Circles stitch us into sacred spaces whenever we sit down in them. We draw circles in the ground. We edge them with stones. We create kiva-circles around our hearth fires. A consultant once suggested that if we got rid of rectangular charts and hard-edged paper and suggested everyone use circles, organizations would take on a different way of being.
What if we actually did ditch all our rectangular tables and everyone used Arthurian round tables instead? Would our collective wisdom more likely surface? Would we begin to think in the round? Would we find, as Aristotle suggested, what is eternal is circular and what is circular is eternal?
(Men-an-Tol stone, c. 3,000 B.C.E.Cornwall England.)
Circles teach us many things. Equality. Harmony. Balance. A place filled with nothing, yet offering everything. A safe place to play.
Like cross sections of trees, wheels, mandalas, sandpaintings, sacred hoops, cauldrons, Tibetan bowls, and medicine wheels, crop circles, they are all powerful.
Black Elk reminded us, in Black Elk Speaks: “Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are the all the stars…Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.”
Bighorn Medicine Wheel, Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming.
(click to order this mandala or others by Paul Heussenstamm)
We keep circling and many now find themselves in circles called: Appreciative Inquiry Circles, Dialogue Circles. World Café Circles. Open Space Circles. Virtual Circles. Labyrinths.
Whatever we call our circles, they are deep place that foster honest listening, clear thinking and authentic heart-sharing.
Wishing to have “sisters” around me, but not wanting a rigid agenda, I dreamed I could be in a circle that in some ways might look like my mother’s Lutheran ladies’ monthly circle meetings back in Wisconsin. They met in homes, had Bible study, worked on quilts or other charitable gifts, talked a lot, made money for the church’s mission goals, planned picnics, ate sandwiches, indulged in “just a small piece” of cake, drank pots of strong coffee and then went home knowing if they ever needed to talk to anyone before the next month’s meeting, someone would always be ready to listen.
But I had a more diverse group in mind. I sought not necessarily a church group or a “support group” but more of a diverse gentle gathering of women who wanted to share spiritual insights. Like mom’s circles, we’d meet in homes, talk and listen—deeply—to each other, express our own inner spirituality in whatever ways seemed valuable, drink herbal tea, and eat a simple dinner together. The outcome would not be pre-determined—no quilts for charity. Just a circle of sisters. I wanted a King Arthur’s round table for champion “grail-girls.” The message my mother’s circles had engrained deep within my own cells was “Like the moon, circles are important. Be in them.”
Believing that where two or three are gathered (in “her name/s”) I discussed starting a wisdom circle with a few friends who invited a few of their friends and soon we’d formed a cohesive group. We called ourselves The Sophias. Or as my husband lovingly put it, “When are the Sophies meeting?”
We met on the first Sunday after a full moon, so no one needed to send out a schedule.
Each of us brought an object—something that seemed important to us for some reason, so no one needed to ask “What’s the topic”? Our experiences formed the topic. And we established a pattern of starting with a brief centering/meditation time, followed by telling stories about the object we’d brought, so no one needed to ask “How do we do this?” The visual metaphors deepened as we placed our “sacred objects” in the center of our circle. Our “altar.”
The feminist author, Carol Gilligan, says “speaking and listening are a form of psychic breathing.” We speak; we listen and the circle breathes. In this intentional space, we deepen, sharing things from our hearts, not from our heads. Round and round we go, like rolling down hilly grass. Safe. Easy. Powerful.
Before long, the Boston Sophia circle had settled into a consistent group of eight; we ranged in ages from 30-60 and came from a variety of spiritual paths. Our goal was to play, to have fun, and to deepen our wisdom by listening to each other. We had no rules, but we did adopt a few guidelines: silence is fine; don’t interrupt; listen deeply; don’t try to fix anything—or offer advice; speak and listen from the heart. As we held several objects at the same time and spoke, our metaphors grew more complex and more meaningful.
Unexpectedly, we wound up encouraging and supporting each other’s creative pursuits. Without necessarily planning to, we had become a creative clan, a tribe of active Sophia-women. In the space of a few years, the circle produced a handful of books and as many art shows, a few new business ventures and the writing and recording of a musical play. But we also helped stitch our lives together as we grieved and celebrated.
Hermes Trismegistus was right. God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere. Because we were “together” even between meetings, we joked about tapping in to our “Sophia Inner Net.”
Even apart from the group, sometimes when we meditated, we sent each other messages. One “Sophia” got a personal message for me, at just the time I was contemplating going off on a stress-reduction retreat. “Go to the trees,” she said. “By the water. Alone. Sit. Let the trees teach you Feel the sap, know the rootedness and groundedness. ‘We shall not be moved!’ Stand your ground. Put your roots down!”
I did. I expected some deep spiritual insights from the monks who welcomed me to their monastery a few miles west of Boston. Instead, on Saturday night, I sat on a well-worn sofa, a brother on either side, munching popcorn as we watched an old Hitchcock movie on television. We were, in William Sloan Coffin’s words, “living the ordinary life extraordinarily well.”
