Circles 2026

2026 Circle Series — An Invitation

Join me in 2026 for a year of shared reflection, study, and slow wandering.

At the heart of this series is a monthly reflective practice gathering:

틈 (Teum): Where Thought Finds Breathing Room
Meeting on the first Saturday of each month, 틈 is a gentle, recurring pause—a space to sit with questions, notice what is shifting, and practice reflection without urgency. These gatherings will take place in coffee shops around Gwangju, and occasionally elsewhere in Jeolla, as energy and curiosity guide me.

Alongside this monthly rhythm, three additional circles meet once each quarter, each offering a different way of thinking-with place, pedagogy, and practice.

  • In January, I begin with The Afterword Circle, a winter practice focused on art discovery in Gwangju—attending to what lingers after the main text, the exhibition, the season.
  • In February, KoreaMaria Tea Time Workshops open as a quarterly space to ruminate on lived pedagogy: teaching lives, accumulated wisdom, and the quiet labor of meaning-making.
  • In March, a third quarterly circle begins: Meet-Me-in-the-Middle, an invitation to study Korean language and philosophy while traveling to different locations across Jeollanamdo, letting place think alongside us.

These circles are not courses.
They are pauses. Thresholds. Breathing rooms.
Ways of gathering with art, land, pedagogy, and one another—without rushing toward outcomes.


  • First Saturdays of the Month

  • January – Weathering Change: Seasons of a Teaching Life

  • February – Who Gets to Rest?
    March – What We Carry Into Classrooms

  • April – The Space Between Speaking and Listening

  • May – Margins as Method

  • June – Small Things with Great Love

  • July – Translation as Transformation

  • August – The Silence of Culture

  • September – Tangled Roots: Pedagogy and Personal History

  • October – Holding Space: Teaching Without Taking Over

  • November – The Weight of Warmth December – Graceful Exits, Gentle Endings

The Afterword Circle: Reflections with Art, Place & Transition (Quarterly Gwangju Art Discovery Circle)


KoreaMaria Tea Time Workshops (Quarterly workshops)

  • “Korean Philosophy & Pedagogy”  (February)

  • “Korean Philosophy as Cosmopolitan Method: A Conversation”

  • “Writing from the Margins: Post-Asia-as-Method and Lived Pedagogy

  • “The Temple and the Threshold: Place-Based Teaching Practices”


“Meet-Me-in-the-Middle” Korean + theory/philosophy group (Quarterly travel events with readings, calligraphy/writing, art sketchbook)

  • “Empty Fullness: The Wisdom of 여백” (March)

  • “The Shape of Reverence: 공경 in Everyday Encounters”

  • “Flowing Without Forcing: 무위 and the Practice of Letting Be”

  • “Face and Feeling: 체면, 감정, and the Stories We Don’t Say”

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