Calling the Circle The First and Future Culture

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 CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

WHAT IS A CIRCLE?

CHAPTER 1: Awakening: Where We Are Now

• The Experiment
• Calling the Circle
• Circles of Recovery and Healing: The Bridge
• Living in Context

CHAPTER 2: The Circle: Past, Present, and Future

• Remembering the First Culture
• The Power of One Circle
• Second Culture: The Modern World
• Third Culture: The Circle and the Triangle

CHAPTER 3: The Sacred as Center in Everyday Life

• The Authentic Gesture
 • The Loss and Reclaiming of Ritual
• Becoming Indigenous
• Circle as Spiritual Practice

CHAPTER 4: Holding the Rim

• Moving to the Edge
• The Circle as Social Practice
• The Three Principles of Circle
• Forms of Council
• The Three Practices of Council
• Generic PeerSpirit Agreements
• Guardian of the Circle
• Covenants of the Circle
• Body Practices
• Circle Energetics

CHAPTER 5: Preparing to Call the Circle

• Preparations for Calling the Circle
• Setting Intention
• Gathering Feedback
• Envisioning the Group

CHAPTER 6: The First Gathering

• Sitting in Circle
• Telling the Story of the Idea
• Making Sacred Center
• Setting Circle Agreements
• Fears and Expectations
• First Time Around the Rim
• Closing the Circle with Respect

CHAPTER 7: Sustaining the PeerSpirit Circle

 • The Circle Logbook
• Time and Commitment
• The Importance of Familiar Ritual
• The Importance of Real Dialogue
• The Importance of Real Accomplishment
• The Importance of Authentic Conflict
• Appreciation Council
• The Importance of Closure

CHAPTER 8: Challenges in the Circle

• Refuge
• Safety and Challenge
• Projection—It Ain’t the Movies
• Protocol for Reconciliation
• Shadow
• Psychic Housekeeping

CHAPTER 9: When the Circle Shatters

• Unbondedness
• A Rock to Stand On
• Entering the I/Eye of the Storm
• Full Council
• The Sting of Otherness

CHAPTER 10: Citizen of the Circle

• Becoming PeerSpirit: Circles in Evolution
• Circle as Social Movement
• An Island and the World
• The Calling

RESOURCES AND ENDPIECES

• Guide to PeerSpirit Circling
 • Appendix A: PeerSpirit Circle Agreements
• Appendix B: Checklist for PeerSpirit Circle
Agenda
• Appendix C Protocol for Reconciliation in
PeerSpirit Circles
• Bibliography and Circle Resources
• Acknowledgments
• Permissions
• About the Author
• About the Artist
YOU HAVE SEEN HOW IT IS
that we are a Strong People—
one who has walked out
from a thundering Earth
and an Ocean that became sky.
YOU HAVE SEEN HOW IT IS
that we are a Wise People—
one who learns survival quickly
against a changing circumstance.
YOU HAVE SEEN HOW IT IS
that we are an Enduring People—
one who continues in the Chosen Purpose
against great difficulties.
YET YOU HAVE SEEN HOW IT IS
—and she traced in the air
the closing of the circle of her thought—
that we are a Young People—
like small ones
whose teachers go away
before they have learned enough
who quarrel over the resolution of this and that.
SO
LET US NOW LEARN HOW TO BE A PEOPLE
WHO SEEK THE WISDOM OF ORDERED COUNCIL.
LET US REMEMBER
HOW QUICKLY ONE WHO LEADS
MAY BE TAKEN FROM US.
LET US UNDERSTAND
THAT WHAT MAY BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ONE
MAY BE POSSIBLE FOR MANY.
AND IF ALL THIS ESCAPES YOUR MEMORY
REMEMBER ONLY THIS:
SEEK THE WISDOM OF ORDERED COUNCIL—
 HOWEVER MANY
HOWEVER FEW
HOWEVER OLD
HOWEVER YOUNG
SEEK THE WISDOM OF ORDERED COUNCIL.
PAULA UNDERWOOD,
The Walking People
 PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

