Words of EnCOURAGEment #15
Resilience and "The Plan"
by Executive Director Terry Chadsey
One of the principles of the Circle of Trust® approach is that paradox enriches our lives and helps us hold greater complexity. As I began to see more clearly the paradoxes in my own life and work it was as if I were given a new pair of glasses. Suddenly I saw them everywhere.
One paradox that is deeply familiar is that of "the plan" and "what just happens." John Lennon wrote, "Life is just what happens when you're busy making other plans." Indeed! Some of my most profound (and sometimes painful) learning came from the unplanned—a chance meeting, a new idea, a lost relationship, a sudden death, the end of a job.
And yet the plan has been equally significant. My life is the result of what was planned and what just happened. Without either, many of the experiences I most value would never have occurred. One of the hallmarks of human society is our capacity to work together, to combine effort and resources toward a common goal or vision, and thereby make something happen that is grander than any individual could accomplish.
In my role as executive director of the Center these days, I think a lot about the plan that will bring our programs and resources to more people for years to come. In doing so, I work with four big ideas that not only apply to organizations but also to our lives, relationships and families.
Integrity in Health Care: Cultivating Organizations of Trust and Inspiration
Save the date for this Health Care Institute of the Center for Courage & Renewal
November 13-17, 2011
Airlie Center, Warrington VA
Our health care system is rapidly changing, under duress, and unable to fully meet the needs of patients and those who serve them. The way forward is unclear, and technical expertise is insufficient. The challenges we face require disciplined practices that bring our full human capacity to bear in every role and at every level.
We offer this program to people in health care who face reality with measured hope, who seek to influence and inspire others, and who believe they can make a difference. "Integrity in Health Care" will strengthen participants' capacity to:
• Use self-awareness and reflection as tools for effective leadership and advancing professionalism
• Employ methodologies to build trust and support integrity in individuals, groups, and organizations
• Work constructively with ambiguity and make progress on complex and difficult challenges
• Strengthen individual and organizational resilience and vitality
Click here for registration and information.
Courage Work Provides Hope for The Church
by Circle of Trust Facilitator Winton Boyd
It isn’t always easy being a pastor in today’s religious climate. While interest in spirituality remains high, churches face all kinds of internal and external pressures. Pastors and other congregational leaders are among the most depressed and discouraged of all professionals.
For many years, I’ve chaired my regional United Church of Christ committee, authorizing clergy into positions of leadership and dealing with churches and/or pastors in conflict. I’m aware of many churches facing complicated interpersonal and institutional dynamics. For most of that time, I’ve advocated for reconciliation and mediation efforts. What I have come to believe, however, is that many of those efforts miss the heart of healthy congregational life and healthy pastoral life. Without strong, grounded, non-anxious, and loving leadership, conflict work rarely has a chance to take hold. Until churches have individual clergy who care deeply about their own spiritual, emotional and physical health, no amount of mediation, coaching or innovation will breathe life into a struggling church. Spending the time and energy to address our own dreams, our own ‘tragic gaps’ and our own sources of inspiration and faith offers the best chance for churches and other organizations to find health and hope. Without changing the leaders, congregational change is unlikely.
Courage to Lead, for me, has emerged as an amazing spiritual/emotional approach, helping me go deeper into my own functioning and my own spirit life where the true issues and challenges of leadership lie.
Exploring Paradox in Korea (Jiyeon Chung)
A few months ago before I joined the retreat with Terry, I was exhausted by my job. I had been teaching kids English at a private institute from Monday to Wednesday, and doing tutoring in the other days. My busy schedule was the result of accidental chances and my own choices. For the first month since I started working, I could do my job enthusiastically, but as times went by, I could not help feeling that I was totally burned out. "Do I have little vocation for teaching?" I was overwhelmed by the feeling of doubt and helplessness, instead of confidence and liveliness that I had when I first started my job. Whenever I thought of my job, I felt I wanted to quit it as soon as possible, rather than trying to change the way I had been doing it. But even if I quit, I had no idea about what my next step in life would be like.
Unable to find some clear answers, I headed for Seoul to see Terry and other participants. For the retreat, I had two purposes: “listening to my inner voice” and “taking a deep rest” with participants who I had missed a lot. I did not know why, but in the first day of the retreat, my entire body became nervous little by little and especially my shoulders got stiff. Whenever I joined the retreat, I expected my problems to be solved clearly, but tried to let such a desire go at the same time. Maybe that was why my whole body got nervous from the beginning of the retreat. But the following day, I could find myself being much more relaxed, smiling and joking to others frequently. Was it because I forgot myself trying to expect or let go something? Otherwise, it might be because I took a rest from the fatigue of my journey.
The theme of the retreat was Exploring Paradox in Ourselves and Our Work. The first session was introducing myself through images; we were invited to pick up two images which expressed “my role” and “my soul” respectively, and to describe them to others. Among the approaches in the retreat, the one using images was my favorite. The reason was that by using images, I could realize the power and value of image and metaphor beyond language. While introducing my role to others, I burst out crying. My role as a teacher at a private institute was strict, organized, and repetitive, and I was having a hard time doing such a role. On the opposite side of my role, there was me―being intuitive, sensitive, and artistic, and being full of imagination and wanting to express it to the full. I had no idea how I could harmonize those two images conflicting each other. Whenever I looked at the image symbolizing my role, my shoulders got stiff as if somebody put two heavy rocks on them.
