CHAPTER
5
Accountability Through Agreements, Practices, and Principles
In any group process, there are skills for participating and norms for functioning. In circle work, the skills are the practices and the agreements are the norms for operating. The principles provide the energetic movement in an all-leader system.
A California middle school (teaching grades 6 through 8) had been experiencing increasing problems with student attitude and vandalism. Near the end of one school year, the principal invited a group of parents, teachers, and students to meet over the summer months to address these issues. The group pared down hours of conversation into three stated agreements, intended to reinforce the kind of environment that would foster mutual trust and respect:
Take care of yourself.
Take care of each other.
Take care of this place.
Before the start of the next school year, a group of parents and students created banners and signs with these three phrases and placed them prominently around the school: on the gymnasium wall, on the doors of classrooms, at the entrances to the bathrooms, and so on. The phrases were referred to in the classroom, both by teachers calling students back to order and by students teasing each other into better behavior.
One rainy October day, the first fire drill of the year occurred. Several hundred middle school children and their teachers stood outside in the muddy soccer field waiting for the all-clear bell. Once the bell had rung and everyone filed back into the building, the principal walked the grounds making sure everyone was inside. He was the last to enter, and when he came in the main entrance, hundreds of pairs of muddy sneakers and flip-flops were lined up against the wall. The principal stopped, nodded to himself, and thought, “Hey, we’re getting it. …”
We heard this story sometime in 2003 and have told it dozens of times since because it so clearly illustrates the power of articulated agreements to significantly shift a group into cohesive self-actualizing behavior. The agreements, practices, and principles of circle components allow people to self-organize toward shared purpose and common good and free a group to become a better version of itself.
Agreements
Cooperation is far easier and more effective than enforcement. In any gathering of people, there are social agreements in play that allow participants to function together through understanding what constitutes respectful interaction. In many social and business settings, these norms are assumed and unarticulated. Assumption works just fine a lot of the time (like knowing which side of the road to drive on) and creates misunderstanding and social disaster when it doesn’t work (like the terror of driving the wrong way down a one-way street, hoping you and everyone else can readjust without crashing). People are observant, and we’ve had a lot of practice being socialized. Assumption of agreements will usually carry people through a two-hour meeting, and social norms accumulate in any organizational or social setting until most folks sort of “get it” about how to behave and belong.
When people come into circle, where everything is designed to enhance clear communication, interaction is strengthened and stabilized by crafting articulated agreements for being together. Naming agreements, claiming what is in play in the social field, is a significant part of what shifts us into “held space” and a sense of interpersonal container.
The first evening of a women’s leadership retreat on the Oregon coast, we were sitting around the dining table at the end of a delicious meal with eight high-powered women from Seattle and Portland. The faint sounds of surf in the background, candlelight, and the remains of a well-catered dinner provided the ambiance for a rich and enjoyable conversation of current projects and politics. When Ann left to build a fire in the fireplace in the adjoining living room and then rearranged the upholstered chairs into a circle around the hearth and Christina suggested that the group bring coffee and tea and come to the circle, the women were somewhat surprised. Once gathered, we rang the bell, recited the PeerSpirit agreements, and offered a question for check-in: “What is the most significant thing you could receive from the next two days together?” We introduced use of a talking piece so that the women could speak one at a time. We brought one of the dining candles to the coffee table positioned between us. The conversation deepened into council—a pattern of listening and speaking.
The next morning at breakfast, one woman said to the group, “When we moved from the table to the fire last night, I couldn’t imagine why Ann and Christina were breaking up such a good time. I was thinking—wow, this conversation is so energizing, these women are so amazing, I could go home right now. Then, what happened in the living room with those agreements in place and that talking piece thing—I’ve never experienced myself and a new group going to the depths we touched last night. What are we going to do today?” Everyone laughed. We headed for the beach—to start by looking for the patterns in nature that sustain us.
Over the years, we have refined four generic PeerSpirit circle agreements to support the skeletal structure of overall circle process. In the first moments of a new circle, or in a brief or onetime meeting, we offer our PeerSpirit agreements so that the meeting can proceed quickly. If the group goes on from this introductory session, we encourage members to take the time to discuss these agreements and make the language their own. Agreements are created in response to the question “What do we need in order to be fully present to each other, to offer and receive contributions, and to fulfill our intention?”