Between 1992 and 1994 I wrote a book titled Calling the Circle:
The First and Future Culture. It was published by a small press, Swan
Raven and Co., an imprint of Blue Water Publishing, both then located
in Hillsboro, Oregon, just outside Portland. The people who owned
this press, David Kyle, Patt Lind-Kyle, Pamela Meyer, and Brian
Crissey, were fellow seekers intrigued by the model of the circle I was
presenting.
The first version of the book was an intense, visionary statement of
belief that gathering in peer-led, spirit-centered circles could help us
successfully face the challenges of our times.
I was writing during a time of tremendous personal upheaval. I
didn’t understand why this idea had chosen me to be its voice. I just
kept writing. When the book came out, the small press struggled
valiantly to keep it in distribution—as all small presses struggle. The
book developed a following in independent bookstores. Letters of
response began trickling into my office; people were excited and
resonating with this vision.
They said things like, “I’ve been in a circle for five years. Now I
understand why it worked for us, and why it didn’t.” “This is the first
book on group process that made me want to slow down and pay
attention to group process.” “First the circle saved my business, and
now it’s saving my marriage.” They said, “Thank you.”
In the next year and a half, over fifteen thousand people found their
way to Calling the Circle. By the late 1990s other books began coming
out. Articles on the influence of circle, council, and tribal learning
systems were appearing in periodicals from The New Age Journal to
The Wall Street Journal Several leading organizational development
models began incorporating learning circles and study circles. It wasn’t
such a strange idea anymore. David, Pam, and I agreed the book
needed a big publisher to give it full exposure, and my agent contacted
Toni Burbank, at Bantam, who has supported my work for years. We
negotiated for rerelease of the book, with whatever revisions I wanted
to make.
Between editions, I spent three years teaching, consulting, living
with the circle, and deeply learning from it. This new version of the
book has been almost entirely rewritten—whole chapters have been
deleted and new ones inserted. What you have here is a new book, still
titled Calling the Circle: The First and Future Culture.
It is now an intense, visionary statement from experience that
gathering in peer-led, spirit-centered circles does help us successfully
face the challenges of our times.
It’s been quite a journey to claim this work and begin to share it
with the world. I know this journey is just beginning. May it begin, or
continue, for you also—somewhere in the great circle of life.
Christina Baldwin
Summer 1997
 WHAT IS A CIRCLE?

The teenage son of a friend asks, “Mom, why do you always light
a candle when you want to talk seriously with me?”
The mother says, “The candle sets the tone. I want you to notice that
this is going to be an important conversation and to pay attention to me
in a different way from when we’re just passing each other in the
house.”
“Okay, cool,” he says, and they are in circle.

A minister is meeting with two parishioners who have been

involved in a long-standing argument. She joins them in the library,
where three comfortable chairs have been pulled around a coffee table.
There is a Bible opened to one of her favorite passages for conflict
resolution. There is a candle. She lights it, looks in the faces of the two
men. “Are you ready to begin?” she asks. She waits for them to nod.
She reads the scripture. She puts a palm-sized rock on the table.
“There will be no casting of stones in this conversation, but whoever
wishes to may hold the stone while he speaks, and we will listen.”
They are in circle.

A man is called into personnel, given notice of immediate

termination, and told to clean out his desk. Humiliated and in shock, he
carries an empty box back to his cubicle. His coworkers help him pack
up his personal belongings. Spontaneously, they begin to recite
everything they appreciate about him. “Stop, stop, please,” the man
says. “I don’t want to lose it in front of you guys….”
“We want you to know we’ll miss you,” another man says. They
decide to meet for supper so they can talk about approaching
management as a unified group, to see if management will let them
influence how these layoffs are handled, to see if they can become part
of the decision-making process, not its victims. They are in circle.

