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Our cohort bonded immediately as trainer Fr. Christopher Halliday (Zooming in from Manchester, England) led us through a number of gathering questions in a row. Who are you and where are you? Tell us something about your Efm group. How are you feeling about this training session right this minute? What's something about you that people wouldn't know from looking? (We found all kinds of personal connections through geography, surgery experiences, music. Surprise: Ben(nie) Green was the model for GI Joe's Tuskegee Airmen action figure.)
Christopher asked for a volunteer to guide a TR that would lead to a covenant. With no more preparation than that, Bryson read a portion of scripture about making a covenant, asked us what jumped out, and we were off.
For a break, we had another Gathering Question: Show us an object in the room you're in and tell us what's important about it. I zoomed in on souvenirs of the Sondheim Summer at Kennedy Center in 2002, and said it was the place I discovered my tribe. Another surprise: Christopher, Katie, and Ben are all Sondheim fans. Ben was at the Sondheim Summer, too.
Another GQ: our favorite example from the Culture source? By the end of that, we had discovered many shared enthusiasms that turned up again in later discussions -- Frederick Buechner, songs of John Prine, Black Gospel Quartets.
Over the three days, as we shared three angles on our spiritual autobiographies (through different experiences of "otherness") we deepened community. I also stored up vicarious experiences -- Black Baptist church made up of mostly relatives, "coming home" to the Episcopal Church on a whim during a road trip, a potty-mouthed Australian nun leading a Buddhist retreat in Tibet, warm hospitality among Southern bigots, and the young father in a secular community who has concluded what to pass on to his children: the stories of our faith, and a comfort with the idea of ritual, so that they will at least be open to faith in the future (while it's "weird" to their school friends). Also: One of us told of applying improv technique ("Yes! And...?") when a mentally disturbed man singled them out to hear his ramblings. The following day, the man came back to our friend to say, perfectly lucidly, "Remember when you talked to me? I'll always remember that!" (Our words or even listening can have an effect.)
Ben and I led a TR that went very well, derived from the list of things we'd shown on camera the day before. As a group, we went to "the cozy shirt." While we accumulated many positive aspects of the cozy shirt, an undercurrent of loss emerged (as, for instance, Ben's green cap from the family reunion where he last saw his mother and brother). Redemption was found in giving away the old clothes, or finding new uses for them. (Tom's quilt, visible behind him, seemed to me a ready-made image.)
For her TR, Katie brought a loopy realistic painting that involved a jacked shirtless Gen Z man fording a nun on his back through a river, while she battles vicious pink flamingoes with a violin bow. Katie closed the file and asked our immediate reactions before she opened it again for us to ask questions that arose. From that we found a theme - world inverted -- and came up with an image: a triangle balanced on one point. Another TR kindled by an ICE incident led to the image of "The Shrug." A mind map around the word "Passion" (thanks to Bryson and James) led to the image of lightning. Tom sent us this image to wrap up most of these:
Note to self: When a person finished their autobiography, they invited someone else to speak: that signaled the end of the story. The person who accepts the invitation begins by thanking them and offering a period of silence to let the story sink in. Only at the end of the session did Christopher say the prayer "For what has been..."
Application at the end of a TR can be a single sentence: "I think... so I will...."
TR: Christopher tells his seminar NOT to bring in a religious work of art for a TR: "It's already been done for us."
Prayer of Sir Francis Drake brought to us by our fellow trainee Frances.
Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little;
When we arrive safely because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes;
To push into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love.
This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.Amen.
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