PeerSpirit Circle Agreements
1. Personal material shared in the circle is confidential. Confidentiality invites authentic speaking and allows people to speak their stories with the assurance they will not be gossiped about beyond the circle group. It is worth spending time considering what parameters of confidentiality fit a group and ensuring that all participants share a definition of what is meant and expected of them regarding this issue. A person’s story belongs to that person alone; it’s not for anyone else to dispense, sell, or give away without permission, any more than we’d take a ring off the person’s finger.
Conversation about confidentiality has the potential to create a profound sense of confidence within a group. It clarifies how we will be listened to and how we are being counted on to listen to others. This first agreement creates a boundary that builds a sense of community inside which personal sharing can occur and ensures that when someone takes a risk, the person understands how his or her story and other sensitive information will be held within the social container of this circle. Confidentiality is not one size fits all. We have helped a group of therapists design a circle where they could share the life stories they were hearing in their sessions for the purpose of peer supervision and where strict confidentiality had to be the highest-held norm. We have called the circle at public meetings where members of the press were present and we had to make sure everyone understood they were essentially speaking in public—that is, confidentiality could not apply.
2. We listen to each other with curiosity and compassion, withholding judgment. Curiosity allows people to listen and speak without having to be in total agreement with each other. This agreement invites circle members to use the center as a place to deposit stories, opinions, thoughts, and feelings. When people speak energetically to the neutral point of the circle’s center, it reminds everyone of the power of this space, which belongs to everyone and to no one. Because the center creates a third point between people engaged in social interaction, we can lean in with curiosity about differences, ask questions, explore issues, discern what fits in the learning of the group—and suspend judgment, or at least notice our judgments and set that stream of thought aside so we can listen more fully.
Judgment is a form of mental defense, a way of guaranteeing that one’s opinion or worldview is not about to be swayed. When curiosity replaces judgment as a thought process, it invites consideration of another’s opinion and worldview. Curiosity and judgment cannot function simultaneously in the mind. When people choose curiosity, diverse opinion and life experience can be honored while people continue to listen to each other and seek their deeper wisdom. And through this practice, our compassion for ourselves and each other grows. Changing our hearts and minds in response to our deeper understanding of one another keeps the circle vibrant and creative. Our diverse voices become like spokes of a wheel attaching to the hub of our common purpose.
3. We ask for what we need and offer what we can. Generally, if a request fits the task and orientation of the group, someone in the circle will respond to help carry it forward. If a request doesn’t fit task and orientation, there will be a lack of interest. Circle members learn to negotiate what they can and cannot do and to hold intention for the direction of group energy.
This agreement also serves as a kind of balancing rod. If a few people end up carrying an inordinate level of responsibility for the circle’s work or process and don’t receive support from the whole, this agreement provides a way to address nonparticipation with neutral language. The group, or the guardian, can call for a conversation about shared responsibility and rotating leadership. Such conversations have the potential to clear up resentments before they erode the circle’s cohesiveness.
4. From time to time, we pause to regather our thoughts or focus. This is the agreement that activates and acknowledges the role of guardian to create pauses on behalf of the group. When the guardian rings a bell, all action stops, at least for ten to fifteen seconds. During a pause, each person takes a breath, focuses on the center, and waits to find out what is going on. The guardian rings the bell a second time to release the silence and then briefly explains why he or she called the pause—perhaps for a challenge, perhaps for an insight, perhaps simply for a break.
Putting the pause into the agreements grants the role of the guardian an acknowledged authority to stop action. The pause becomes part of the circle’s self-governance. The structural acceptance of intervention is a great teacher in circle process. Anyone in the circle can call for a pause, so guardianship is diffused and responsibility for the quality of group experience sits in the rim in profound ways.
The Wisdom Circle Agreements
Drafting circle agreements is a powerful task that can challenge a group to examine many underlying assumptions and social patterns. In 2006, when the Wheaton Franciscan sisters decided to embark on a yearlong experience of circle they named the Wisdom Circle, one of their first tasks was to designate a small group to draft their agreements. As is true in many orders of Catholic religious women in North America, they knew they needed a process to hold delicate conversations and hard decisions as their community faced declining enrollment and advancing age. They took seriously the writing of agreements, which the whole group eventually discussed and approved. The agreements they crafted are shown in Exhibit 5.1:
Wisdom Circle Agreements |
|
|
|
|
|
The Wisdom Circle agreements clearly contain some of the elements of the PeerSpirit generic circle agreements, yet the Wheaton Franciscans’ wording reflects their own social culture and specific needs. These agreements were artfully typed on large paper, read aloud at the beginning of each Wisdom Circle gathering, and placed in the center to remind all participants of the self-governance they had chosen. Agreeing on their agreements was an elaborate process that took several hours and included considerable conversation council followed by a thumbs vote and a round of singing sixteen alleluias.
