How often do we hear that you can’t do something just by talking about it? For the most part, that is true. However, yesterday I experienced something different. We were at the Circle of Hope, a talking circle that we have going in Quesnel BC. It meets at the local homeless shelter in a back room on Sunday afternoons. It is a ‘programme’ of the church, but we don’t preach, or read scriptures, sing or pray. We just provide a safe place for people to come together, share a coffee and snacks, and talk. Each week we pick a different topic and someone from the leadership team (4 of us currently) starts the circle off. We begin by checking in and saying how we are doing and how our week was. Then we move to our topic. This week, our leader led us to talk about community, what it means to us, how it can be discouraged or encouraged and how we will build community through the coming week. We have a strict policy of confidentiality. “What’s said in the circle, stays in the circle” in our regular mantra. So I’m not going to tell you what was said. However, as we went around the circle, we could actually feel community being constructed between us all.
We are a mixed group. There are usually some folks who are clientele at the shelter, along with a few middle-class professional types, other low-income working people or those on social assistance. Some of us are clean and sober, while others who drop in are still working towards that. About half the group is First Nations. We pass around a beaded, feathered talking stick to show our respect for the person who is talking at the time and we all really listen and affirm what they share. We have a lot of laughs together, and sometimes no shortage of tears for our own griefs or those we shed in sympathy with each other. Yesterday much was shared from the heart and trust was built. The very things we talked about which build community were experienced as we shared – listening without judgment, a sense of belonging, caring, encouragement, safety.
I’m thankful for this little group of disparate people who come down to the circle, even when it is below -20C to a cold room with hot coffee and warm hearts to be there for one another. Wouldn’t it be great to find this more in the church? Maybe in the church, we need to do more by talking.