Exploring Paradox in Korea (Ellen Greenberg)
by retreat participant Ellen Greenberg
Everything about September 10, 2010 was different to my everyday routine. I was excited to be attending a one-day bilingual Circle of Trust Retreat for the first time in Seoul. I left behind a busy schedule of juggling being the Mum of two small children, and working in a family business, to have a whole day to just “be.” I caught an early bus to Seoul. Even as I dozed on the bus, I was aware of a lightness of being as I was temporarily set free from the roles of home and work.
The theme of the retreat, led by Terry Chadsey and the “Gardening the Teacher’s Heart” facilitator team in Korea, was “Living and Working on the Mobius Strip.” Using this relatively simple tool, we considered the interaction between their inner and outer worlds in new and profound ways.
Terry quickly made people feel at ease. At his hotel, that morning, he said that there was a conference being held on “crisis management”. He had to chuckle to himself, because, he too, was about to lead this retreat, which could also be classified as a form of “crisis management”. What could be more important than empowering our own lives through aligning our inner and outer worlds? Could we find a different way of dealing with crisis within us? Later in the retreat he quoted someone who said, “In our lives we have complex outer and inner landscapes and seldom feel at peace in either.” This is the reality of many people’s lives.
Terry then introduced touchstones of the Circle of Trust approach. They all seemed to make perfect sense, and yet they go to the heart of what makes it so difficult to connect the inner world of the individual with their workplace and family roles. Mostly we are in too much of a hurry, or too busy, to bother with any one of them, let alone the eight in combination. Imagine “making space for silence” or “not trying to fix somebody’s problem” or “choosing for yourself when and how to participate” in the middle of a busy work day. The touchstones were an indication that this day was going to be different.
Praise the Season of Darkness
by Circle of Trust Facilitator Karen Erlichman, LCSW
The seasons of my Philadelphia childhood live in my bones. In Northern California, where I live now, winter is very different than the demanding East Coast winters of my cellular memory. Here, the vague turning of the seasons from fog to rain requires a deeper commitment to praise. Without the indisputable visual reminders of fall colors or snow’s stunning arrival, I have to dig a little deeper to find my praise, to coax my soul out of hibernation.
During my Circle of Trust Facilitator Preparation, I would arrive at the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo to greet the season with the unabashed joy of a gleeful toddler. Winter in Kalamazoo called my seasonal childhood memories out of hiding with no mercy. I would touch the snow, eat the snow, listen to the snow, watch it fall through the enormous windows of our meeting room.
In fact, what was supposed to be our fall retreat session ended up being Winter, Part One. So much for autumn metaphors. Winter's unexpected early arrival was so magnificent, it did not occur to me NOT to praise its precocious arrival. Wonder and awe can distract me just as easily as disappointment.
"Praise wet snow falling early," writes poet Denise Levertov in her poem of the same name. Praise the long dark nights of winter, when the sacred holidays of light and miracles take place. Darkness is often associated with negative emotions, or suffering; however, when the winter sky is blue-black, it also offers a royal landscape for the stars to shine. Too much light and things will glare, burn, dry up. Too much darkness and there is withering, lifelessness.
In my private psychotherapy practice, there are cycles of emptiness and times of fullness, not only for my clients but for me as well. There are seasons of abundance punctuated by times when business is slow, quiet, even scarce. I have also come to rely on those dry seasons of darkness as times for spaciousness, rest and reflection. Desiccating is also defined as a process of preservation by removing moisture; even in dryness there is life.
Websites and Twitters and Blogs, Oh My!
by Circle of Trust® Facilitator Sharlene Voogd Cochrane
I have to admit I have had mixed feelings about teaching online, or visiting websites -- even the Center's website -- as often as I could. My complaints have been clear: I spend too much time at the computer! I need physical activity, not more seat-time! Online there are too many, never-ending expectations. However, I’m beginning to change my tune, and it started when I facilitated a Courage to Teach Institute this past summer.
The Institute, subtitled “Sustaining Professional Practice,” was a weeklong experience for teachers and/or graduate students, through Lesley University. The week included retreat days, clearness committees, and stepping back from our experiences to understand the principles and practices of a Circle of Trust. Participants were invited to set personal intentions around how they could move this experience into their lives, in and out of the classroom.
Fifteen teachers enrolled, from as far away as Illinois, Delaware, and Georgia, as well as Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and their teaching ranged from kindergarten to college. There was diversity in age, gender, sexual orientation, region, religion, and ethnicity. It was a typical, wonderful, Courage group.
We met in a Lesley classroom, July 6-10, from 9-4 each day. Required reading included Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach and A Hidden Wholeness, and one book of choice from the course reading list. People wanting PDP’s (the Massachusetts acronym for “Professional Development Points,”) completed a reflection paper, based on their journals, readings, and experiences. Those receiving graduate credit also had a longer research paper to complete within the month following the class.
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