First year
Attendance
Weekly observance at one house. A reading list of eleven titles, none of them ours. One residential period. No commitment is asked beyond attendance, and a fellow may withdraw at any point without conversation.
The Fellowship
A commitment to inhabit ordinary life more completely.
The Fellowship is not an escape from ordinary life, and it is not the destination of ordinary participation. Fellows keep their work, their families, and their addresses. Roughly a third do not complete the four years, and the Institute does not regard this as failure.
The Fellowship is optional and uncommon. The great majority of people who take part in the Continuance never apply for it, and nothing in ordinary participation is withheld from those who do not. A member who keeps a rota in a local circle for thirty years and never sets foot in a House is not at an earlier stage of anything.
Second year
Service
A fixed public work commitment, chosen by the fellow and held for the full year. Correspondence with a steward, monthly. The first continuity review.
Third year
Study
Archival work, an extended essay, and a period of voluntary silence of not less than four days. Fellows in the third year may attend closed observances at their own house.
Fourth year
Obligation
The fellow takes responsibility for one thing that will outlast their attention: a rota, a record, a person, a repair. What is taken on in the fourth year is not usually given back.
Terms
There is no fee. Fellows contribute according to a schedule they set themselves with a steward, and the schedule is reviewed annually. Contribution is not a condition of participation, and no record of contribution is held in the same place as the record of participation.
Leaving
A fellow may end the Fellowship by saying so, once, to any steward. No exit interview is conducted. A period of separation may be taken instead, at any length. Former fellows are described in the Record as no longer continuous; the phrase is not intended as a judgement and has been objected to internally since 1993.
What a continuity review consists of
One hour, annually, with a steward who is not the fellow's own. Five things are considered in a fixed order: attendance, obligation, contribution, correspondence, and standing. The fellow speaks first and for as long as they wish. The steward's note is written afterwards, in the fellow's presence where possible, and the fellow may read it that day and may ask for a second note to be entered beside it.
Since 2016 a review may also be held “at other times as required.” Two houses have objected to that clause in writing and the objections are held with the definition on the house vocabulary page, where the earlier wording is also printed.
“If it ever becomes easier to join than to leave, the thing has failed, whatever else is true of it.”
Eleanor Vale, 1981. Read annually at the reconciliation.
Request an introductory conversation
One hour, with a steward, at a house or by telephone. Most people who make this request do not go on to the Fellowship, and the conversation is not arranged on the assumption that they will.