Words of EnCOURAGEment #20 Fall 2012

We’re all in this together

by Terry Chadsey, Executive Director

I write less than a week before the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election. Yet our news is dominated by the unprecedented damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast, which also left death and destruction for our neighbors across the Caribbean. The greatest cost of such a natural disaster is, of course, the death of loved ones. I wake up each morning grateful that my family is safe, I have a warm and dry home and plenty of food and water when so many are suddenly or chronically without.

What dominates the news, however, is the rampant destruction of the infrastructure upon which we all depend–roads and bridges, electric power, water systems, train tracks and tunnels. Repair in the U.S. alone will cost tens of billions of dollars. Ironically, many Americans have said that Sandy has given us a much-needed respite from the frantic last days of presidential politics.

There’s truth in that. I know I’m weary of the relentless demonization and attack that seems to characterize this election at every level in every community across the political spectrum and all carried by a flood of money at levels never before seen. What concerns me is the damage and destruction this storm has wrought on the political infrastructure upon which we all depend–our capacity to disagree over substantive issues and learn in the process, our interest in being in relationship with those who view the world differently than we do, our assumption that, agree or not, we are all in this together, and our attention to nurturing communities that foster dialogue across difference in our neighborhoods, our schools, and our work places.

Natural devastation can bring out the best in people as we reach out to help those around us. This week our founders, Parker J. Palmer and Marcy Jackson, are leading a program for 30 emerging young leaders from across the New York area. All of these people are doing heavy lifting on behalf of their communities and professions. The event is outside the city, and at first we wondered if we’d have to cancel, but then a remarkable thing happened. The participants began organizing themselves to support each other to travel together to the event. I suspect they will build a powerful community among themselves before the program ever begins. This is but one example of how difficulty brings us together and can lead us to strengthen the infrastructure upon which we depend.

No matter what happens in the Election next Tuesday, many Americans will breathe a sigh of relief that the storm of national politics has passed. Yet in its wake this year, much of the political infrastructure upon which Democracy depends lies in shambles. I hope you will join us and so many neighbors in reaching out and making the needed repairs, acting on the core belief that “we’re all in this together,” the first habit of the heart that sustains democracy as described by Parker.

As you will see in this issue of Words of EnCOURAGEment, Courage & Renewal programs strengthen each participant’s capacity to access their own clarity, integrity and courage. We are touching the lives of leaders, clergy, educators, health care workers, and people just like you.

It’s Annual Campaign time when we invite you to join hands and hearts with us through your financial support. Your gift to the Center for Courage & Renewal helps us bring programs to more people in more communities. Please make your gift today.

With much gratitude,

Life in the Company of Strangers: Ways to “Go Public”

by Parker J. Palmer

A vital public life is key to democracy: the public realm is where we learn that despite our many differences, we really are in this together. It is where we have a chance to rub elbows with diversity and realize that “the other” not only lacks horns but may enrich and enliven us, that some kinds of tensions are educative, energizing, and even entertaining rather than threatening.

Equally important, public life gives us a chance to size up what is happening in our world, speak our minds about it, hear other speak theirs, and perhaps join some of them in taking steps toward the kind of world we want.

Today, however, American public life is on the wane. Overly focused on family and friends, we are detached from—and sometimes actively afraid of—the strangers who are our fellow citizens. As Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out, when our world is reduced to our kin and a few kindred spirits, we have lost our country.

In the midst of our increasingly privatized lives, we can still “go public” if we choose to do so. Here are some possibilities:

• We could drive to work with more than one person to a car, a common practice during times when gas is either rationed or prohibitively priced.
• We could get out of the house more often for something other than going to work or the mall. We could attend political rallies, buy food at the local farmer’s market, visit the public library, go to a concert. Once we start experimenting with public options for meeting certain needs and pursuing certain interests, we might learn that they have life-giving features that trump their “inconvenience.”
• When we are in public places such as the mall or a coffee shop, we can be there unplugged and unwired. We might find that sometimes the public life is as entertaining, even as musical, as what comes to us through ear buds.
• We could meet people outside our small circle of family and friends by volunteering for visitations an hour or two a week at a nearby hospital, joining a voluntary association, or simply taking time to ask neighbors and colleagues how they are. As we do so, we might discover that we are revitalizing our own lives as well as helping revitalize the public life.

In all of these everyday venues, we settle into the fact that we are part of a large, diverse and sometimes problematic but often fascinating motley crew. If we use our opportunities in these settings wisely and well, we develop habits of the heart that not only make us better citizens but help us feel more at home on the face of the earth.

