The BRC Learning Circle: An Experiment in “Lived Community”

From the fall of 2004 to the spring of 2006, 17 Boston area community builders from diverse backgrounds came together for a series of one- and two-day sessions at the Boston Research Center (BRC) to explore the meaning of community and share their experience and skills. The goal of this experiment was to see whether the group could arrive at insights that would be helpful to others at a time when U.S. national leaders were acting out of a deepening sense of isolation and fear in the world community.

Because the BRC staff had been impressed with the power of the “peacemaking circle” based on indigenous understandings of interconnectedness, Tlingit elder Harold Gatensby and circle trainers Gwen Chandler-Rhivers and Sayra Pinto were invited to initiate the group into this methodology as its foundational practice. After an intense four-day experience of the peacemaking circle in October of 2004 with Harold and Gwen serving as “keepers,” participants found themselves deeply moved and committed to doing something together, but uncertain about what that “something” might be.

Being human together “in a good way” took on new meaning and challenge thanks to the peacemaking circle. “What is a living community?” they asked. “Can we experience it ourselves?” Gradually, the members of the BRC Learning Circle on Community Building (BRC-LC) began to build community in real time, drawing on their collective reservoir of expertise as needed to deepen the connections they felt with each other. Building their own community became an end in itself.

In the months that followed, the BRC-LC explored the joy-and intense struggle-of this aspiration. The all-inclusive peacemaking circle sometimes gave way to dialogue in smaller “support groups” and pairs. Rotating groups of planners met between sessions to organize each meeting. People took turns “keeping” the circle and a buddy system of randomly chosen “triads” built group solidarity in between the formal sessions. Learning Circle members made use of practically every method imaginable-from song, music, dance, rituals, laughing exercises, art work, and group poetry to appreciative inquiry, nonviolent communication, visioning, difficult conversations, open space technology, and pedagogy of the oppressed. Relational psychology, spiritual practices, community organizing and peace activism informed the circle in larger ways. As two years of “lived community” drew to a close in the spring of 2006, the BRC-LC's attention turned to the outside world in earnest. Its members trained their sights on the historical moment, asking themselves, “What kind of healing is needed in the world right now?”

Having encountered the jagged edges of race, class, gender, and cultural differences during their time together, participants were acutely aware of the many dimensions of this question and found the process of reflecting on it deeply motivating. Some had already joined forces spontaneously outside the circle to run workshops together. Some had taken their learning into their own work, communities, and family lives. Two kindred spirits who had met and bonded through the BRC-LC coined the term “relational activism” and decided to explore this concept in greater depth. According to “relational activism,” social change needs to happen in the context of community building and the deepening of relationships among all the people involved. This idea was summed up nicely by an observation one of them had heard from David Bucara, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who became a peace activist. He said authentic social change happens only if it's organized “slowly, deeply and in small groups.”

In a concluding discussion, several of the BRC-LC members shared what they had learned from their experience in intentional community and how they were using this learning in their lives and work. Personal transformations included becoming more skilled at creating safe spaces for honest dialogue, deepening the capacity to love and be fully present to others in pain, feeling empowered to push beyond the limits of academic convention in teaching and writing, and finding greater courage to stand by those ostracized by a group.

Some pointed to the need for a spiritual base on which to build community and remarked on the healing power of choosing an indigenous practice as foundational, especially in the United States. There was a sense, too, that the defining moments of their exploration reached spiritual depth and created lasting, dynamic value. Such deepening of experience occurred when someone was able to be truly authentic and make themselves vulnerable to others without being rejected, ignored, or judged. When the group was able to listen deeply and hold that person's pain and honesty without retreating or pulling away, this was when the “grace” of deep community happened, observed one of the circle members.

Though their formal experiment has ended, BRC-LC members plan to keep their connections alive through occasional gatherings.


• Click here for insights shared by participants in the BRC Learning Circle

• BRC Learning Circle participants