Accessing the Best We Have to Offer

a profile of Courage & Renewal Facilitator Caryl Hurtig Casbon

Caryl Hurtig Casbon has been affiliated with the Center for Courage & Renewal since l998, setting up retreat programs in Oregon and nationally. Caryl taught in and directed the CORE program at Lewis & Clark College for 13 years, and is currently working for the Sacred Art of Living Center, in Bend, OR, with their Anamcara Project. She facilitates Courage to Lead retreats for clergy and congregational leaders, school leaders, as well as facilitating cross-professional circles of trust. She sat down with us to talk about her many years of facilitation.

How did you first hear about Courage to Teach? What drew you to this work?

When teaching at Lewis & Clark, I was using Parker Palmer’s book To Know As We Are Known in my courses. Parker was the only writer I knew of who was addressing spirituality in the classroom, and actually made a case for silence in education! I was working with Greg Smith who had a friendship with Parker, and he passed along an invitation to a retreat at The Fetzer Institute. That was the beginning of my journey.

When I walked into that first retreat with Parker, I felt that I had found a soul friend, and I had come home. I knew immediately I belonged to the Courage community, just as it was beginning to form. The pace, the pressures and intensity of education, and our society in general, are grueling. What the Courage work offers educators is a way to “come home” to their own lives. When I walked in that room at Fetzer and I experienced the sacredness of what was going on, I knew that I didn’t have a choice – I had to be involved!

I have always felt that my calling is to bring spirituality into the workplace. To be able to offer this process to educators in these secular settings is profoundly rewarding. By embracing this work, educators can connect professional practice with their most deeply held values; I can tell immediately when I meet a teacher who has been through this program. Ten years later, Lewis & Clark College continues to offer retreats to teachers, school leaders, school counselors, and now to the PhD candidates. One of the things I love most about this work is that it is a deeply collaborative process, and I have had a chance to work with such exceptional people. I am so grateful and proud to be a part of this national neighborhood of courage facilitators!

Why is it that spirituality is important in education?

That’s a great question. I think it’s the only way to deal with the whole person. We can’t treat people like they are just their minds or feelings, culture or history. A central part of being human is our connection to something larger than ourselves. I agree with the Quaker philosophy, that we have the Divine spark within us, which has a great capacity to guide us, inspire us, and inform our actions and lives. Education should teach us to learn from ‘within’ as well as from ‘without’ and know ourselves. Education, at its best, teaches about the sacredness of our world, each child’s heart, and acknowledges that learning is more than acquiring and testing information, or preparing for a job.

I also think that educators have a responsibility to support the students discerning their calling in life, which is a spiritual issue. One’s calling has to do with the birthright gifts and innate passions that are within the individual soul. Without this grounding, education can actually become a deforming experience.

Why is it important to offer this work to clergy?

Clergy, like school leaders, are in ‘fish bowl’ roles. There is so much projected on them and expected from them. They are watched everywhere they go, and can learn to protect their true selves from the assaults. I don’t know how many places they have to turn where truth- telling can happen, where confidentiality is guaranteed, where they can take their brokenness and their questions. Because they are put on pedestals, they often take devastating, public falls. They are also trying to hold together churches that are under assault. It’s not an easy time to be a spiritual leader. It’s a great gift to them to have a circle of trust to turn to. One participant, an Episcopal priest, said “I can’t tell you what it was like for me to be in a place where I wasn’t judged for two hours.” Another commented, “I feel at peace for the first time in many years. I am in touch with my soul.” I honor these brave people, and am so grateful to be able to work with them in this way.

What promise do circles of trust offer congregations?

Often in retreats, we hear, “I wish my church was like this. This is what I go to church for and I can’t find.” I think churches, like education, are in transformation mode; it looks more like break down than break through right now. In church life, we often end up either being part of the audience or a member of a committee, isolated in superficial exchanges. The Courage work offers life-giving ways of being in community where people can access a ‘live encounter’ with the soul, and with one another. While churches ground us in invaluable traditions and values, and offer rituals and worship that are essential, I think people today are looking for direct encounters with the Divine, for an opportunity to have access to the spiritual experience themselves. The hope and potential of circles of trust is that these ‘live encounters’ are possible.

So you’ve worked with educators, with clergy, and also with people of diverse professions. How is the work different?

Truthfully, we don’t change the work all that much, based on the professional make-up of the group. The cross- professional circles of trust I-III retreats are based on the major themes in A Hidden Wholeness, such as: the living the undivided life, deep listening, the tragic gap, nonviolence, and on themes drawn from the seasons as well as the inner life. The content easily transfers and applies to all professions.

Circles of trust break through our roles, so that we can have a doctor and a teacher sharing deeply from the soul, bypassing the role filters and boundaries that so isolate us, and create a false sense of separation between people.

Can you talk about your own personal transformation?

The word that comes to mind is re-member. As a result of doing this work for so long, I remember… know in my bones, the grace of silence, solitude and slowing down, even if I don’t always do so. I know when I am deeply challenged, or at a crossroads, that moving in to the pain through the clearness process always offers direction and transformation, if I give it the attention, the wait- time, and patience it deserves. I remember I am not alone. The cycle of the seasons is a roadmap for me, and holds the ever-changing landscape of my life in an organic perspective. I love the seasons, each of them. I cringe anymore when someone tries to give me advice, or I try to give it to others. I’ve deepened my capacity to hold complexity in my heart, and awareness when I am polarizing my thinking and responses. I walk around with poems in my pocket, and tire my friends by reading them at dinners and Thanksgiving celebrations.

Facilitator preparation is like first baby steps. And then we do it and do it and do it and then we keep going deeper with it. I think this is one of the signs that this is trustworthy. There’s a long way to go within each of us. We don’t just get it and then we’re there. It’s like any spiritual discipline; we have to practice it and look at it, reflect on it and incorporate it, and remember to use it! I trust these methods completely.

There’s a huge piece of the impact of this work that we don’t always get to see. How does this change a whole congregation or a whole religious community?

It is never our intention to ‘fix’ any institution. Still, in church life, we are told to love one another, and to address our human suffering, but not really how to do so. Circles of trust offer meaningful practices that will assist congregations in embodying these values. I know of no better practice for honoring suffering and serving (loving) each other, respectfully, at these crossroads than the clearness committee. Churches can be lonely places; a circle of trust creates sacred space where deep, soul-level sharing is possible. We are a movement model, and if enough people in a congregation learn these practices, I think they can infiltrate it and offer a great opportunity for renewal and grace to move among their people. This work offers tremendous, if modest hope for an alternate way of being together that accesses the best that we have.