News from Parker’s World:

• The Sun magazine’s November issue on politics offers an extensive interview with Parker J. Palmer. The first part of the interview will appear online on The Sun‘s website on or around Nov. 1. To read the full interview, we encourage you to purchase a print copy. Find a nearby store that carries the magazine or submit a purchase inquiry.
• Wisconsin Public Radio on Friday, October 19, featured an hour-long conversation with Parker J. Palmer and Veronica Rueckert. With our economy in the doldrums, the frenetic onslaught of the election season, and the unending demands of home and work life, it seems difficult to remain true to ourselves. Veronica asks Parker Palmer how we can retain our integrity in a fragmented world. Listen to or download the file at the WPR website.
• Healing the Heart of Democracy is now out as an audio book from Audible.com
  

  ---

At Home in the Academy for Leaders

by Pat Thompson

Challenging assignments, significant supervisors and hardships. The Center for Creative Leadership ranks these three sources of experience as critical to developing effective leaders. It is, however, the failure to learn from experience – missing the meaning – that usually results in the derailment of careers.

It wasn’t until I participated in my first Circle of Trust® retreat in 2004 that I found the time, space and resources to listen to my own stories and to learn their lessons.  Several retreats later, the Circle of Trust approach has moved from the edges to the center of my work. But adopting its principles as my own has been much easier than turning practices into habits.  What I’ve needed is a place where I can continue to integrate what I know and what I do daily as a leader within my field.

Enter the Center for Courage & Renewal’s Academy for Leaders – a new six-month program for Circle of Trust program alumni like me.

The Academy’s first cohort is made up of 32 people from different professions and places in the U.S. and Canada.  Guided by skilled facilitators, we returned to the familiar, slower rhythms of a four-day retreat last April and will gather again at the end of October. In between, small groups of five or six (known as Peer Learning Circles) have been meeting monthly in two-hour teleconferences.

The Academy has been designed to serve each of us where we are in our lives and work – a design which feels firm enough to support collective needs and flexible enough to enable independent inquiries. Here are some of the ways it’s been serving me so far:

Time for what matters. The Academy has been helping me clarify my sense of vocation in a time of personal and professional transition. Both my husband and I are at different stages in our careers but we’re currently discerning what’s next and carrying our own questions. I’ve taken mine into the Academy where they’ve been held respectfully and where answers have emerged at a manageable pace with the help of carefully chosen poems and texts. The Academy has awakened in me the desire to create my own tool (akin to the Hippocratic Oath) for keeping role and soul connected, and to use it to start a conversation with others in my field.

A supportive community of peers. I find our Circle to be a bottomless source of evocative questions, generous with its resources and advice, yet mindful of the boundary between encouraging and instructing. By risking honest communication, its members are showing me how to sustain authentic and trustworthy collegial relationships. The Academy has been for me as much about unplugging, exhaling and relaxing in good company as it has been about honing skills and making plans. Even via telephone, I’ve been able to release the stresses of the day in my Circle’s presence. It’s been good to discover the depth of listening possible at a distance with trusted colleagues and a well-prepared facilitator. I now know first-hand the benefits of engaging in reflective practice while on the job not only on retreat.

Hospitable, beautiful and restorative space. The Academy provides an opportunity to reconnect with the natural environment and to notice the cycles, seasons and patterns of renewal in our world, workplaces and selves. IslandWood is the campus for the program’s two retreats. It’s an innovative outdoor learning center on Bainbridge Island in Washington State where deer sightings are common and the peace is broken only by the sounds of birdcalls. From the moment I stepped on to the ferry bound for Bainbridge, nature ministered to me. I returned home revived, lament having been replaced by praise.

Truth is, I don’t think of the Academy’s take-aways as only a set of reassuring tools, tips and techniques.  I value most the mindful moments to which I can return in an instant. The light breaking through a canopy of ancient trees and moving across the ocean’s surface. “Familiar strangers” deep in conversation, cross-legged on the grass or walking and talking in pairs along unfamiliar, unpaved paths. I say to myself, in the words Mary Oliver has given me for such liminal experiences, “Oh, good scholar, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these?”

This is the kind of Academy in which I feel at home. A school where experience is turned into meaningful knowledge for action.  Like the olive grove described in Plato’s earliest writings, this school is a place where each life is examined and we look to each other for big questions, not easy answers. In this way, the Academy is a school for leaders who seek what Aristotle called phronesis or practical wisdom. What we learn comes from the alchemy of our stories. We also learn how to create and hold safe space for others to transmute their own experience into gold.

