging of chairs. The plant became that, and stuck, propped up slightly on top of another upside down bowl.

Round 1: The candles, one for each participant. These are the 8-inch jar candles that are a dollar at The Dollar Store. Decorated with oil-based paint pens by each participant upon first arriving in our meeting space. “Make it your own; make it beautiful,” we tell them. It becomes a kind of ritual to light the candles when we start each day, and to blow them out when we leave each day. Getting ourselves to the center. And letting it go.

Round 2: The photo cards, again, one for each participant. This set comes from colleague and friend, Carla Kimble, who started collecting her photos, printed on 4 x 6 cardstock. We invited each person to choose a card (from a bigger selection) that represents an intention that they want to carry with them in the week of learning. I love having one of the access points be an image.

Round 3: Objects that represent something important to each participant in why they do the work that they do. Stones. Poems. Pouches. Photos. Necklaces. Placing an object in the middle comes with invitation to tell a story, which of course connects the group even more. It adds to the lake. It adds to the fire.

There’s other stuff in there. The lines of blue tape were used for a few exercises. The juggling balls that I put in there, just because. The bells to be used for a pause.

Centers matters. Centers hold us. Centers give us a channel to be connected with the group. They give us the transformational shift in awareness, that perhaps beyond the moment of the retreat, we are, in fact, connected. In beauty. In story. In purpose. In energy.

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The Aim of Life — Henry Miller

Henry Miller was an American Writer from the 1900s. He’s known for, among other things, breaking with literary styles of his day. He was born in New York. He lived and wrote for a significant time in Paris. He died in California.

A few of Henry Miller’s words were spoken as a closing check-out by a participant at The Circle Way Practicum that ended two days ago. It was for me a beautiful closing (the person who spoke them was in fact the last person in the circle).

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware … joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
Henry Miller

I hope for this in myself, all of these layers, to be living. I long for the overall feeling of such aliveness and awareness. In self, and in group, and in community.

Some days, it doesn’t come so easily. When aloneness overtakes (or appears to), leaving only the next precarious step through wobbly and slippery stones of despair.

Some days, it comes so easily. Like in that closing circle when people sang, offered gratitudes. I gushed with the beauty of it, a momentary increased and awakened awareness, fed to the center by the group, and to be carried to the next circle, with gracious aim.

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There Is A Field

It was the 13th century Persian poet, Jellaludin Rumi, that wrote so beautifully of fields. Of expanded minds. Of oneness. Of the less visible that is “field” that is often beyond words.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”

Yesterday I returned from the field above, at the Aldermarsh Retreat Center. Out beyond Maxwelton Road in the Maxwelton Valley, in traditional lands of the Snohomish, Suquamish, Swinomish, and the Lower Skagit, over the wood-chip paths, through the marsh of Alder, there is a field, in which Marsh House exists. I love this little gathering spot. Bunnies hop out there. Coyotes howl at night. There is room to amble. There is space to be held. And this little building holds us in circles. On chairs. On cushions. On back-jacks. With a candle in the middle and some questions to guide us.

It’s been 20 years now that I’ve been going to Aldermarsh both to convene groups and participate. It’s the retreat center in which, looking back, I’ve done so much of my life learning from my mid 30s to mid 50s. And that learning was refreshed a bunch this last week for The Circle Way Practicum.

There is a point at which we are no longer circling, we are no longer doing the circling. But rather, we are being circled, we are participating in something much larger and energized by a deliberate and sustained encounter with one another. It does feel like the space beyond right-doing and wrong-doing.

I’m grateful.

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Free Listening

I often feel that what I seek to do in this blog is to be a noticer. Of things big. Of things small. Of things that are not things. Of moments that come and go like one gentle draft of wind. Of long arcs that are so worth giving ourselves to over years and decades. I notice for myself. For others, to encourage their noticing, I hope. It’s a really rich world, isn’t it.

I notice things that are painful, like some of the conditions of runaway confrontation. Or smoke-filled skies that won’t go away as forest continue to burn. I notice things that are joyful, like the teapot sitting in my friend Sarah’s window, and the garden beyond it neighbored by centuries old Douglas Fir trees. I notice. I notice. I notice. Perhaps we all do, but just rarely find ourselves removed enough to be in the soft edges of it all.

I’ve been teaching and convening the last week. It was The Circle Way Practicum, co-hosting with Amanda Fenton, and convening with 24 of us. There’s a pile of that that I’ll share over the coming days. Insights. Impressions. Ahas. Or maybe, just the way that that encounter, six days worth, peels away enough of the tough outside to see the everyday in a more noticing way. Sorrows and joys that bring me to tears.

Well, as I scan through email that’s been coming into my inbox the past week, I see this morning Charles LaFond’s post on Free Listening. Another story of noticing. Another beautiful image. Another something to feel some delight in, or whatever within the range of human emotions that are so often packed into a briefcase or a hall closet, only to be found another day when less busy.

Enjoy…

She stands in the park during the Grower’s Market and she holds a sign.  “Free Listening.”  When I saw her, and her sign, I was so happy I could hardly inhale.

And more… on Charles’ sight for The Daily Sip.

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