Schools of the Heart
What are the places that teach you how to find companions -- and to be one?
As we conclude this month’s focus on the thresholding skill “Claiming Companions,” I’m thinking about the importance of place and how I depend on some places more than others to foster the trust that companionship needs and breeds.
Sociologists sometimes talk about “third place” or “third space” as neither our home nor our workplace (our first and second place, respectively) but as additional places that offer a sense of belonging shared with others. The park down the street. The coffee shop on the corner. The sanctuaries where we gather in communities of faith. The public beach or plaza or forest. The art museum. The riverfront. The pavilion at the end of the bike trail.
I like to think of these as the “schools of the heart” that Canadian theologian Jean Valier named as increasingly important in times of confusion and brokenness. “Schools of the heart,” Valier said, are “intermediaries between people and society” that teach us to “love intelligently” and help us “grow to greater wholeness.” They are places where we experience belonging deeply enough to learn how to share it with others.
“Schools of the heart” teach us to “love intelligently” and help us “grow to greater wholeness.”
Jean Valier
Last week, I was reminded of one such “school of the heart” that has been important to me. The Christine Center, host and sponsor of my annual writing retreat, is a place where I go to encounter nature, myself and others. Situated in central Wisconsin’s blend of fields and forest, it offers a warm and welcoming retreat center and a variety of housing options, including about a dozen hermitages of different sizes and characters, all nestled in a forest where fireflies hoover outside the screened porches on a summer’s night. It is a unique place where solitude and community meet and where faith, creativity and nature come together. Where I have enjoyed the peace of my own hermitage while also encountering new and longtime companions in deep if sometimes brief exchanges and where nature itself opens its arms to companion all visitors.
I’ve come alone and I’ve come with writing companions, to focus on a new project or to finish a manuscript for a publisher’s deadline. I’ve come with my dog to discern the next steps in my life and ministry. I’ve come to lead retreats and to participate in them. And with each of these different purposes, I’ve experienced the generous hospitality of the staff and volunteers who keep this holy place going. I’ve experienced the sacred silence of meditating with others in the chapel. I’ve been awestruck at night by the stars and the darkness that makes them visible, and in daylight, by the summer wildflowers or autumn colors, by the snow-blanketed fields in winter or the invitation of paints and fresh paper in the art studio in any season.
I’ve been delighted by the many paths marked “The Way” and the many shrines tucked into the forest and fields waiting for wanderers to find them.
I tell you all this, because last week, as I walked the paths at the Christine Center and again experienced the marvel of a new circle of companions as it formed and dispersed, I was keenly aware of the beauty and the power of this place and others like it – and of their inevitable fragility. Threshold times, by their nature, mean some of the places, organizations, communities and institutions that we cherish and might have taken for granted, may not last through the changes now occurring. Churches and theatres, restaurants and retreat centers. Many of these are hanging on by a shoestring and some have already closed their doors. And I’m convinced that these organizations and places devoted to helping us to experience kinship, to discover and build trust with others and with Nature, are the same ones we need most as we live through great change.
COVID has taught me not to take life – or my loved ones – for granted. And climate change teaches me daily not to take nature, its ecosystems and its many species, for granted. Now I’m also reminding myself not to take communities, places and organizations for granted. I’m asking myself: what are the places and communities that have companioned me through times of great change – and what am I willing to do to help them adapt, survive and even thrive as we are all transformed? We can support these places in many ways – as participants in their programs, as donors and volunteers, and as fans who help spread the word so that others might discover these schools of the heart, too.
Make your own list of cherished places or communities that have companioned you through change. And consider: what will you do to help them survive and participate in change and to grow with you through these threshold times? How might you companion them as they also companion you?
What “schools of the heart” have taught you how to find companions and how to companion others? Where have you experienced belonging deeply enough to learn how to share it with others? How will you now help these places to survive, to change and to thrive in threshold times?
If you wish to experience the Christine Center with me, whether you’ve been there many times or never before, I hope you’ll attend the weekend fall equinox retreat I’m leading there in September: “A New Balance: Trusting a World in Motion.” The retreat is part of “A Year of Living with Change,” which has offered monthly online programs and an earlier in-person spring retreat at Prairiewoods Center (another retreat center dear to my heart!), and it is open to all. Whether you’ve attended any of the earlier programs or not, and whether you’ve read my book, Trusting Change or not, you are welcome to join the circle of community that we will form at the Christine Center as we discover “A New Balance.” Your participation will support your flourishing in changing times – and the Christine Center’s.
Finally, I remind you that the month of August is a planned month of a different rhythm here at Threshold Times. Subscribers will received guest posts from Juliana Keen and Justin Schroeder. And in lieu of our usual online gatherings, I encourage you to pause and enjoy summer’s many tastey and tangible fruits. Or, choose a Threshold Times post from a previous month (possibly this one), share it with a friend and find time to explore your thoughts about it with each other.
Come September, I’ll be back with new reflections on the next thresholding skill, “Moving On.”
With best wishes,
Karen