The world hungers for what makes Courage & Renewal alumni deeply glad. My time in the Academy has prepared me to lead more fully from this intersection. I’m also now better equipped to call myself back to what matters most when necessary. What I’ve experienced is a trustworthy approach to professional development that brings more of us – perhaps even you – back to the true meaning of leadership in a world at risk of forgetting.

Join the next Academy for Leaders

Applications are now being accepted for the 2013 Academy for Leaders. Program dates are:

• Residential Retreat I: April 25-28, 2013
• May-September: Ongoing implementation supported by Peer Learning Circle teleconferences
• Residential Retreat II: October 17-20, 2013

Download the full program description for details.

Register now at the Early Bird rate and save $400. The Early Bird rates is available through January 15, 2013.

2nd Annual Healthcare Institute: April 24-27, 2013

It’s hard to imagine a more challenging time in health care. This is a time of unprecedented change.  From every direction come fundamental questions about the future state of medicine. As health care leaders and professionals, we are asked to guide our organizations with courage, resilience and wisdom. It’s a challenge that requires us to bring to bear not only our skills, but our full human capacity in every role and at every level.

We believe that many of the greatest improvements in health care in the crucial years ahead will come from trustworthy, passionate and respectful leaders who create engagement and a shared sense of purpose in the organizations in which they work. Integrity in Health Care will bring together just such a group of individuals, those who serve in traditional leadership roles and those who lead informally, and provide them with an ideal setting for learning, renewal and support.

Our 2nd Annual Health Care Institute: Integrity in Healthcare: The Courage to Lead in a Changing Landscape will take place April 24-27, 2013, Chaska, Minnesota near Minneapolis.

Last year’s Institute helped launch a community of health care professionals dedicated to leading their organizations with courage, resilience and wisdom. We look forward to growing that community through a program that will foster a dynamic learning community in which all participants can identify focused ways to apply new tools of leadership in their current work settings. And we will also offer generous time for individual reflection and renewal that are a cornerstone of the work of the Center for Courage & Renewal.

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the Essential Areas and Policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education through the joint sponsorship of the Minnesota Medical Association and the Center for Courage & Renewal. The Minnesota Medical Association (MMA) is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The Minnesota Medical Association designates this live activity for a maximum of 22.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)TM. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Please join us in Minnesota this spring. Save $100 if you register by January 15, 2013 to get the Early Bird Rate of $1795 (includes tuition, lodging and all meals). For more information, please contact Lisa Sankowski at lisa@couragerenewal.org or 781-283-2861.

A Geography of Grace: Courage & Renewal for Congregational Life

There is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul;
we search for its outlines all of our lives. – Josephine Hart

How would you describe the geography of your soul? Where are the vista points? How about the desert places – those landscapes requiring hope and persistence?

In August, twenty-two clergy and lay leaders gathered at a retreat center on the wooded slopes of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County, California, to explore the landscapes of their souls and learn how to lead others in such an exploration.

Participants gave voice to the impact of their Courage & Renewal experiences:

“There is something of God at work in me that I was not aware of. This event brought that awareness.”

“This was “practice time” for talking about my faith, God’s presence in my life and struggles with a calling for a possible change of direction in ministry.”

“Our Circle of Trust has been a part of my spiritual self care, a place to quiet my mind from the pressures of seminary life and find relationship with self and others.”

Courage & Renewal facilitators Caryl Hurtig Casbon and Faye Orton Synder, both ordained ministers, developed A Geography of Grace: A Four Day Courage & Renewal Institute for Alumni. In the introduction to the 12-session guide, Caryl and Faye explain their use of geographical metaphors:

The metaphors from geography and nature offer images and archetypes which speak deeply of the inner life, and thus create a worthy map of the terrain one crosses when working together in a Circle of Trust.

In addition to the focus on geography, the other theme for this program naturally emerged as we began to write this guide, the theme of grace…Just as grace is abundant and often present, the landscape of the soul and her gifts are always available to be received and treasured, if we only stay receptive.

Over the course of the four-day learning retreat, participants first reviewed the Circle of Trust Approach they had experienced in previous programs. These principle and practices are critical in creating the kind of safe space necessary for spiritual formation. Then came the fun, and as some said, scary part…practicing leadership of the reflective sessions.

