Three Circles of Learning

The religious educator Thomas Groome said, "We need a way of knowing that is capable of forming and transforming, as well as informing, people." Often there has been a dichotomy between the head and the heart, what Jim Fowler calls the "rational" and "passional" ways of knowing. When we attempt issue education we often become fixated on facts, public policy debates, and the abstract. We are given massive doses of information, but somehow we are not transformed by it. The three circles provide a framework in which to look at "formation", "information," and "transformation."

Let's look again at the three circles:

The first circle, the personal, is where the process of spiritual formation begins. As we become more centered, we "fill our wells" with spiritual food for the journey.

After reflection, we move to the other side of the balance, toward action. And action occurs first in community, at the interpersonal realm. There is a component of this middle range which requires information about the issues confronting us and tools for decision-making. As the Roman Catholic Bishops said in their Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, "people may agree in abhorring an injustice, for instance, yet sincerely disagree as to what practical approach will achieve justice. Religious groups are as entitled as others to their opinion in such cases, but they should not claim that their opinions are the only ones that people of good will may hold."

Finally, in order to move toward transformation, we need to risk action and risk being changed. In To Know as We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education, Parker Palmer says:

To be educated, to know (knosis) requires us to be challenged to subject our lives to the Word in which we and the world were created. We sense danger in that challenge, because it requires that we stop relying on our own powers and throw ourselves upon a power beyond our own. But this is the "danger" to which faith always calls us, the leap beyond that point where our knowledge claims certainty and gives us control, a leap into that place where we know ourselves to be known and loved by a Spirit who works not toward violence but toward the Peaceable Kingdom. (Palmer, 1993)