Robin Carnes - Sacred Circles: A Guide To Creating Your Own Womens Spirituality Group

W e cant help but believe that this book wanted to be written. Every place we turned for help, we found it. Resources appeared, books fell off shelves. This is not to say that the book magically wrote itself. Hardly. But we felt guided and supported and protected at every turn.

We must have had a secret coconspirator and coauthor out there, and we choose to call her Spirit. Thank you, Spirit, for your endless and juicy generosity.

On a more mundane but no less important level, many people have helped us along the way, and we want to acknowledge a few of them here. At the inception of this project, we invited a group of wise women to serve as our midwives, a virtual circle of support. Some of them read chapters and gave us helpful feedback, some of them advised us on specific questions, and all of them held us in their hearts. To each of them we give thanks:

Gertrude Banks, Sallys grandmother, who died before the book was finished;

Dorothy Mae Taylor, Robins feisty, funny, huge-hearted grandmother;

Caroline Banks and Bettie Deen, our mothers and kindred spirits;

Ria Portocarrero, love warrior extraordinaire;

Colleen Kelley, visionary artist and desert ceremonialist;

Sarah Fahy and Cita Lamb, rekindlers of ancient memories;

Joanna Macy, Sallys spiritual sister and role model;

Jean Bartunek, Robins wise friend and grad school professor; and

Ruthmarijke Smeding, Dutch goddess and all-around great woman.

I, Sally, have a large, extended family, at the heart of which is my husband, Peter, our grown daughter, Katie, and her new husband, Piers. You are each nurturers and anchors for me, sources of steadfast love and support. Ellen Barlow lives with us and radiates a powerful life force. Jenny Craig radiates hers from long distance. Among my friends, I would especially like to thank Elizabeth Fox and Ruth Caplan for their daily and enthusiastic interest in this project. Sunny Pietrafesa provides the unconditional love that we all need. Bill and Caroline Banks, my parents, have spent the last twenty-eight years as independent booksellers on Cape Cod. Not only did they impart a love for reading, but they are my role models for living a life they love.

I, Robin, would like to let a few other people know how important they are to me and to thank them for supporting me through this book journey. Peter, for your gentle yet probing questions, for your confidence in me, for your quiet, profound intuition, and for forever surprising me with your tender, wise, expansive heart, I thank you. Our love is my fuel. Josh Reid, I thank you for being the most incredible son/person I could ever hope to have birthed, much less befriended. Mom and Dad, thanks for the colorful palette of genes and traits you have passed me and for the exuberant confidence and support you have given me on this project. Thanks to Suzanne Lagay, Lisa Zoppetti, and Sarah Harris for loving me. And thanks to Ria Portocarrero and Connie Miller for teaching me the tools that help me dance through life.

Of course, our own womens group was what inspired us to write this in the first place. Each one of you is a splendid and sparkling facet of womanhood. We love you all: Bettie Deen, Laura Delaney, Laura Dicurcio, Jeanne Feeney, Elizabeth Fox, Elizabeth Friberg, Antoinette Kranenburg, Clair Oaks, Allison Porter, Susan Shearouse, Lois Taylor-Holsey, Sandra Van Fossen, and Lisa Zoppetti.

In the course of writing this book, we spoke with hundreds of women. We are especially grateful to the women we interviewed concerning their own groups, which we profile in chapter 2, and to those who wrote their stories in chapter 6. Wabun Wind, Hemitra Crecraft, and Sue King all shared their spirit and wide experience so generously. Our interviews with them ended up as full-fledged spiritual transmissions.

We had a wonderful forum for sharing our ideas about womens spirituality groups at the Washington National Cathedral, where we helped to produce two massive events, Sacred Circles and Passionate Living: The Embodied Spirituality of Hildegard of Bingen. Our thanks to Carole Crumley, Grace Ogden, and Erik Schwarz. They are skilled at walking out on the edge.

Loretta Barrett, our agent, took on this book despite the fact that we had no track record. Sally had a chance encounter with Loretta at a conference in November 1995, and Loretta took us under her wing even though our only previous published work was a book commissioned by a supermarket trade association on the cost of employee turnover! We are grateful for her willingness to take a risk on us. Her assistant, Karen Gerwin-Stoopack, has been a real trouper in shepherding two first-time authors through the book publishing process.

We were blessed to have a wonderful editor, Caroline Pincus, who did a masterful job of helping us to focus on what was really important. Her empathy, savvy, and humor are an unbeatable combination, and we hope we are fortunate enough to have the chance to work with her again. Sally Kim, her editorial assistant, was also responsive and helpful and was there when we needed her. And Priscilla Stuckey copyedited our manuscript with compassionate attention.

Thanks also to Laura Delaney, Laura Dicurcio, and Jim Ronan for volunteering their wonderful photographic services.

And finally, our gratitude to all the pioneering and courageous women who have kept alive the traditions of womens spirituality.

Our Sacred Circle .
Allison Porter, Sandra Van Fossen, Laura Dicurcio,
Antoinette Kranenburg, Elizabeth Fox .
Susan Shearouse, Lisa Zoppetti, Jeanne Feeney, Robin Carnes, Sally Craig, Laura Delaney, Bettie Deen, Clair Oaks, Lois Taylor-Holsey and Elizabeth Friberg .

There is undeniable power in the shape of the circle. It is one of the fundamental energy patterns in the natural world. Circles collect and focus energy. We sit facing one another, mirroring one another, no one higher or more prominent. Women facing inward. The roundness of our circle reflects the roundness in our bodies. There is no outward diversion, no distraction from the focus on one another and ourselves. Circles are soothing, comforting, and challenging.

Our initiative to start our circle five years ago grew out of many years of exploration in all kinds of groupsconsciousness-raising, support, therapy, twelve-step. By late 1992, we had each established our own individual spiritual practices. We also each had friends with whom we shared some spiritual matters. Yet we still felt a longing within us, a longing for a more intentional community in which to grow spiritually. We discovered that we yearned for communion with other women and the real intimacy that can come from a long-lasting commitment. We wanted a group different from all the others we had been in. It would be a circle. We would sit in a circle and work in a circle, sharing leadership and responsibility for the group.