A beautiful clear balmy morning in Santa Barbara --

I am continuing to feel this pull -- towards "conjunction" -- towards a kind of intersection of traditions and movements --

My own instincts have been strongly interfaith for years. I am a "spiritual" kind of person -- and I want to see spirit brought into the world, in effective and authentic ways -- and I have always felt that interfaith is the appropriate channel. We need a spirituality that works for everybody -- indeed, a spirit that works "in the public square".

And over the past few years -- I have been introduced to the "circle process" by my women friends here in Santa Barbara -- and through our experience with "resonant circles" in Conscious Evolution. This has been a powerful learning experience for me, as all my complex and ambitious ideas about universal spirituality in an interfaith context were bathed in the soft clear light of the resonant circle. Maybe the "Philosophia Perennis" can be complex -- but circles are simple. There's a powerful message here.

Yesterday, I took the first steps towards writing up what I was calling a "theology of circles". I'm not suggesting that these ideas are original, or particularly innovative -- but what IS new, I think -- is the idea that a clear and conscious and articulate definition of what goes on at the center of a circle -- could have a powerfully transformative effect out there in the real world.

I recently purchased three books on the women's circle movement -- Millionth Circle (Jean Bolen), Calling the Circle (Christina Baldwin) and Sacred Circles (Robin Carnes and Sally Craig). Reviewing these books helps me confirm that my basic ideas are on track. What we are doing here, I would say, is very consistent with the message of these books.

But I do feel something more is called for. Yes, if we take a very soft and unpresuming approach -- we can let the circle process call and create its own theology -- ad hoc, local to the moment, sensitive to "what is bubbling up" -- etc. And this approach might be very wise. The spirit -- cannot be placed in a box. It IS "different every time". That's the essence of its creative vitality.

But still -- it seems to me -- there is something "common to all circle processes". There is a kind of "deep center" -- that always appears. There are universal principles in play.

The way I see it -- it makes a lot of sense to explore these principles, and consider how they might be expressed in a solid way that makes sense in many separate and diversified contexts. It's my feeling -- that this is something we are called to explore -- something the world is aching to understand.

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Yesterday, without trying too hard, I started sketching out an initial approach to this kind of "theology of circle". I want to send my little article to this network this morning, as a starting point for more discussion and connectivity to follow.

In the upcoming months, I expect we will be exploring the relationship between women's circles and interfaith circles. How does the natural openness and graceful bonding of the women's circle process inform and inspire the interfaith circle? How can the interfaith circle confirm and empower and solidify the women's circle? How can -- the indigenous sacred circle process inspire and inform both?

I ask these questions -- because I feel something coalescing. There is a kind of "cosmic networking principle" that wants to emerge. There IS a deep commonality connecting very diverse creative forces -- and for me, this creativity is the hope for a transformed society and global civilization. Diversity IS creative power in the bonded circle context. We are discovering this -- and learning to entrain the energy. It's a skill AND a grace.