Circles Session 6
Persist
Damn if this work isn’t hard, our task towering
The fire of activism—on the front lines, in the belly
Standing for justice, for health, for the sacred
We don’t have to do this alone
🎵 Welcome Tune (optional)
She Persisted by Gina Chavez
🌱 Opening
Read 1 poem or quote from this section to open.
💫 Check-in
Prompt: A wordless check-in—share your name + a physical expression of what the word “persist” means to you. Then “popcorn” to someone else. (Circle leader should go first and model this. Invite everyone to “echo” each physical expression.
☀️ Discussion
Move through 3 generous questions, ensuring everyone has a chance to share.
What do you find to be critical fuel for persistence? Where/how do you get it?
What content or insight in this section stoked fire in your belly?
What values do we need to bring into or nourish in this work? What values do we need to release or root out? What values do we need to recover from older/ancestral ways of knowing?
📓 Journal prompt
Offer the following journal prompt, for those who may want to reflect and write between this session and the next one.
Prompt: What would you take on, if you knew you’d have the winds of persistence at your back?
🔧 Workplace Exploration (optional)
First, revisit the prompt from the last session.
Prompt: Was anyone able to take up the workplace exploration prompt from our last session, on finances? What did you learn?
Then, offer this next prompt for exploration between this session and the next one. (You may also want to email/message it.)
Prompt: Read your organization’s values, mission, vision, and/or purpose through a climate lens. (If these don’t exist, consider the informal values that guide your organization.) What feels in alignment with a just and livable future? What might need to evolve?
🌙 Closing
Read 1 poem or quote from this section to close. (You can either select and read the poem/quote, or you can invite a member of your group to.)
Additional Resources
For those who may wish to watch/listen further—now or down the road—we’ve curated a couple resources related to this section of All We Can Save. Please share these with your Circle after the session.
🎧 Changing Woman: One Navajo’s Fight for a Just Energy Transition podcast episode from A Matter of Degrees (via Apple, Spotify, anywhere you listen to podcasts)
📺 The Bad Math of the Fossil Fuel Industry TED Talk by Tzeporah Berman
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