and so we think a lot these days about
circles of trust as as something of a
model of the kind of community that
needs to be out there for citizens to
recover their capacity to approach our
our common life in this country with
with decency with openness with
generosity and with a lack of fear which
again is the root problem that courage
to teach courage to lead courage to
serve is trying to address the fear that
so often paralyzes us and shuts us down
and of course in our society these days
nationally and globally the fear in a
very sharp and paralyzing way is is a
fear of the other whoever that may be
the person of another color the person
of another religion the person of
another ethnicity
if we are going to recover the Citizen
Lea habits that make a democracy work we
need to have this country dotted through
through our churches and synagogues and
mosques through our schools even in our
workplaces all kinds of institutional
settings we need to have this country
dotted with circles of people who are
learning to talk to one another in a
creative way about common problems on
which they have quite different opinions
um I I remembered some years ago
visiting a place in Tennessee called the
Highlander Folk center I think it's now
called the Highlander Research Center
and the Highlander Research Center when
I visited it was essentially a farmhouse
with some other buildings out in the
middle of the Tennessee countryside and
in the living room the big ol living
room of this big old farmhouse there
were about 20 Tennessee rocking chairs
in a circle and I was powerfully
reminded that it was in that circle at
that place that people like Martin
Luther King jr. and Rosa Parks and
Fannie Lou Hamer and lots of others
whose names we don't know that well
gathered together in the 50s whites and
blacks in the same circle together
across racial lines for the first time
in in in that era of southern life
talking about what it was like to be a
black person and to be a white person in
a highly segregated society and the
price that everybody was paying for them
and that out of telling those stories
and out of the mutual understanding that
emerged and then out of some very
specific training and non-violence which
made those circles different from
circles of trust as as we hold them but
out of that sitting in circle telling
stories sharing of lives touching the
soul rejoining it with the citizen Lee
role came a civil rights movement which
was one of the great acts of citizenship
of the 20th century
a history like that and the fact that so
much has happened out of these small
circles of people learning to tell each
other the truth in a generous and
hospitable way neither giving or taking
offence a story like that reminds me of
the power of circles of trust to restore
the soul of the citizen and in turn to
help restore the soul of democracy