For the last six weeks, it’s been incredible to learn from the power of circle. Our Week 5 Sunday Laddership Circle was no exception yesterday.

The theme-of-the-week was Systems,and as we flowed from our check in to open-mic convo to closing reflections, it was beautiful to witness the wellspring of angles and perspectives around such a topic unfold one after the other.

From Poonam's intention to connect with love in all places to Deven's reminder of the bigger picture to connect with a higher self, Geet's serendipitous experiences in trust and various forms of capital as she moved homes, Natasha’s experiments bringing sacred into money and sitting with unknowns (rather than acting right away) at work, Neha’s birthday wish to sit in silence with her family, Joel’s questions of inviting patience in changing systems and what service really is, Kozo’s lesson from a letter from Mother Teresa to love both rich and poor, Nipun’s spectrum of helping, fixing, serving, and offering, Nicole keeping us on track with beautiful closing reflections, and everything in-between and beyond!

Some excerpts from the convo:

Joel: We were talking about the systems that are in the world this week. For me, we don't often look at certain systems like how philanthropy and fundraising show up in the world. Those are strong systems that have a history and they’re done in a very certain way. … In fundraising and philanthropy, you have to do it this way because that’s the way it is. A whole lot of fundraising and philanthropy are based on this idea that you have to have huge sums of money… and I think this is kind of disabling. Poverty takes on all kinds of forms. To address poverty as an issue, it doesn’t take a huge amount of money; it takes a lot of different kinds of resources. How do we transform our ideas about philanthropy and fundraising?

Geet: While moving this week, I experienced social capital full-on. Someone who was helping us move came with this group of 2 people. They had committed to 2 hours, but it ended up being 5-6 hours. And it turned into conversations-- they taught us Spanish, it was such a fun thing. And then we fed them chai, which they’d never had before. The relationship building was fascinating to see. When the time came for me to write the check for this guy, he said, “Oh, I can’t charge you too much. We’ll skip the gas and fuel.” And I thought, Oh, in that case, we’ll just do our bit and add a little more so we can support you, because I know how it feels to receive that generosity.

Natasha: When it came to inviting sacredness into the way that we relate to money, I had a practice this week where whenever I was in a situation of either giving or receiving money, I asked myself how can I create an alternative form of capital at the same time? So, if I was going to pay for something at the grocery store, could I create some kind of community connection, or could I give in some other way? Could I create some other form of wealth? For example, when people came by to pick up a payment at our workplace, I actually walked them to the car and had a conversation with them, as opposed to just rushing on to the rest of my day. I realized creating conversations was a big way for me to be able to give. Or I found myself asking questions about, “What’s going on with you?” and really listening deeply for ways I could give back to them that wasn’t about money. In email exchanges, if I was talking about a price negotiation, I included another way that we as a business could be of service to them, and just really wanted to highlight that at the same time. I’ve noticed that when we’re in this transaction with money, we tend to have this view that it’s isolated—that nothing else can happen at the same time. And I really wanted to break my own conditioning to that.

Neha: Two weeks back, around my birthday, my mother-in-law in Germany asked, “What is your wish?” I wrote her and said, “I’d really love for when we come to Germany, our entire family sits for an hour or silence together.” She said, “Wow, no one’s ever asked for that. We would love to do that.”

Deven: I was reminded of Vinoba Bhave’s approach to with his "Bhoodan" (land-gift) Movement, where “everything belongs to God,” we’re just trustees here… He’s created this kind of work around this thought that if we really design our economic, political and social systems with that at the center-- that our final goal is not just to feed the hungry and have our stomachs filled, …but to achieve union of self with the higher self.” “People have a new story, and it’s not going to come from someone on top, it’s going to come from each of us who will create that story.

Nipun: There’s this idea of helping, fixing, and serving. But for me, in my experience, I’ll often offer a fourth one. In serving, we still co-create, but I think there’s a fourth state which is way more powerful than serving, and that’s offering. In offering, it’s almost the opposite—where the giver feels voluntarily indebted to the receiver—where they say, “Thank you for the opportunity to be of service.

Kozo: When I’m faced with questions of “What would I do in this moment? How do I serve? How do I offer?” I find myself asking what would love of humanity do?

Poonam: It’s easy to love people when they have not hurt you, or they’ve not tried to fix or impose something on you. It’s easy to love people like that with just an open heart. But it’s much harder to love people when you’re experiencing any sort of pain and hurt. I think that’s the level I’m going to… How can I still hold these people and these systems as partners toward a common goal? And how can I create the kind of conversations I want to have to actually help me get to that larger goal, as opposed to just saying ‘No, these guys don’t get it.’