Words of EnCOURAGEment #11

New Beginnings

by Marcy Jackson, Co-Director
 


Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life’s desire.


Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.



—John O'Donohue, excerpted from “For a New Beginning,” To Bless the Space Between Us

Last September our board and staff initiated a strategic direction process with this stated purpose: “We are at a critical juncture as an organization and we want to create a clear direction and new business model to advance the Center’s mission and ensure long-term sustainability. Our task will be to develop a compelling picture of what the work of the Center for Courage & Renewal (CCR) will look like 5-10 years into the future so we can effectively direct both human and financial resources toward achieving this vision.”

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The Center at a Turning Point

by Terry Chadsey, Co-Director

In the San Juan Islands north of Seattle, there’s a picturesque nineteenth century lighthouse on a high bluff on Stuart Island. On nautical charts this is named “Turn Point” because the shipping lanes that route ships between the Pacific Ocean and Vancouver (one of the world’s largest deep water ports) make a near 90-degree turn off the point. This is an apt metaphor for where we find ourselves today at the Center. In our wake are growth and success beyond anyone’s anticipation. Ahead lies great promise, but in order to continue the journey, we are making a significant turn. I feel a keen sense of both gratitude and humility to be helping to lead the Center through this turn.

Twelve years ago, I was in my twenty-first year as a public school teacher. I’d never heard of Parker Palmer or his work. A colleague handed me a copy of the recently published book, The Courage to Teach, and I eagerly read it over a weekend. Parker’s writing opened for me new ways of thinking about my own teaching and life. My journey with the Center’s work and the growing network of Circle of Trust® facilitators had begun.

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Executive Director Search

The Politics of the Brokenhearted: Opening the Heart of American Democracy

A Note of Explanation: I am working on a new book, and what follows are some of the “sketches” I’ve been making as I try to discern its shape. Normally, I don’t share notes like this in public. But since my topic this time is democracy, I thought it would consistent with the topic, and good for me, to open my thinking to discussion. And since the Center is planning to host several large gatherings on this topic at sites around the country, your responses will help us shape those events as well. I’d love to hear what you think, with one proviso—I cannot respond to your comments individually or I will never get the book written! So thank you in advance for whatever you have to say. The topic is of great importance to me and I hope it is to you, too, whether or not you agree with what I have to say about it. That’s the way of democracy! —Parker Palmer
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It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. —Audre Lord

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.
                —Rumi

Like most Americans, I treasure our nation’s unfinished experiment in democracy. And like many I know, I find it heartbreaking when democracy’s highest values get trampled—when, for example, government “of the people, by the people and for the people“ is trumped by corrupt deals and official lies, or when “we, the people” declare those with whom we disagree “unpatriotic,” eroding the foundations of the public on which democracy depends. Watching something or someone you love come undone is one of life’s most painful experiences, and heartbreak is the most honest word I know for that pain.

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I Brought My Soul to Work

by Jay E. Valusek with reflections by Circle of Trust® Facilitator
 Paul Michalec

Paul As a Circle of Trust Facilitator, the observations of the poet Marge Piercy have a certain resonance: ”Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground. You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.” I sit in a circle, inviting participants to encounter a deeper sense of self, not really knowing what might be growing inside the soul. Shortly after a recent retreat, a participant (Jay Valusek) sent the circle the following email. Now I know a little of “what was happening” and nurtured into life through the mysteries of a Circle of Trust.

Jay I’d like to share a story with all of you about what happened immediately after our Circle of Trust retreat last week. I decided to bring my soul to work. 

I am a freelance writer for high-tech companies, mostly in the oil industry. Not a place my soul gets much nurture. One of my clients is the CEO of a software company, for whom I write speeches. The day after I returned from the retreat, I was faced with a serious problem: I had two days to write his speech for a major event and I couldn’t reach him on the phone. When I finally made contact, he spent an hour talking vaguely about innovation and customer collaboration. Not much substance at all. Afterward, I called the woman in charge of the event. I told her that I didn’t think I could pull any rabbits out of the hat this time. By day’s end, I still had no idea what to do...and only one day left to write the speech.

However, because of the time we spent together on retreat, I decided to let my challenge sit overnight and trust whatever arose from the “abundance” within.

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Living Inside Out: Exploring Creativity and Renewal

by Circle of Trust Facilitator Megan LeBoutillier

Summer’s transition into fall is a dramatic transformation filled with brilliant color, changing light, dramatic weather flourishes and abundant harvest.  I am reminded of movement around the mobius strip where some things pass out of view while others emerge into greater clarity.  When I moved to Virginia where the seasons have strong definition, the first fall I began feeling a little panicked as the trees shed their foliage.  I was afraid of the barrenness.  The color was draining out of my world and I didn’t welcome the dark grayness ahead.  Slowly my fearfulness gave way to an appreciation for what was coming into view.  I could see rock formations and the delicate shape of naked trees.  I could look more deeply into the landscape that a month earlier had been camouflaged by the lush flatness of green.  This slight perceptual shift in awareness made it possible for me to look more carefully and appreciate what I was seeing with fresher eyes.  I’d like to use the metaphor of learning to draw as a lens through which to view the process of renewal and healing.

“We are disabused of original giftedness in the first half of our lives.  Then—if we are awake, aware, and able to admit our loss—we spend the second half trying to recover and reclaim the gift we once possessed.”  Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak.

As an artist and Circle of Trust Facilitator, I have long sat with the question of where is the intersection of my work and “Courage Work.”  My own journey back to reclaiming my original giftedness has taught me many lessons.  “Creative” was close to being a dirty word in my family.  I was constantly admonished for being “too sensitive” and for “daydreaming.”  The inference was that both the quality of creativity and whatever behavior might express it were somehow bad.  Fortunately I was also smart, a characteristic I mistakenly came to believe was incompatible with creative.  Surely one must be either smart or creative, so I chose to embrace intelligence and disowned my creative nature.  I “circled the wagons” as Parker would say, and made sure only my outside showed itself to the world.  The inward and outward flow of the mobius strip seemed far too dangerous to navigate.   Much of my adult life has been dedicated to healing the divide in my psyche between my intellect and my intuition.

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