While this story focuses on religious women, we have noticed time and again that organizational issues are very similar and that in other settings, we wished we could suggest a round of “sixteen alleluias” when an administrative team or association board had reached clear guidance because the sense of satisfaction felt the same. The gift that the Wheaton Franciscans gave to us was the opportunity to return with such consistency over the period of our consultancy, to observe their process, to coach the circle form and watch its evolution and integration into their collective life.
One of the benefits of taking time upfront to craft agreements is that it allows some of the shadow issues of a group to come forward early on. By shadow (discussed in greater detail in Chapter 9), we mean those things that have not been previously discussed or ways that people have accommodated to one another that produce tension. Sometimes this is referred to as the “undiscussables”: asking, “What topics are off limits in this organization? Family? Community setting?” opens up layers of dialogue. For example, the sisters questioned themselves deeply about the meaning of confidentiality and how to honor each other’s stories without creating a sense of “secret meetings” that separated those present (generally every member who felt she had the physical and mental stamina to join the conversation) from more frail elder sisters who held an equal stake in the outcome. The conversation on confidentiality brought forward several issues and clarified intention for the Wisdom Circle. The sisters decided to maintain confidentiality for personal stories and to share the progress of their topical conversations with older vowed members and with covenant members (laypeople who are woven into the spiritual life of the community). They also promised that decisions would not be made in the Wisdom Circle without calling the whole community into session. This led to further clarifying of the intention of the Wisdom Circle as an experience of deepening community bonds and coming to know one another again after decades of service and living in small groups. Their experience was chronicled in their quarterly newsletter. Needed topics raised in the Wisdom Circle were then brought to the whole community at semiannual gatherings, such as the one pictured in Figure 5.1. And as confidence in their capacity for circle leadership grew, they hosted circle experiences for the elder sisters and covenant members. All this stemmed from the original conversations on agreements.
FIGURE 5.1
Agreements remain constant while leadership rotates. They become the core expression of a circle’s self-governance, a sort of constitution designed to support the circle’s intention and the ability of every member to contribute to that intention.
The Practices of Circle
Conversation of any kind, from casual socializing to structured dialogue, requires skill. In PeerSpirit Circle Process, we articulate three practices that strengthen verbal interaction. These practices are interwoven: it is much easier to do one of them when the other two are activated. At the beginning of a round of council, the host or guardian might recite the practices as a start-point and say, “We call our awareness to the gifts that come from attentive listening, intentional speaking, and contributing to the well-being of the group.”
Attentive Listening
Attentive listening is the ability to focus clearly on what is being said by someone else. This means that we listen when someone else is speaking and avoid withdrawing into our own thought process to prepare agreement or rebuttal. We are not searching through our memory archives for a story of our own. In large or complex circles, such as the Wheaton Franciscan Wisdom Circle, it was very helpful for each sister to have a notebook on her lap so she could jot down thoughts for later reflection or reference without being distracted from listening. Their long talking piece councils could take several hours and include several breaks.
Attentive listening is a donation of energy to others that is sustained by a focus on the center. Attentive listening combines thought and empathy: the mind seeks comprehension while the heart seeks connection. The art of bearing witness to other people’s stories and receiving others’ thoughts and questions requires the kind of deep listening for which the circle is well suited. Listening in circle can transcend the cognitive and become a kind of mystical experience. We have sat in circles where people spoke in different languages, making cognitive comprehension impossible, and yet a profound essence of understanding emerged.
During a kayaking trip we guided among the Greek isles, we were befriended by an elder Greek fisherman who joined our evening campfires. Trip participants came from five countries and used English as our common language. And even though he couldn’t speak English, Barba Mitsos sat thoughtfully through our evening circles. When the talking piece came to him, our Greek guide would translate his contribution. We were not sure what he understood of our stories, but we welcomed his help and his boat as we made our way through the week. On the last night of camping, Barba Mitsos said, through a translator, “You are good people. Thank you for coming to my olive grove. When you go home to your countries, tell your people of this place and its good people.” Attentive listening invites a tenderness that can shift a circle’s comprehension of its purpose and identity.
