From Diane Diachishin 

Here is a brief explanation of UUCRT Circle of Trust. Open to all members and friends, we meet Saturday mornings on an “as needed”  basis. For more information, please contact  Rev. Chris Antal  or Diane Diachishin (ddiachishin@gmail.org).

   So what do we do in a circle of trust? We speak our own truth; we listen receptively to the truth of others; we ask each other honest, open questions instead of giving counsel; and we offer each other the healing and empowering gifts of silence and laughter… Our purpose is not to teach anyone anything but to give the inner teacher a chance to teach us.

 Spaces designed to welcome the soul and support the inner journey are rare. But the principles and practices that shape such spaces are neither new nor untested. Some are embedded in monastic tradition, for the monastery is the archetypal “community of solitudes.” Some emerged over four hundred years of Quaker faith and practice. Some were revived in the transpersonal psychology movement of the mid- twentieth century. And some are embodied in the processes of spiritual formation that can be found at the heart of most of the world’s great wisdom traditions.

In a circle of trust, the powers of deformation are held at bay long enough for the soul to emerge and speak its truth. Here, we are not required to conform ourselves to some external template. Instead, we are invited to conform our lives to the shape of our own souls. In a circle of trust we can grow our selfhood like a plant-from the potential within the seed of the soul, in ground made fertile by the quality of our relationships, toward the light of our own wholeness—trusting the soul to know its own shape better than any external authority ever can.

Excerpt from The Soul is Shy: A Vision of What Small Groups Can Be

Parker J. Palmer, “A Hidden Wholeness”