Over four 2½ hour sessions, pairs of participants had an opportunity to practice facilitating sessions in small groups. The universal response was that the practice session was both invaluable, and humbling as participants realized the skill required to create “soul-safe” space.

“Even the redwoods and the mountain participated deeply by “breathing” our reflections and providing sturdy pastoral grace to support each of us,” said facilitator Faye Orton Synder. “The house that held us was over 100 years old and in many ways we experienced what it meant to be a community alive and vibrant with the ancestors of the house.”

The Center for Courage & Renewal will be offering this program for alumni again in the near future. For information on this and other programs and resources for clergy and people of faith, please visit our program website for Clergy and People of Faith.

Also on our website for Clergy and People of Faith!

• NEW Monthly Resource Roundup with video, books, inspiration, and more!
• Special summer retreat and conference with Parker J. Palmer in August 2013 in Wisconsin

Circles of Trust Examined In-Depth in Academic Journal

Transformational teaching and learning are possible only within a space that encourages participation of the whole self—our hopes and dreams, as well as our doubts and fears. Such teaching and learning require a space where vulnerability is valued and not knowing is embraced as an essential step on the learning journey.

An academic journal devoted its summer issue to exploring a variety of educational initiatives that incorporate the principles and practices of the Circle of Trust approach as developed by Parker J. Palmer and the Center for Courage & Renewal.

New Directions for Teaching and Learning – Special Issue: Teaching and Learning from the Inside Out: Revitalizing Ourselves and Our Institutions, Number 130, Summer 2012 (Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company, 2012) was edited by Courage & Renewal facilitator Margaret Golden, Ed.D., associate professor and director of The Courage to Teach Initiative in the School of Education and Counseling Psychology at Dominican University of California.

“Even though most in higher education started with feelings of hope and passion for their subject and for teaching, these feelings can sometimes be lost over time as political battles, accreditation issues, state mandates, and problems with people take center stage,” writes editor-in-chief Catherine M. Wehlburg . “This volume of NDTL helps to remind us that the connections we have with ourselves, our students, our colleagues, and our disciplines are truly important and meaningful–and should take precedence over these other smaller issues.”

The journal explores the transformative power of engaging in a Circle of Trust and the research being done by the facilitators of this work.

• The Principles and Practices of the Circle of Trust Approach, written by Terry Chadsey, executive director, and Marcy Jackson, cofounder of the Center for Courage & Renewal, describes how the approach provides a structure for faculty and students to engage in teaching and learning that awaken both heart and mind.
• Bonnie Allen and Estrus Tucker describe how a community-in-recovery and democracy-building project in Mississippi offers a new approach to social change, one that addresses the root of human suffering.
• Paul Michalec and Gary Bower tell the story of creating an intentional community at the University of Denver, where faculty and staff embrace the tensions inherent in academia to remain vibrant members of their learning community.
• Judy Goodell, who teaches in the marriage and family therapy program at the University of San Francisco, describes the principles and practices as a “hand in glove fit” with the counselor training program at Portland State University.
• Karen Nordhoff examines how these principles and practices help aspiring teachers appreciate the ambiguity inherent in teaching by developing an understanding of life’s paradoxes.
• Similarly, Michael Poutiatine and Dennis Conners analyze the role of identity development in a transformational leadership program at Gonzaga University.
• Applying the Circles of Trust pedagogy to a professional development program for K-12 educators in Texas, Twyla Miranda considers its impact on school culture and teachers’ commitment to student achievement.
• Janet Smith evaluates the impact of the Circles of Trust approach on the personal and professional lives of participants from a variety of programs.
• Chris Love uses the novel approach of creating found poems from participant interview to evaluate a distance-learning pilot program for pastors in Montana.

Although the context for each of these initiatives varies greatly, each consciously seeks to create a space that takes seriously what is held in the human heart, a space necessary for real transformation. You can order the journal or purchase individual PDF chapters at the Wiley & Sons website.

Send Us Your Poetry for a New Book: Teaching from the Heart

Educators! There is still time — by February 1, 2013 — to submit a piece of writing for a book tentatively titled: Teaching from the Heart: Poetry That Speaks to the Courage to Teach.

This book is modeled on our award-winning and best-selling book: Teaching with Fire: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Teach (2003). Get details, including how to submit a piece of writing.

Featured Retreats

Journey Toward an Undivided Life

ALSO see event calendar

The post Words of EnCOURAGEment #20 Fall 2012 appeared first on Center for Courage & Renewal.