Intentional Speaking
Intentional speaking is the ability to contribute stories and information that have heart and meaning or relevance to the situation at hand. This ability arises out of the patience of waiting and watching for the moment when we know precisely what to say. We may feel a quickening of the pulse that insists we offer a certain thought, a sense of being moved to speak. When we are listening attentively, we base what we choose to say on a sense of receptivity alive in the group.
Timing is more transparent in circle process. In Chapter 4, when Frank begins to share the story of his schizophrenic son, he has established relationships in the group, and the moment offers him a context for fitting into the narrative that is occurring. If he chooses to step into his own readiness to share his story, he will find that he has support among his colleagues. There is alignment between his willingness to expose a vulnerable story and the group’s capacity to respond in helpful ways.
As with listening, sometimes speaking can transcend the cognitive and take on a mystical quality. A number of years ago, we were privileged to offer a brief circle experience to a group of profoundly handicapped young adults and their caregivers. Two dozen of us were gathered in a classroom at a community college—one of several sessions that people could choose during a conference exploring issues of giving and receiving care. Shortly after we began our session, the school band began practicing in the courtyard, and we had to huddle close to hear one another. Our welcome and explanation were brief. We passed a talking piece, a small, easy-to-hold stuffed animal, inviting a response to the question “What is one thing you are learning at this conference?” The responses ranged from thoughtful—“I’ve never spent time with my client in a social setting before, and I’m enjoying this”—to humorous—“I’m distracted by the band—anybody want to dance?”
When we got three-quarters of the way around the circle, the talking piece was handed to a woman with severe cerebral palsy. She used a talking board to express herself and rarely attempted verbal speech. She held the talking piece a long time, rocking back and forth as if gathering the energy of all of our attentiveness. Finally, she stuttered, “I’mmmm hhhere,” and beamed with pride that she had been able to contribute in her own voice. The band had stopped playing. The room was utterly silent. For a moment, our ordinary classroom had become a sacred space in which we had been able to receive what she so intentionally offered.
Attending to the Well-Being of the Group
Attending to the well-being of the group is the ability to consider the impact of our words and actions before, during, and after we speak. This ability arises from being present to the subtleties of circle practice. The first thing we notice in this environment is how sitting in circle listening to others activates a stream of thoughts, stories, and ways we want to respond to what is happening. The second thing we notice is that we can’t respond to all these impulses—and that we need a kind of impulse control if we are to remain thoughtful participants. This sets off an internal process of conscious self-monitoring: we find ourselves running a mental checklist through our impulses before we contribute.
Agreements, principles, and practices corral some of our individual impulsiveness—like a tiny internalized time lag that allows for brief but necessary reflection: “Hey, do you really want to say that? Remember that stuff about tending to the well-being of the group? Remember that this is confidential? Maybe listening and not interrupting at this moment is the best way to show leadership right now.” We practice self-monitoring by looking at the content of our contribution in relationship to the larger conversation, sensing the readiness in ourselves and in the group, and understanding our own motivations or hopes for sharing our comment. Self-monitoring questions might include the following:
Is this an appropriate moment of receptivity?
Am I speaking from competition or collaboration?
How does what I want to do or say benefit where the group is?
How do I phrase my contribution in neutral language and still speak my “truth”?
Can I say this with integrity without disturbing the integrity of the group?
When attending to the well-being of the group, there is an important difference between self-monitoring and self-censoring. The infrastructure of the circle helps us in this discernment. If we’re in a talking piece round, we know when our turn will come; we can hold the talking piece in a few seconds of silence and gather our thoughts; we can speak to the center and draw from the intention represented there. We can take the time necessary to say what we need in the manner most likely to be heard.
One weekend, Ann was part of a large training that was running late into the evening hours. The circle hosts had designed the closing round of the day as a talking piece council that invited each person to share an insight story from his or her experiences in the session so far. No suggestion had been made as to how long or short the stories should be. Ann was seated about halfway around the circle—tired and ready to go to bed. As the talking piece was making its way toward her, people’s contributions were getting longer and longer. In her mind, Ann was having a little battle between her physical self, who was irritated and ready to sleep, and her circle host self, who knew the importance of allowing each person to speak. She vacillated between thoughts of sharing a short, thoughtful story of her own and simply speaking the truth of her exhaustion. When the piece finally came to her, she realized the importance of acknowledging the hour and her own stamina. “It has been a good day,” she said, “and I am not a late-night person. I am doing my best to listen to each one of you and would greatly appreciate it if our comments tonight could be succinct. I’ll share my story in the morning session when I can be more present.” No one took offense, the second half of the circle went more quickly, and everyone had the opportunity to be heard.
