Walking in our Values

by Roy Lincoln Karp

The planet is heating up and growing more crowded each year, with increasing numbers of climate refugees as well as those fleeing war or oppressive rule. Democratic institutions and values are under assault by authoritarian leaders and movements around the world and in the U.S. We need to make significant changes to the way our society is structured, to transform the economy from one of extractive capitalism rooted in systems of racial oppression to a true commonwealth in which all people have a voice and are treated with dignity.

As we do that work for a better, more equitable world tomorrow, we also need to live our values today. While we advocate for change, we also need to be the change we want to see in the world. The moment we are in calls for creative ways to be in community together, to make decisions that include diverse and dissenting voices, to appreciate the unique gifts each of us brings to the table. One powerful way to do that is through a restorative practice called Circle. 

I can still remember the first Circle I ever participated in. It was held after school in a classroom down the hallway from mine at Social Justice Academy, in the old Hyde Park High School. This was about 2007. What I saw that day made a deep and lasting impression. I saw young people and adults together engaged in the work of creating community and I thought it was wonderful.

At the time, I was running a little non-profit organization I had started called the Civic Education Project. My goal was to get young people engaged in the civic life of their community and give them the skills they needed to think critically about those in power and systems of power. I believed this is what we needed in order to preserve and strengthen democratic values and systems.

I had the why, but then Circles gave me the how. Here was a highly engaging, iterative process for bringing people together to create community built on a foundation of shared values.

For the next several years, I was involved with early efforts to bring Restorative Justice and Circles to the Boston Public Schools along with early adopters at SJA and the Curley K-8 here in JP, and in the juvenile courts. I worked closely with Carolyn Boyes Watson at the Center for Restorative Justice and Janet Connors, known affectionately in the community as “Mama J,” as well as law students from Northeastern who had formed an organization called the Society for Restorative Justice.

One memorable moment from that time was when we held a Circle in the office of the Deputy Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools, Samuel DePina. We wanted him to experience Circle and see it was a way better process for, among other things, addressing behavioral issues in school than suspending and expelling kids from school. 

One of the students there that day was a bright, kind-hearted student of mine who was one of our student leaders in this work. Sensing that the Deputy Superintendent was still not quite getting it, Travis said, “Mr DePina, think of it like this. If traditional discipline is like garbage, then Restorative Justice is like recycling. Kids get to stay in school.” Afterwards, Travis said the analogy just occurred to him then and there.

Several years later, I had the opportunity to build an alternative high school in Lowell from the ground up. We used Circles and other restorative practices to engage young people in Lowell who were facing significant barriers to education. We knew we had to build trust with our students. In many cases, the adults in their lives had not been there for them, had let them down, so they had good reasons to not trust adults. So we did everything in our power to earn their trust and develop strong relationships with them. Circle was a huge part of how we did this.

I have also used these practices in my personal life. The restorative mindset has changed the way I navigate my way through the world and how I approach people and situations. It has also helped me respond to conflict and harm when it occurs.

I have countless examples of this, but I will share one of them with you today. We were in the Intermediate Care Program at Children’s Hospital with Lucy, but she was really struggling and had to be emergently moved to the ICU. At some point, during our 48 hours in the ICP, the attending physician made a joke that was deeply offensive and hurtful for personal reasons. 

It was one of our scariest moments as parents as our daughter was fighting for her life. Even after she recovered and came home, I was still thinking about the comment made by the doctor and how insensitive it was. My wife suggested I let it go, but I wanted to use my restorative skills to work. I reached out to the doctor and requested a phone call. During the call, I told her the story from my perspective and she understood immediately how deeply hurtful her words had been. She apologized sincerely and said she was grateful that I had the courage to share this with her, to give her the opportunity to learn from her mistake.

That all took about 10 minutes, but then she asked how my daughter was doing and we ended up talking for close to an hour about our experiences caring for medical complex children, which is of course what brought us together in the first place. I got off the call feeling good. I was no longer angry or upset; I had said my peace and received an authentic apology.

Now my favorite part of the story is actually the coda. A few months later, our daughter was unfortunately admitted to Children’s Hospital yet again. This time she did not require ICU level care, but did have to be admitted to the pulmonary floor, where she was a frequent flier. And of course, who should walk in the door as the attending physician on duty, the same doctor from the ICP. 

Now if we had not had our restorative conversation, I would have been triggered.  I would have been right back in that highly stressful moment when I was harmed by her words. I probably would have demanded a different attending physician. But it was the very opposite. When we saw one another, we greeted each other warmly and hugged. I had no anger toward her, only a feeling of connection and mutual affection. That is the healing power of restorative practices.

Circles are really the heart of Restorative Justice, pumping life into the work. But when you do this work, the restorative practices start to circulate in all aspects of your life. They begin to shape the way you understand the world, treat people with whom you interact, plan and run meetings, and navigate conflict. And, as my example from Children’s Hospital shows, they also help you respond to harm in a way that truly heals.

One of the most important lessons I have learned from Restorative Justice work is that we cannot control what other people do. We can only control our own actions and words. As Mama J likes to say, “When we walk in our values, they radiate into the world.” 

And when we walk in our values, others see us and want to walk with us. Let us walk together in our shared values of love and compassion, justice and beloved community. Let’s work together to create the kind of world we want to live in, not in some distant future, but right here, right now.

This piece was modified from a sermon given by Roy Karp at First Church in Jamaica Plain, Unitarian Universalist, August 3, 2025. Below is a Values poster made by students in Roy’s “Circle Up for the WIN” class at Watertown Middle School.