How We Got Here: A Note from Ben
Hello, RCC community! This is Kirstin with greetings on behalf of the Stewardship Circle. Last Friday, we officially said goodbye to our dear Program Director Ben Scott-Brandt, who’s moving on to explore where his heart is leading him next. Ben brought many blessings to our community, and he’s left us with yet more gifts: his heartfelt letter we published last Friday, and the letter below, which is an inspiring overview of where we’ve been together as an organization.
As we lean into the future after a huge leadership transition, we hope you’ll take the time to read Ben’s reflections and consider how you might feel called to support what’s next. You can find e-mail contact information for the Stewardship Circle here, and please mark your calendar for the March 26 Community Call when we’ll gather for updates and open conversation. Thank you for being part of this collaborative community of practice!
The initial proposal paper to the Fetzer Institute, describing the idea for what later became the Retreat Center Collaboration, seemed magical to me when I first read it. The stapled pages seemed to stare back at me from the passenger seat during the long drive home from my summer internship at a retreat center. I resonated deeply with the vision of creating an interwoven network of retreat center leaders, and I longed to be a part of a collaborative effort to understand them and support them by building bridges of connection. What if, instead of creating one sacred space, I could be a part of connecting dozens (now hundreds!) of different spaces to each other?
Over a year later, this longing became a reality, and I joined the team at RCC in December of 2019. As the community grew, the program grew, and my role also grew and shifted. I was delighted to be able to use a wide variety of my skills to build programs and networks that helped to connect gaps across the field. All along the way, I began learning how to hold loosely, to slow down, and to listen to the edges.
As I look back on the past four years, I’m grateful to have been included in exploratory conversations with visionaries and leaders from a diversity of backgrounds and lineages – leaders and elders who shared their passion for the work with me, and invited me to join in both the ‘wonderment’ (Jean Richardson) and the ‘crunchiness’ (Nanci Lee) of collaborative community. I am lucky and honored to belong to this vibrant community, enriched by the deep presence of many colleagues and collaborators over the past four years. Belonging is a special gift – and RCC keeps on giving.
My intention at RCC has been to help create the container for an emergent ‘community of practice.’ In this space, community participants orient around shared core values, participate as both teachers and learners, and reflect collectively on what is emerging between us. We may not have all the answers, but we can find them together.
This posture of curiosity and creativity was crucial when the Covid-19 pandemic arrived (two short months after I started at RCC). As a community of peers facing similar disruptions, RCC experienced the pandemic as an invitation to deepen our interdependent connections. Many leaders stepped forward – too many to name here – and shared resources, encouragement, and words of hope and resilience. We began to build trust, share our gifts and challenges, and open doors to new relationships and partnerships, easing our centers out of isolation, scarcity thinking, and unnecessary competition.
We began to address retreat centers’ roles in perpetuating injustice and inequity, and began to see more clearly how racial healing, land healing, and ancestral healing are all interconnected. The Racial Healing Initiative team began to voice a vision of retreat centers as liberatory spaces where racial healing is embodied, where communities expand their capacity to hold discomfort, and where staff, board, partners and stakeholders collectively commit to equity practices and accountability.
Throughout the past four years, the Retreat Center Collaboration has explored the emergent joys and concerns of our expanding and deepening community, and worked to provide consistent support for retreat center leaders through toolkits, surveys, maps, discussion groups, and gatherings. We’ve also continued to dream together about how this program can best serve retreat centers into the future – supporting the resilience and sustainability of retreat centers, and contributing to a universal flourishing that connects these centers to the land, community, and greater web of life, seen and unseen.
As I step down from my role as program director, I couldn't be more proud of my time here. And I remain deeply grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the “start-up” phase of this incredible community. To each of you whose paths I have crossed, thanks for showing up, for sharing your gifts and talents, and for being open to exploring how we might work together as a retreat center collaboration. My hat’s off to each of you, and I look forward to our paths crossing again!
Ben Scott-Brandt
