Dear Friends,

It is with great excitement that I share with you our inaugural edition of The Circular, our quarterly newsletter from Circles in the Square. As we begin our second year, we have lots of news to report and lots of coming adventures to tempt you.

But before I get to that, I would like to invite you to celebrate our first anniversary with us. We will hold an Open House on Sunday, September 20th from 2–4 pm and would love to have you join us. We will have our fall programs and many of our facilitators on hand, as well as an art exhibition of Doors to the Universe as a feast for the eyes. We hope to see you there!

I have now completed my Master’s degree at the Vancouver School of Theology. Yippee! I enjoyed the learning immensely and best of all, it led me to create Circles in the Square as my field project. In our first year, we have hosted 103 sessions with well over 800 people — about half offerings out into the community and half brought in by neighbourhood groups. I am so very grateful for your support and participation!

I have recently hired a part-time manager, Sebastian Varela, to help move us into sustained growth, and he is already such a blessing in getting this mailing together and creating an updated website. His assistance will allow me to turn some of my attention to an emerging project creating what we are calling Humanity Centres.

Circles in the Square is the prototype for these neighbourhood gathering places for conversation, creativity and collaboration. They are intended to be a response to the breakdown and uncertainty we see all around us. We believe being our most conscious selves in community is essential to humanity’s future — and that both require places where people can gather, explore, and grow together. We currently have two additional centres with more coming in the near future.

We will also host our core Humanity Centres program, Humanity at the Crossroads, for leaders and facilitators of programs, Friday October 23rd to Sunday October 25th, 2026. We invite you to join us at Circles in the Square for a weekend of collective exploration. Please be in touch if you would like to participate.

We are currently putting together our Fall 2026 lineup at Circles in the Square, and hope you will join us as a participant, lead a workshop or community gathering, or suggest what we might offer that would enhance your own humanity. You can see what we’ve planned so far on our website, with many more to be added as we go. Here are a few to tempt you…

Hope to see you soon.

With love,
Susan