But as my Sophia-Sister encouraged, I also spent hours journaling with trees and I returned to work on Monday morning gentled, rested, and ready to step back into my very ordinary life.
In the spring of 1990, I became a part of a collaborative painting group with five other Boston area women. We often painted on our living room floor, pausing to view our work from time to time from an upper balcony. We always completed a painting in one evening and then shared a meal.
(Photo by John Speerstra. From left to right: Sharon Bauer, me, Lillian Habinowski, Christina Hepner Brodie, May Reisz, Jean Lokensgard.
Each time we met to paint, we first meditated, often on Hildegard of Bingen's words and music. We placed objects on the blank canvas, our altar, and told why we had brought the object and those objects and stories usually made their way into our painting. Our sisterhood deepened over the five years we painted together.
Six months after we began, we trusted each other enough to paint this mandala which we called our "Advent Wreath," surrounded by fecund fringes. That night we were inspired by Starhawk's words:
"All things are swirls of energy, vortexes of moving forces, currents in an ever-changing sea...all fixed things dissolve, only to coalesce again into new forms, new vehicle."
Whenever we experience “circle-time” the wisdom circles I've been blessed to be a part of are open to extraordinary things happening.
When we’re not speaking, we honor the silence. Like Quakers, we listen our souls into discovery. It may, as the Quakers claim, be the greatest service one human being can do for another. Silence, like listening, is powerful. It is like a lake, Octavio Paz says, “Down below, submerged, the words are waiting and one must descend, go to the bottom, be silent, wait.” Perhaps that’s why being silent for any length of time is so frightening to some. People fear silence because they think they might drown in its deep darkness. But by entering the silent circle, by stepping up to the labyrinth's “minotaur,” we soon learn that whatever emerges will buoy us up and we will float in her presence.
Here’s a portion of what Debra, one of our Boston Sophia members, wrote about Sophia after one of our gatherings.
“I could never tell if she was real or simply a fantasy, like the Druids, like fairy energies are only fantasies. But suddenly I knew they are real too, and so likewise the search for Sophia begins…She is the wind that moves and she is the space that exists where nothing is. She is the glue to relationships, that make us stick in there and learn to love with and through others. She is the knowing within that something is supposed to happen, and of course it does. She is also the receiver…the one who listens to the inner knowing.”
Many books on wisdom circles and intentional conversation have appeared within the past decade or so. As a culture, we seem to have tapped into her consciousness and she has driven us out into the “desert” to create something new.
Supportive, inclusive, nurturing, loving circles now wrap round the earth as Jean Shinoda Bolen predicted in The Millionth Circle, her small essential guide to women’s circles. Her title is based on the idea that, according to the hundredth monkey theory, there will be tipping point, a critical mass of circles at some point and we’ll all be in them—drawing on our inherent spirituality—all enjoying our Sophia state.
Circles inform us how to better care for each other. They mirror Sophia’s deep, dark, delicious divine energy. When I look across the circle into another woman’s eyes, I can see Sophia more clearly. When we speak our own truths, we speak her truth.
Bolen wrote, like carrying coals around to start fires, “being in one circle leads to being in others.” So, when we moved to Vermont one of my first self-appointed tasks was to start another a “Sophia-north” group. Women in Sophia circles don’t come and go as often as in other sorts of groups, I’ve noticed; perhaps that’s because our hearts as well as our minds are engaged.
Over the years we have remained a pretty consistent six. We meet monthly. I know of some women’s circles who meet once a year, for an extended retreat-setting time. I know of other women’s circles who practice very deep self-awareness and transformative techniques. I’m guessing any circle will hold if the deep wisdom of Sophia is the reason for meeting.
In our Sophia Circles we not only share in sacred play, contribute wonderful food, but we form deep relationships, and support our sister’s inner work in a safe place, a place to be vulnerable, a place to be real. We gather, like priestesses, to honor Sophia in each of us. She sparks our memories so that together, we remember more. And more. And more. And more.
The ordinary objects we bring to the center of our wisdom circles often take on magical consequences as when we hold them as we speak.
Penny, said she thought each time, long and hard, about what object she’d bring and that way she prepared her inner self for the circle. Sherry likened her choosing of an object to a deepening. Holding our sisters’ “soul-stones” we often speak more than we know we know.
In our meditation time we experience Sophia, Power of the World, in light and energy and love. We inspire each other. We con-spire. LIke the "Advent Wreath" painting, we spiral up and out.
In an attempt to see more deeply who Sophia is, this little poem was born onto my journal pages.
Sophia
She is the blood and the bleeding
the seed and the seeding
the sow and the mare
the step and the stair
the All and the One.
Sophia
She is the cloud and the shining
the pines and pining
the beach and the tide
the narrow, the wide
the awe and the fun.
Sophia
She is the wave and the waving
the shares and the sharing
the thrust and the lance
the step and the dance
the moon and the sun.
Sophia
She is the wax and the bee
the root and the tree
the you in the me.
Sophia
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