I had the great fortune of meeting Mary Pierce Brosmer in the way I’d wish to meet everyone: we became a source of listening for each other. This happened a year and a half ago when a colleague brought us together as prospective co-facilitators of a workshop on courage, and because we spent very little time creating content and almost all of our time creating for each other precisely the kind of context we intended to create for those who attended our workshop.

Mary began doing this sort of work 18 years ago when she founded Women Writing for (a) Change, which she describes as a “living system” that inspires women and girls to craft more conscious lives through the art of writing and the practices of community.

I experienced this living system when Mary and her team invited me into a staff meeting, which began with a writing-sharing-and-reflecting practice. In this community, ongoing practices of deep listening are a pre-requisite even for the seemingly mundane tasks of staff meetings and budget reviews. And as a result, this community has endured – and expanded into the relational lives of many thousands of women through a growing number of affiliates around the country – for nearly two decades.

What I have learned from Mary and WWf(a)C is that healthy, sustainable community cannot rely on a single “grand idea.” It requires ongoing practices, rituals, and care of the details: what Mary calls an “operating system” — reliable and replicable for continually inviting people into more conscious community. She shares how this has worked within WWf(a)C in a recent talk, and offers more details in her forthcoming book.