About Colorado Courage and Renewal

Our mission is to create a more just, compassionate and healthy world by nurturing personal and professional integrity and the courage to act on it.

Distrust, stress, isolation, and burnout are robbing society of what’s possible when people bring integrity and humanity to the places where they live and work.

As a result, we are losing competent and compassionate individuals in some of society’s most crucial roles—educating children, caring for patients, serving congregations, leading teams and organizations, and fostering civic community. The costs are substantial as once-committed people lose their sense of purpose and passion, grow disillusioned and disengaged, and eventually drop out.

To create a more just and compassionate world—and sustain the leadership we need for such a world—we need more people who can work together to solve pressing, complex problems. Responsibility can no longer rest solely with designated leaders. It requires all of us to claim our leadership roles and responsibilities.

Courage & Renewal programs cultivate the heart and soul of leadership, encouraging people to “lead from within.” Courage & Renewal programs help people:

  • Lead and act with courage on their true callings
  • Develop trustworthy relationships
  • Cultivate practices to sustain themselves and inspire others for the long haul
  • Work together to transform the institutions they serve

Circle of Trust® Touchstones

  • Give and receive welcome. People learn best in hospitable spaces. In this circle we support each other’s learning by giving and receiving hospitality.
  • Be present as fully as possible. Be here with your doubts, fears and failings as well as your convictions, joys and successes, your listening as well as your speaking.
  • What is offered in the circle is by invitation, not demand. This is not a “share or die” event! During this retreat, do whatever your soul calls for, and know that you do it with our support. Your soul knows your needs better than we do.
  • Speak your truth in ways that respect other people’s truth. Our views of reality may differ, but speaking one’s truth in a circle of trust does not mean interpreting, correcting or debating what others say. Speak from your center to the center of the circle, using “I” statements, trusting people to do their own sifting and winnowing.
  • No fixing, saving, advising or correcting each other. This is one of the hardest guidelines for those of us in the “helping professions.” But it is vital to welcoming the soul, to making space for the inner teacher.
  • Learn to respond to others with honest, open questions instead of counsel, corrections, etc. With such questions, we help “hear each other into deeper speech.”
  • When the going gets rough, turn to wonder. If you feel judgmental, or defensive, ask yourself, “I wonder what brought her to this belief?” “I wonder what he’s feeling right now?” “I wonder what my reaction teaches me about myself?” Set aside judgment to listen to others—and to yourself—more deeply.
  • Attend to your own inner teacher. We learn from others, of course. But as we explore poems, stories, questions and silence in a circle of trust, we have a special opportunity to learn from within. So pay close attention to your own reactions and responses, to your most important teacher.
  • Trust and learn from the silence. Silence is a gift in our noisy world, and a way of knowing in itself. Treat silence as a member of the group. After someone has spoken, take time to reflect without immediately filling the space with words.
  • Observe deep confidentiality. Nothing said in a circle of trust will ever be repeated to other people.
  • Know that it’s possible to leave the circle with whatever it was that you needed when you arrived, and that the seeds planted here can keep growing in the days ahead.

Facilitators of Courage & Renewal programs use these Touchstones to create safe and trustworthy space for shared inquiry and exploration in a group. They derive from the Principles and Practices of our Circle of Trust® approach. Read more at www.couragerenewal.org/approach/.

© 2012 Center for Courage & Renewal www.CourageRenewal.org

Good work is done with heart as well as knowledge and skill, done with a depth of commitment that brings integrity and courage to the workplace. But workplace culture can make it risky to reveal our hearts. So we hide them—and sometimes lose them.

By supporting teachers, medical professionals, clergy and others who want to reclaim their hearts, we bring new life to them, their work, and the people they serve.

Parker J Palmer

Founder and Senior Partner, Center for Courage and Renewal

A small circle of limited duration that is intentional about its process will have a deeper, more life-giving impact than a large, ongoing community that is shaped by the norms of conventional culture.

From A Hidden Wholeness

Parker J Palmer

Founder and Senior Partner, Center for Courage and Renewal