These are the agreements that make a STIR gathering possible. They are what we each carry so that the night can hold all of us. Please read them before you ask for an invitation. If they feel like something you can hold with us, you are welcome here.
The STIR Agreements
- We begin together. The story starts when it starts, and it starts with whoever is in the room. Arriving on time is the first thing we give each other. If something goes sideways on your way here, text me so I am not wondering, and I will let you know whether there is still a way in.
- We are guests of this neighborhood. Being in right relationship with my neighbors is what allows these gatherings to keep happening, so I am conscious of not filling up the street so their guests have nowhere to park. Please park hree cars deep in the driveway, then along the street in front of my house behind them (4-5 cars fit here). If all that is full, then please park by the school field fence on 15th and walk the 5 houses down. Carpool where you can, and let your arriving and your leaving be gentle on the block.
- This is a home, not a rented room. You are coming into the place where I live, and I want it to feel that way. Shoes come off at the door and go on the rack in the hallway or the laundry room. Treat this house with the same care you would want for your own, and it will hold us well.
- We leave our phones at the door. There is a charging station at the front, and that is where phones spend the evening. A story cannot hold a room that is half somewhere else, and nothing pulls a person out of the circle faster than a screen. If you are on call, or you have a kid at home, or there is anything you need to stay reachable for, tell me when you arrive and we will make sure you can step away and check.
- Bring what you are asked to bring. Every gathering asks for something: a piece of food, an object, a phrase. You will know what it is well before the night. This is not a formality. The story gets built out of what walks in the door, and the part you carry in is the part only you can give.
- Feed the story. A story shaped by everyone needs everyone. Come ready to engage, to play, to put something in, even when you are not sure it is any good. What we make will only ever become what it becomes because you fed it. There is no audience here, only the communal circle.
- Make room, and take room. Watch your own airtime with affection rather than anxiety. If you have been speaking a lot, let the next voice in. If you have been holding back, come forward. Both are generous acts, and most of us are better at one than the other.
- Ask before you touch. We are often close together here, and touch can be a beautiful part of that. Ask first, and let a “no” land easily the first time it is spoken. A “no” that is received well is what makes a yes worth anything.
- We tend the house together. I spend hours making this house clean and welcoming before you arrive, and I do it gladly. Please help me leave it that way. We open the space together and we close it together, and when there is food, the kitchen is never one person’s job to clean up.
- Photographs and video only if we all agree. So that everyone can be as unguarded as this night asks, we check in before any kind of recording. I will likely ask whether anyone minds an audio recording, or a photo for marketing, and it happens only if every single person in the room is willing.
- What is made here is ours. The story belongs to the room that made it. Carry home whatever you learned about yourself, and leave other people’s parts of it here, with us.
A Note About Contributions
Everything I had went into this house: into buying it, into all the supplies, and into renovating it as a place where people could gather. I would make that choice a hundred times over, and I am glad every single time someone walks through the door. It is also a choice that keeps asking, in mortgage payments and heat and in the hours of cleaning and designing and preparing that happen long before you arrive.
However you come to this gathering, and whatever you are able to bring, you are welcome here. A contribution is not a price and it is not a ticket. It is a share in the keeping of a place that belongs to everyone who gathers in it.
Whatever you bring is received with gratitude. If you come and sit with us and find you have received more than you gave, you can support the sanctuary any time. And if you are well resourced, consider giving to the Pay It Forward Fund, which makes room for people for whom cost is a barrier. That is how the door widens.
There are other ways to hold this place too. Come to a gardening day. Tell someone about the sanctuary when they are looking for a room to gather in, or about a circle that might be theirs. And the one that matters most to me: become part of this community, and keep coming back. A sanctuary is not a building. It is the people who keep showing up in it.