One lesson from this moment is a reminder that in circle, impulses to speak something are often collective as well as personal. Ann named an experience shared by others, and by doing so in neutral language, people could ally themselves with her and admit their own tiredness while still choosing whether or not to tell their own stories. Listening, speaking, attending is the practice of wholeness. When we listen to the wholeness of the group, we know we must acknowledge, listen to, and speak from our inner truth even when it initially appears to contradict conformity in the group.
Three Principles
Amid the Components of Circle, three principles animate PeerSpirit Circle Process. Back in the early 1990s when we were articulating PeerSpirit Circle Process, we asked each other questions like “Who’s the leader?” “How does power show up?” “How might it be shared?” “Who takes responsibility for what happens?” “How do we help each other see what needs to be done when we’ve been trained to segment responsibilities?” “Who decides when there is conflict or difference?” “What exists in circle that is greater than any one person?” “How do we name that presence?” From these questions, the clarity of the three principles emerged.
As is true for the three practices, the three principles are interwoven: when one is activated, the other two are also activated, and they work in coordination. Sometimes when introducing these principles, we almost want to use as preamble the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Every action in the circle supports these principles, and these principles support every action.
Rotating Leadership
Rotating leadership means that every person helps the circle function by assuming an increment of leadership. In PeerSpirit circling, leadership can shift moment by moment and task by task. Rotating leadership trusts that the resources to accomplish the circle’s purpose exist within the group and that the energy of leadership is active in every member.
Shared Responsibility
Shared responsibility means that every person pays attention to what needs doing or saying next and steps in to do it. In PeerSpirit circling, responsibility also shifts moment by moment and task by task. Shared responsibility is based on the trust that someone will come forward to provide what the circle needs.
Reliance on Wholeness
Reliance on wholeness means that every person places ultimate reliance in the center and holds his or her place on the rim. Through simple ritual and consistent refocusing, the center houses collective intention and reminds people that the circle consists of all who are present as well as the circle itself.
The Principles in Action
Every four years, the Wheaton Franciscans elect a new leadership team, set forth a clarified and renewed mission statement, and attend to the business of their community. As the 2008 election approached, the vowed community voted to use circle process as its governance during Chapter. Chapter in religious communities is a formal process of discerning direction and leadership. The meeting needed to be conducted with an understanding of the community’s religious life and the ecclesial dimensions of the Chapter, so Sister Brenda Peddigrew, a Sister of Mercy from Ontario, came to serve as facilitator, and we continued to coach the community’s circle process. Sister Carola Thomann, the general directress of the congregation, arrived from Rome to oversee the proceedings. They were ready to trust the three principles with the most important of their meetings.
For the Wheaton Franciscans, as for most communities of religious women, Chapter meetings are a formal governance process to which delegates are elected. Meeting participants reflect in depth on the life of the community and try to discern the direction of the next four years of province life. After lengthy conversation in the Chapter of affairs, new leadership is formally elected in the Chapter of election to guide the community in fulfilling the Chapter’s directives. Chapter is a time set apart from other work: meetings are a formal process with daily Mass, prescribed voting in the chapel, and lengthy discussions about current issues. In previous Chapter meetings, speakers had moved to the podium to address the group or a stood at a microphone stand waiting to be acknowledged by the facilitator or chairperson in order to engage in dialogue.
In the 2008 Chapter, half of the gymnasium was set in circles of six chairs around a common center, and the other half of the gym contained forty-five chairs in a gigantic circle around an exquisite center of candles and flowers and colored scarves. An outer rim of chairs invited nondelegates and lay covenant members to witness and sometimes participate. Sister Carola and two other members from Rome sat at a round table adjacent to the large circle. Though religious in tone and context, the form here is similar to stakeholder meetings or annual association meetings. There is a need for a full gathering, strategic discussion, decision, and commitment to a course of action.
The group ceremonially filed into the circle singing. There was no particular order as to who walked in first and who walked in last. Once everyone was seated, several sisters shared a prepared meditation. Leadership was rotating, responsibility was shared, and the reliance on wholeness was deeply set in place.
