National Circle Keeper Gathering Reflection
By Anab Nur
What’s the role of a Circle Keeper? How can we truly honor the restorative process? How can we do this work better?
These were some of the questions I hoped to explore as we traveled to Nashville, Tennessee to participate in the annual Circle Keeper Gathering with Kay Pranis and The Circle Center. For 4 days - nearly 24 hours total - we sat in circle with up to 30 other Restorative Practitioners from Washington, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Kay Pranis, National Leader in Restorative Practices, co-kept the circle and guided us through a transformative experience.
I expected to leave Nashville with a notebook full of best practices for circlekeeping, some new ideas, and maybe templates on how to teach others about circle. Instead, the gathering ended with questions being answered not explicitly, but rather through the experience of sitting in circle.
Circle is an opportunity to create a shared space with a group. A circle is made of participants, guidelines, a talking piece, and a centerpiece. The circle process includes an opening ceremony, rounds of questions, and a closing ceremony. The talking piece moves through the circle each round in a clockwise direction as participants are given the option to share, answer a question, ask their own question, or pass.
At the beginning of this gathering, I watched Kay Pranis be quite still. She didn't take space or leadership in the way I expected someone of her status to. There were moments in circle where I looked to her and the other keepers to address instances where I saw guidelines not being respected, or answer questions that were being posed by participants. I sat and waited, and it seemed like that’s what she did too. This question of “what’s the role of a Circle Keeper?” came up for me repeatedly. I expected someone to speak to some of what was going wrong in the circle. What I learned was that “someone” was supposed to be me.
A significant takeaway that led me to understand circle processes in a new way was that circle can be an exercise in power, both personal power and collective. When in circle, some may use the opportunity to expand into their power, while others may constrict into the powerlessness they’ve known. Kay Pranis described the talking piece as an opportunity to engage with Positive Personal Power–to add your perspective and voice to the group’s conversation.
Positive Personal Power comes from the moments where you are handed the talking piece and choose to speak authentically into the circle, without worrying whether others understand or agree. This led me to understand that I should not be waiting for Kay Pranis, or anyone, to address the things that I am seeing transpire in front of me. Others in the circle do not see what I see, and it is not my responsibility to make them see it. It is my responsibility to authentically share. Sharing in this way made me feel more empowered. The empowerment did not come from being heard, but from speaking from my own perspective and realizing power can come from sharing and using my voice. Kay Pranis understood this on a deep level, therefore the stillness.
Sometimes a circle can look like a mess. Literally - unfinished snacks left on the floor, shoes taken off and pushed to the side, chairs abandoned as people choose to sit on the floor or pace. What you hear in circle can sound like a mess. People take questions in unexpected directions, leaving you confused. Stories make you laugh or cry, maybe both. Someone shares something that leaves you hurt, offended, or angry. When the talking piece comes to you, exercising your power can sound like saying: “ouch, that hurt,” or “I think one of our guidelines was just broken,” or “what’s going on here?” You can also choose to pass, walk out into the hall for a break, or just breathe. It is essential to remember that even though you see and hear the mess, it’s never your mess. Even as the keeper, it’s not your mess.
Often as practitioners in the community we feel the need to provide answers, to fix what’s broken, to clean up the mess. The Circle Keeper Gathering taught us that this is far from our responsibility. Our job is to contribute to the collective in a way that allows for all of us, even those that may be causing harm, to understand that we care about the people around us and we are paying attention to the quality of the spaces that we are in. Circle is an exercise in collective power, which means that we are all contributing to what is taking place amongst us. If the circle feels we are not having a good conversation we each have the power to share, question, and pass our way into a new conversation. We never know what will come from sitting in circle, even when sitting with people we interact with frequently, because we rarely get the opportunity to practice the deep listening that circle requires. This gathering gave us that time we rarely receive. It also solidified our trust in this process, strengthened our relationships and national connections, and renewed our spirits.
