‘If you must know, let it be flowing and growing.’*

‘Who is your coaching circle – your circles of five or six?’**

Who are those who make it possible for you to know and grow?  Not in some forced way but in the direction of who you are?  Perhaps they’re all in one place, or maybe they’re scattered.

Geography doesn’t define them as much as how they humbly and kindly and caringly challenge – they are not about answers but about questions and possibilities.

What you see on the surface is what lies beneath.

In Alone Together, Sherry Turkle describes how the simulated pressure of a robot hand can lead someone to think the robot cares – we argue that we gain comfort from other creatures with limitations so why not robots?  We even gain comfort from humans whose true motivation is unknown.

‘For [Aaron Edsinger], creating sociable roots is its own adventure.  The robots of the future will be cute, want to hug, and want to help.  They will work alongside people, aware of their presence and wishes.’^

There is nothing simulated about those who make up a circle of knowing, and there is nothing simulated about the awareness they bring to us.

(*Kerry Hillcoat, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)
(**From U.Lab Portobello.)
(^From Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together.)