Photo by Mahad Aamir on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking about circles and the ways they provide spaces of beauty, nurture, and life.

Some of my most formative, life-giving, sacred memories happened when I was sitting around a circle. Not in straight rows, not one-on-one, but in a circle. There were camp chairs or blocks of wood, benches, or floor pillows so some people were sitting higher or lower but no one was outside the circle. Both men and women sat in the various circles, people of many ages and life experiences.

A physical object is usually in the center of the circle. We sit around Sunday lunch or a tray of nachos or a crackling fire or a coffee table with a candle and tea. The object in the center isn’t our sole focus, but it gives us a hub to gather around and something to watch if we feel twitchy and unable to meet someone’s eye.

A circle says everyone matters, every voice is valuable–even the voice that would otherwise stay quiet. No one can hide, and it’s safe enough that no one wants to hide. The circle includes, expands, takes in, listens, responds. In these spaces, there’s one conversation happening that everyone contributes to, not splattered clusters of discussions, although those also have value. The words I carry away with me often begin with:

What I hear you saying is….

Have you considered…?

What if…?

You need to know….

I never thought of…in that way.

I heard Jesus say…

I remember circles with gales of rollicking laughter that helped set my world right again. I remember deep questions with long silences. I remember thoughtful observations and poetry read. Food is always a nice feature, and tissues for tears are essential. I remember advice given to me that I could hand to someone else in turn. What’s spoken was usually simple but valuable because it was born out of experience.

To be clear: not all circles are life-changing. Sometimes the conversation is about the lettuce in the garden or the housing market or wall paint. I don’t love small talk, but I’ve learned to try hard to engage even there because it gives me data for conversations with those people in the future. Small talk is a window into what they care about and it establishes trust and safety. (Read The Six Conversations by Heather Holleman for more ideas and guidance about conversations.)

When you’re done with small talk, the real enjoyment and life-giving exchanges happen with good questions.

What have you been processing lately?

What’s big for you next week?

Are you happy?

What are your dreams for the next 10 years?

These are the kinds of questions that enable knowing and being known, a level of intimacy everyone hungers for. These questions went deep fast in the circles I’ve sat in recently. I love that circles are a recurring theme of my story. I blogged about it here before and probably will again.

You can choose a favorite question to keep in your back pocket for the next circle you encounter.

Laurence Koo, board member of Authentic Intimacy, teaches that humans were created for five levels of intimacy:

1. intellectual (exchanging and pushing around on ideas)
2. emotional (friendship, banter, camaraderie)
3. spiritual (sharing what we know and learn and love about God)
4. physical (hugs, sharing personal bubbles)
5. sexual (one man and one woman in marriage)

People live whole, full lives without sexual intimacy (thousands have, over the centuries), but people cannot flourish without those first four levels of intimacy. However, when someone has vacancies in any of those first four aspects, they’re more vulnerable to sexual sin.

I’m an unmarried woman at 50 without a date. Multiple formal and informal circles provide those first four levels of intimacy for me, and I dream for everyone to have the same opportunity to flourish and develop.

But here’s the rub. Circles don’t usually show up at your fire ring uninvited. Only fairies and mushrooms do that. To engage in those facets of intimacy, you have to be intentional and risk and give up significant control and autonomy. To be part of a circle might mean you plan, invite, or host to make it happen instead of stay tidy and cozy at home.

You don’t usually just happen onto a circle. You choose to linger when it might be easier to leave an event early. You choose to engage when it would be easier to stay aloof. You choose to ask questions and be awake to who is around you and what they’re saying.

So start small and fun: a shared activity like a walk or work or art project or birthday to celebrate. Find a common interest like poetry or bird watching or thrifting. Start light and breezy, not heavy and ponderous.

Ask God to give you circles to be part of. It was His idea in the first place, that you thrive in community with other voices contributing to your life. He cares about the circles you sit in. I can trace His mysterious, light fingerprints in the way He arranges the circles I’ve been part of. It was clearly His arranging, not mine, but it was on me to be aligned with what He was up to.

Loneliness is an epidemic in the West, and loneliness doesn’t go away when someone gets married. That means everyone needs to find ways to live well in our common experience of being lonely, separate, other.

So let’s learn how to hold the weight of loneliness without crumpling. Let’s find places—circles—to offer companionship, understanding, presence that offers an antidote to crippling, suffocating loneliness.

This doesn’t mean that we should desperately chase after circles so that we’ll never be lonely again. In an ironic turn, I’ve found that when I’m most at peace in solitude, I am most ready to contribute and receive from the bounty of a circle.

Circles are gifts to receive, not rights to demand. But isn’t it good of God to give such lovely gifts?