At lunch on the first day, Sister Carola approached us. “Are you the ones who teach this circle practice?” she asked. We nodded. “You invented this?” Christina responded, “Not exactly. People have been meeting in circles for thousands of years. We have studied the structure that resides within this very old form so it can be used in modern-day meetings.”
“And the purpose is that each woman’s voice can be heard?” she continued. We nodded again. “I think I like this. We will see if it can work all week.” As the week progressed and complex issues of finances and programs came forth, the group alternated between large circle councils and small circle conversations. We acted as guardians of the process and actually said very little. In the evenings, we met with Sister Brenda, Sister Carola, and anyone in the community who volunteered to help design the next day’s process. This was no longer a circle in training; it was a circle fully in its stride. After two years of working with the Wisdom Circle, the Wheaton Franciscans had clearly made circle process their own.
At the conclusion of the Chapter of affairs, the delegates adopted the following as their vision statement for the next four-year cycle:
Grounded in the Light of the Gospel and our Franciscan way of life, we deepen our commitment through contemplation and action:
To leadership in issues of justice, peace, and integrity of creation
To conscious use and sharing of resources that are faithful to our values of sustainability, solidarity, and collaboration
To live compassionately and creatively in the chaos and brokenness of the Church and the world
To grapple courageously with the challenges of the changing face of the province
To integrate the Circle Process as a respectful holding of one another and as a form of shared leadership
We face what Life presents, returning only blessing that we might be instruments of peace, transformation, hope, and healing.
Then the delegates regathered for the Chapter of election. A subgroup of sisters who had designed the election process moved into their leadership roles. Election discernment began in the chapel with meditation and prayer. Names for leadership were placed in nomination through written ballots. The results were read aloud, and then the nominees had the opportunity to speak within the circle concerning their readiness to serve. Back and forth the process went as people carefully considered what it would mean to share responsibility at the leadership level.
There is a painful history in many religious communities concerning elections, and the Wheaton Franciscans used circle process and the three practices to keep the discernment grounded in faith and trust. Every effort was made to sustain an open and respectful conversation, especially among those who were willing to serve the community as possible leaders.
When the final ballots were cast in the chapel for the new leadership team, the individuals the community had selected were formally welcomed in front of the entire membership. PeerSpirit and Sister Brenda had given Sister Carola her own guardian bells. She rang them to begin the ceremony. Each member of the new leadership team proclaimed her willingness to use the principles and practices of circle as she moved into service on behalf of the Wheaton Franciscan province.
As is true in wider society, the new leadership team, of Sister Beatrice Hernandez, Sister Margaret Grempka, Sister Jane Madejczyk, and Sister Rose Mary Pint has had to make some very difficult financial decisions as the recession of late 2008 gripped the United States and the world. As a team and as a community, they have made these decisions by both grappling with numbers and statistics and leaning into the trust that circle leadership has bestowed on them.
As we completed our consultative cycle with these women, we remembered the first time we had walked into the provincial offices at the mother-house. The central meeting room had a long oval table with a flip chart hovering at one end and a center filled with markers and sticky notes, fruit, and snacks. At the other end of the room was a circle of comfortable chairs—four for the council and one draped with a shawl and icon to represent the community, symbolically present in all the council’s dialogue and deliberations. A candle burned there, calling these women to an experience of collaborative leadership in the heart of Roman Catholic hierarchy.
Although this story comes from a religious community, we were aware many times of how universal these challenges are for people working or living together. We have applied insights from our experience with the sisters to organizational settings and articulated insights from our organizational work back to the sisters. We have helped other organizations incorporate the symbolic empty chair to represent employees or staff nurses or clients, just as the Wheaton Franciscans held this space for community members during their circles. And sometimes in the heat of a business setting, we have looked at each other and wished that the wholeness provided by ceremony that is so deeply embedded in the Wheaton Franciscan culture could be available as a sectarian option. How differently our meetings would proceed if people could file in ceremoniously, if they felt they could bless each other at the beginning of difficult times, and if they would allow themselves songs of gratitude, praise, and recommitment as their time in circle progressed.
Ceremony doesn’t have to look religious: it’s what those middle school students did taking off their shoes—hundreds of them pausing in the foyer, bending down, and laughing and calling out to each other as they padded off to class in socks or bare feet.