Circles

DaVinci's Vitruvian Man

Job 22:14 "Thick clouds cover Him, so that He cannot see,  And He walks above the circle of heaven."

This past week I was called into a local congregation to mediate a church conflict.  An open meeting to discuss the matter had been set up and the church leadership decided that instead of sitting around tables, they would place chairs in a circle.  A small altar with a Christ Candle was placed in the middle.
 

As people began to arrive for the meeting, it became clear we didn't have enough chairs set up and so people backed up, and re-arranged until about 40 people were seated in one large circle.  Except for two.  One couple (who I knew were threatening to leave the congregation because of the conflict), sat at one of the tables in the hall, directly behind my place in the circle.  They were invited to come into the circle by the pastor and several church members.  Their response was one of the oddest I've heard.
 

While they could have said, "We want to take notes and need a table," or simply, "We prefer to stay here," what the wife said was "We don't like circles."  How very, very odd.   I mean, I was no fan of 30-60-90 triangles in geometry class, but how do you not like circles? 
 

The circle is one of the most basic forms.  In Leonardo daVinci's famous sketch of Vitruvian Man (pictured here), he is visually portraying the fact that the human body is in perfect proportion to both the circle and the square.  In it's 3-D version as a sphere it is the shape of our planet and across religions you'd be hard-pressed not to find the circle used as a symbol in some way.  If the couple had not been directly behind me, I would have been scanning them for things like...oh...wedding rings or other circles that they might have been wearing.
 

What they meant, of course, was that sitting in a circle was uncomfortable for them.  They wanted the barrier of the table between themselves and others, and the circle has no such barriers.  When people are seated in a circle, there is no apparent hierarchy or authority.  Everyone is equal.  In a circle you can see everyone at once, full-bodied, and you are literally face to face with everyone else. 

A circle is a unity...if anyone leaves it, it is no longer complete, and for some reason the image of a broken circle is much sadder than a broken square.  When people stand together and hold hands in a natural fashion, you make a circle by default, no matter if there are ten people or a million.  Some of the people would have to stand in a very awkward and uncomfortable fashion to make a square.
 

Their table served its purpose.  Although I know they had some of the strongest opinions in the room, the woman spoke vaguely just once or twice and the man not at all.  Most seated in the circle spoke to the issue, from the youngest to the oldest, and on all sides of the question.  It was a frank but healthy discussion punctuated with both laughter and concern, for which many expressed thanks afterwards.
 

I can't presume to know what God thinks about circles (although my geometry grades show little evidence of divine interest), but I do know that when the people of God gather, whether it is in worship or in conflict, the space we occupy and the positioning of ourselves to one another play a role in what happens.  We subconsciously learn things about what and who is important by how our space is structured and where we are within it.  We make statements about how open we are to the ideas an opinions of others, about who is allowed to speak, who should remain silent, and how unified we are in the geometry of our gatherings.
 

I suspect the couple at the table will leave the church and find one with a more suitable geometry.  If I were that pastor and congregation, that would make me very sad.  But I would not give up the circle.