A woman visits her elderly parents to tell them she is getting

divorced. This will be hard news for them. She spends two days
bringing little things to their kitchen table-, a feather, a piece of bark,
photos of her husband and children taken the previous Christmas. Her
mother adds a small vase of flowers. There is no language between
them to acknowledge what they’re doing, but the actions of the mother
and daughter are natural rituals of centering. When the woman feels
centered, she invites her parents to sit down with her and begins the
conversation. They are in circle.
 A community takes up the challenge of dealing with vandalism in
a rural area where adolescents are being accused of defacing bridges
with graffiti, knocking over mailboxes, stealing street signs, and other
destructive mischief. A group of retired businessmen volunteers to
meet with the teenagers. They begin a tentative process of getting to
know each other, talking on the roadside and at hangout spots, the
older men careful not to accuse. Then they take a group of boys fishing
for a day, ending with a beach picnic and campfire. One of the men
simply suggests, “What if we pass this beach stone around and anyone
who wants to can share a story—something you wish you could tell
your own grandfather, or something you wish you could tell your own
grandson. Let’s see what happens…. And if you don’t feel like talking
when it’s your turn, just pass the stone on.” In the gathering dusk, they
enter the circle.

The director of a nursing home that has operated for years on

Catholic spiritual values suspects that certain conflicts within the staff
are personifications of the tensions in the health care industry itself.
She wants to help people be able to talk about these changes and their
accompanying tensions, rather than acting them out in anger on the
nursing teams. She sets up a Listening Council that meets every other
Tuesday at the end of each shift. The council serves as a place to air
grievances and garner innovative ideas. Within months, conflicts have
diminished, morale is improving, and religious and nonreligious staff
are beginning to understand each other’s values. They are in circle.

A group of women have been to Baja California, kayaking among

gray whales in the waters of their calving grounds. Every night they sat
in circle to help each other make holy stories of the day’s events. Los
Angeles International Airport was the meeting and departure point for
the group. When they return to LAX at the end of the trip they have
several hours of leave-taking, as one by one the women peel off from
the group to fly home to cities across the continent. They find some
space at the side of a corridor and spontaneously sit down in a circle.
Speakers are blaring flight announcements, babies are crying, people
are whizzing by on either side of this seated circle of fourteen strong,
tanned women and their piles of luggage. Because they have listened
attentively to one another all week, they can listen attentively now to
one another’s farewell statements. One at a time, each woman holds a
shell and speaks of her learning. The chaos around them melds into
one sound: All they can hear is one woman’s voice and the ocean’s
roar.

A church calls a circle to discuss the homeless people in their

downtown parish, and how the church might respond. The homeless
people hear of the meeting and join it. “We know what our needs are,”
they tell the parishioners. “Do you want to listen?” The group holds a
council in which every person’s voice is heard. The church moves out
of its traditional position of “providing for the poor” into a position of
participating with the homeless people to empower change. They
expand the circle.

In a neighborhood elementary school, the children form a council

to provide creative, nonviolent solutions to their everyday conflicts.
The council members—fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders—wear badges
on the playground and intervene when trouble occurs. They call a
circle when one is needed, so that each child gets heard and a solution
is reached. One teacher sits with them as a witness, but she doesn’t
interfere unless the children’s process gets stuck and they call on her
for assistance. They are learning circle.

One evening at Christmastime, a multigenerational gathering of

family decide to honor their mother/grandmother with a “coming of
age” ceremony. On the rec room carpet, they lay out two large circles
of yarn: red to signify the blood ties, green to signify the marriage
alliances. The four grown children all light candles representing their
births and offer an appreciation to their mother. Each of the dozen
grandchildren brings a carnation; they make a bouquet in the center,
and tell Grandma stories. And so they call the circle.

It is through such ordinary acts that the circle reenters the world.
It is through these ordinary acts that the world is changed. The most
important step we can take with the circle is to use it—now, today. We
can set the circle simply in place in our lives, in our work, in our
neighborhoods, in our civic centers, in our religious or spiritual
communities, in our families and friendship groups.
Where might you call the circle?
 There is no one but us.
There is no one to send,
nor a clean hand nor a pure heart
on the face of the earth, nor in the earth,
but only us,
a generation comforting ourselves
with the notion that we have come at an awkward time,
that our innocent fathers are all dead
—as if innocence had ever been—
and our children busy and troubled,
and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready,
having each of us chosen wrongly,
made a false start, failed,
yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures,
and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved.
But there is no one but us.
There never has been.

ANNIE DILLARD, Holy the Firm