Introducing... 7 Cups Sharing Circles!

@Gardenyarn Standard 7 Cups time is US Eastern time. There's a converter for your local time zone here: 7 Cups Date and Time

(The web servers for www.7cups.com appear to be in Oregon, where the time is US Pacific time, but that has no real significance.)

Charlie

that sounds good

@Heather225

Great idea!

@Heather225

Sounds amazing! Can't wait! :)

@Heather225

When do the circles start and where will the schedule appear hopefully with an announcement.

@Heather225

This is a wonderful idea...

Uh what's this why am I so new

@Heather225 That's great idea iloved it

This is fantastic and very good for everyone

@Heather225

sounds awesome!! great idea, much love

Sounds intriguing!

How is everyone doing today?

@Heather225 sounds great!

Quick question- why do these discussions talk about higher powers?

I was going to join but then I saw that and the prayer and decided I wouldn't join since I'm atheist.

@goldenDog9992

We conduct sharing circles in the tradition of other support groups like Alcohol Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous. These groups have helped millions of people and we believe they can help people in our community as well. These groups refer to a Higher Power. We use the word Love as love is a neutral term.

"Prayer" is not used in this mantra.

@goldenDog9992 The mantra at the beginning can seem similar to what prayer is. However it does not mention God or a higher power at all. It says "love" which is what we are all providing one another by helping each other through trying times. I am agnostic but I still attend the sharing circles on a fairly regular basis. I assure you that there is nothing preachy about them, only people there to support one another. I do hope you will give it another try and just think of the mantra as a way to get our attention that it's starting and to put you in the headspace to be open to listen and help others within our 7 cups community.

@Heather225

That's really amazing! , love this !!

I'm getting a lot out of these circles. They give me a concrete anchor of sorts for me to be here and active and interested at a set time each and every day. More importantly, they make good use out of the Support Room in a capacity that gives multiple people 5 minutes each to vent or speak freely about what might be bothering them.

This is one of those changes that I think will be tweaked or maybe even vastly revised with time as no plan survives contact with the enemy (enemy in this context not be seen as literally the enemy).

I would suggest maybe adding SMART recovery to the list of sources of inspiration as it does not draw from or make any references to higher powers and is a strictly secular organization. I did my facilitator training with them some time ago and find them to be transparent and fairly controversy free organization.

@Heather225
Awesome!

good

I caught my first Sharing Circle this week, and it worked very well and the room was really ... well, wholesome! I just had one point of feedback that threw me off a bit. When explaining the chat at the beginning, suggestions are given for responses, such as Sorry to hear that. These are given with abbreviations, so: STHT (sorry to hear that). The abbreviations throw me off a bit, because when I am entering the chat, I see quite a lot of abbreviations that I am not familiar with. Also, it seems less friendly. I believe that in the listener guidelines it used to say not to use abbreviations. (I tried to check the group chat rules, which link to the listener guidelines. This link gives me an error: item removed. So I couldn't check). I suppose it's a conscious choice that was made, and I wonder if it bugged others as well?

@OpenWindow

In the context of sharing circles, the plan seems to be trying to ensure that the focus is on allowing the person to share the space to do just that. If we have a lot of questions or longer comments, the sharing gets lost in the mix. Hence the emphasis is on shorter comments in the model that they've provided that don't derail the sharing with questions and other comments that tend to cause a loss of focus.

I attend the evening sharing circle fairly regularly and about the only abbreviation I've seen is, "ODAT" or one day at a time. Have you attended the evening or morning circle?

@DaveMcGrath Hey Dave, thank you getting back to me so quickly! Probably it was the morning routine - I am based in Europe and it was afternoon for me haha. Also, thank you for explaining the reason behind opting for abbreviations! Perhaps the abbreviations are just something to get used to, and the Mod did explain the abbreviations every time a new person started sharing. Perhaps I am alone in feeling this was a bit of a barrier. As long as no one else is bothered by it, I am content :).

@OpenWindow

I for one wouldn't object to you using entire words. Though, I'm an English teacher by trade and acronyms drive me bonkers in most use cases. Just try to keep your comments to a few words to ensure you aren't distracting the focus away from the person sharing or distracting the person sharing.

@Heather225 how do I join this?

@Heather225

Wow this is awesome

@Heather225

I need this.