Wisdom Group Leadership Training Part I: Skilled Leadership Perspective

This is the first in a series of four articles by Bill Redfield about the Wisdom Group Leadership Training offered November 29 ~ December 3, 2017. This practical training in skillful post-holding, including ‘embodying the wealth of Wisdom’s vision’ and developing group skills for greater integration, will take place at Hallelujah Farm in Chesterfield New Hampshire.

Before I begin my pitch, allow me to introduce myself and our team to you. The Wisdom path started for me when I met Cynthia 27 years ago and when I began a practice of Centering Prayer. As an Episcopal priest and clinical social worker, I have long been interested in the intersection of spiritual development and psychological development. I reconnected with Cynthia ten years ago and since then have been a participant in her Advanced Wisdom group. Having spent a chunk of my adult life leading groups of various kinds and teaching group process and group development in several graduate social work and graduate education programs, the upcoming training in leadership skills for Wisdom groups represents for me a confluence of life interests.

Lois Barton
Lois Barton
Deborah Welsh
Deborah Welsh

I have had the great good fortune of being able to work with two dear friends over the past four years. Sister Lois Barton is an experienced spiritual director and teacher who has lived in community for almost fifty years. A gentle spirit, Lois is a steady loving presence who brings grounding to our team. Lois also has participated in Cynthia’s Advanced Wisdom group. Deborah Welsh is a skilled Dance/Movement and Body/Breath sensing and awareness practitioner and teacher. To this work she brings decades of experience as a therapist and trainer. Deborah is the principle creator of the Wisdom of the Body portion of our Wisdom work. While the three of us also work separately, we have deeply enjoyed our partnership in leading Wisdom Schools over the past several years, and we look forward to working together in this upcoming training. Let me also, then, say a word about that. 

Because there are some who, as a result and response to their own training and growth in Wisdom Schools, want to organize and lead Wisdom practice groups in their home communities. To equip these “Wisdom post-holders,” we will be offering a training at Hallelujah Farm in West Chesterfield, NH from Wednesday, November 29 through Sunday, December 3, 2017. The details of this training can be found here.

crocus in the snowHow wonderful it is to gather with a small group of spiritual seekers to share silence and spiritual practice. Like a lush and verdant oasis in a parched desert, participation in a Wisdom Practice Circle restores the depth of our spiritual life and sustains us on our path. And from the outside it may seem easily done, right? Find a quiet and out of the way room, arrange the chairs in a circle, and have your bell bowl at the ready to signal the beginning and end of periods of silence. If you want to get a little more complicated, you could add a chant or two and/or introduce a little lectio divina.

And while I wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from doing just that, I would want to suggest that leadership of a Wisdom Practice Circle is actually more than that. It affords the opportunity to skillfully guide participants to and through a life-changing transformational process. And, yes, while there are certainly contemplative practices that can be taught and shared (and these will be introduced in our training), the most skilled leadership will place these practices in a Wisdom context that will illuminate both their purpose and their implications. This skilled leadership perspective will be, therefore, both vast and deep; leaders will thoroughly understand not just the means of an accumulation of various contemplative practices, but also embody the wealth of Wisdom’s vision; and leaders will have a quiver-full of group skills that will deepen group formation and participation.

Woman thinking sculptureThis residential experiential learning event will present both the contextual underpinning of the Wisdom practice movement as well as a thorough presentation and practice of specific leadership skills for leading Wisdom circles and practice groups. While we will begin with a suggestion of what human Wisdom development might be in this current age and how the Wisdom movement directly addresses this present human challenge, this training will then move directly into the practical demands and realities of Wisdom group leadership. Not only will we catalogue some of the current expressions of Wisdom groups (e.g., chanting groups, Gospel Thomas groups, book study groups, and, of course, Wisdom Schools), but we will also present, demonstrate, and practice some of the specific group leadership skills that will be demanded in each of these groups. Besides setting forth a unique perspective of the Wisdom post-holder as group leader and delving into some of energetic realities subtly present in this work, this training will also suggest a marriage between Wisdom spirituality and more traditional group dynamics theory.

Open_doorWhile many present iterations of Wisdom practice groups are nearly exclusively experiential, eschewing nearly all discourse or conversation, I will be arguing that actually it is the right mix of experience and reflection of that experience that provides the necessary ingredients for the deeper integration of Wisdom into the self-system. Otherwise we encourage the collection of preferred states without building enduring stages. But how do you open the doors to group interaction and conversation without losing that sense of present moment awareness? That’s where skilled leadership comes in…

In the next few writings I will highlight some of the issues that we will be sorting out and practicing in this training. Stay tuned!

For more information about Bill Redfield and Lois Barton please see ‘Our Teachers’ page.

All third party images are public domain courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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