Supple
“Supple” means pliant or flexible: able to bend, move, and change.
Supple Community is a platform dedicated to helping communities restore their suppleness for liberatory social transformation.
The resources here are designed to be co-facilitated by your own team: Supple Community affirms that you are yourselves capable of shaping collective change. You can get started with change together today right where you are.
Supple Community is also a consulting practice. Explore options for consulting contracts tailored to your groups needs here and feel welcome to request a no-cost initial consultation.
Who curates Supple Community?
The resources here on Supple Community are created by Rev. Dr. Anna Mercedes, a Minnesota-based theologian and facilitator. Anna has been teaching in higher education for twenty years, focusing on the intersections of theology, gender and cultural theory, peace studies, and trauma studies. Anna is also a Christian minister, ordained as a Lutheran pastor in the chapel of a Roman Catholic monastic community. She serves in campus ministry and in social movement chaplaincy.
Anna’s theological work aims to raise awareness of ways in which Christian traditions have shaped many deeply embodied social oppressions and, in contrast, to discuss and facilitate ways in which spirituality can offer sustaining capacity for liberating social change, healing, and communal flourishing. Anna’s writing is available in books and in shorter forms. Anna’s PhD is from Drew University, with an STM and MAR from United Lutheran Seminary.
Anna is also a conflict mediator, with a BA focused in Alternative Dispute Resolution from James Madison University. Anna’s conflict consulting takes a restorative, trauma-informed, and mindfulness-based approach. Anna is a qualified neutral under Rule 114 of the Minnesota General Rules of Practice.
Instead of one-to-one trauma healing work, Anna’s focus in trauma healing is on organizational or community-wide healing. Anna applies STAR methodology, having completed Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience or “STAR” training with Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Additionally, Anna offers Mind Body Skills Groups developed by the Center for Mind Body Medicine and brings these skills into consulting work.
Anna is also a student of politicized somatics (with teachers in the lineage of Generative Somatics and Strozzi Institute, especially Minnesota teachers at Root Down Somatics ), Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness (through David Treleaven’s online training courses), and Global Social Witnessing (through the Pocket Project). Through being an active learner of these methods of embodiment and attunement, Anna aims to help groups embody, rather than simply think about, change.
Anna is a second generation facilitator and mediator, shaped by her mother’s inspiring professional career, and Anna is shaped by and always learning from her mighty daughters.
History
The seed idea behind Supple Community began with two college campuses and a vision for inclusive transformation. A large initiative, funded by the Mellon Foundation, enabled the schools to purse a multi-year program for structural change. You can learn more about that exciting initiative here or listen to Anna talk about it here. You can also read our book about doing that work and bringing it to your context!
As one of the co-directors of the initiative, Anna developed two curricula for campus and community participants. The curricula were piloted with around 500 participants from 2019-2022. Those curricula are being edited for wider use and presented here as Agility Groups (called Dialogue Groups during the grant project) and Ground Shift Groups (previously called Contemplative Action Groups).
If you were a member of those initial groups with the Becoming Community Initiative and you are reading this now, heartfelt thanks for participating in these groups and helping them get where they are today. Please tell a friend about the new resources and start another group where you are now!