Supple
“Supple” means pliant or flexible: able to bend, move, and change.
Supple Community is a platform dedicated to helping our communities restore their suppleness for structural change towards social justice, inclusion, and healing.
The resources here are designed to be co-facilitated by your own team: Supple Community affirms that you are yourselves capable of shaping change. You can get started with change together today right where you are. If support would help you get started, reach out at anna@supplecommunity.org with questions.
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 half hour 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 Christian theology, gender and cultural theory, peace studies, and trauma studies. Anna is also a 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 applies STAR methodology (based in 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 also studies in politicized somatics (with teachers in the lineage of Generative Somatics and Strozzi Institute) and helps 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 three mighty daughters.
Note from Anna: Invitation to Collaborate
I offer the group resources on this platform freely: I want to empower your group to get started with structural change with no cost barrier. I will also offer occasional “Supple Community Classroom” webinars at no cost on this platform to support those who are using the resources. I’ll announce those by email to Supple Community members (so join for free here!).
I also invite consulting contracts to help your group become more supple for change.
Reach out to me at anna@supplecommunity.org.
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!