Live-Blogging Kairos: Live the 4th (Sleep the 5th)

This is part of a short series of posts written while on a Kairos retreat with high school students. Click here for previous posts: Intro | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

The retreat ended on Friday night around 7ish. I fell asleep about 10:30pm. I woke up on Saturday at about 10:30am.

Kairos means "God's time," and the retreat invites its participants to embrace timelessness. The beauty of this thematic message is that Kairos never ends. Or as our retreat leaders put it, "I leave Lindenwood, but Kairos never leaves me."

The coherence of the Kairos message and the community atmosphere such an intensive retreat fosters helps sustain the retreat beyond the confines of particular days and times. At some point, the students and adults have to return to family and school life. Yet, the invitation from God is to keep it rolling.

On the morning of Day 4 and again later at afternoon Mass, everyone hears the story of the Transfiguration. Much like retreats, it is viewed as a "mountaintop experience." In the story, Jesus literally takes his friends up the mountain and shares with them an illuminating experience. As a result, his friends want to settle down and stay there rather than go back down the mountain.

As part of my homily as I presided over morning prayer, I harped on the final words of that passage: "So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant" (Mk 9:10).

The importance of Kairos isn't in guarding secrets and perpetuating a cult-like aura. Such behavior alienates and predisposes others to dislike Kairos before experiencing it.

The key is to internalize what you've experienced and to continue processing it with those who have been there with you. Jesus leads His disciples back down the mountain, but He doesn't tell them to forget what they saw. He continues to preach and to embody the reality which was manifested in His transfiguration.

Kairos, and similar "mountaintop" experiences, give us intense, profound reality that we respond to with great emotion. We shouldn't cast it aside as illegitimate. We shouldn't invalidate it for its extraordinary context. It's real. We must engage with it and enflesh what has brewed in our minds and hearts through loving action and deepened relationship.

Living it out can't be about going back, to be a Kairos leader or grow up to be a teacher that goes on Kairos. The true Kairos leader ultimately doesn't need the context of the retreat to lead. The real yearning for Kairos is satisfied by living out its message of authentic, vulnerable, loving relationship in everyday life.

The time, space, and context of retreat exist in order to teach us the power and reality of what happens when we're real with each other. The lasting effect comes in perpetuating such vulnerability beyond the confines of a retreat center and a retreat program.

I try to tread lightly when the students moan and groan about wanting to go back. I try to be gentle when reminding them that Kairos never ends, that the opportunity to continue living and feeling what they found there is right in front of them in everyday life, everyday situations, everyday relationships. 

Though their reaction doesn't always run quite as deep as I'd hope, it is beautiful to see that a real experience of relationship with peers can and does have a profound impact. The power that God has to move our hearts is incredible when we just get out of His way.

I was humbled by the absolute lack of complaints we heard from students about not having smartphones for four days or being on retreat while everyone else got a snow day. Their attentiveness and presence to Kairos was heart-warming and affirming - proof that God is alive and well in our hearts, and ready to do amazing things with us and for us.

Live-Blogging Kairos: Trust the 3rd

This is part of a short series of posts written while on a Kairos retreat with high school students. Click here for previous posts: Intro | Day 1 | Day 2

So to kick things off, there were no power outages today, so we had that going for us. But this morning, our retreat fell victim to every retreat's eventual nightmare - getting absolutely behind schedule.

Our student leaders are responsible for leading the small group discussions, which includes moving the group through the conversation at an effective pace and getting them back to the meeting room promptly for the next activity. This is especially important leading into meals, since there is a staff of people busting their tails to provide an enormous group a fresh, hot meal. It's not fun to roll in late to a meal and disappoint the people who are seeking to serve you.

In our case today, the leaders were being negligent about the clock - a great irony that faces Kairos leaders as they try to embody a retreat based on timelessness. We were late to thing after thing and despite the exhortations of our dear retreat director, the group was pretty unresponsive. Our schedule sluggishness luckily maxed out at being 15 minutes late to lunch, not terrible but still something to avoid.

Our director sought an explanation on why this was happening and how we could fix it, but the team - students and adults - was pretty speechless. I later told him that if I were directing I'd take each student leader aside and try to confront the issues in one-on-one conversations. The perspective I found here was seeing the strengths and weaknesses of two different formats for leadership teams.

Last year at my old school, when I went on Kairos as an adult with our Campus Minister directing, and when I went again as the director, we were pretty fast and loose, as a solid Kairos tradition was already in place. Our schedule was a moving target, shifting and sliding as we flew by the seats of our pants, reading and reacting to the group as we went.

I would flex things on the fly a little, texting out mass texts to my leaders to keep us on the same page; whether they checked those texts or even looked at the schedule were completely other stories. We kept our team meetings short and sparse, intended only really for brief prayers, opting instead for two slightly bigger recaps during the midday rec break and again after we sent the retreatants to bed. Each leader took turns calling the retreat to order, introducing speakers, giving instructions, and giving input to the team during our little meetings.

As a director, I still belonged to a small group and participated in the full schedule. It helped me keep the pulse of how that aspect of the retreat was going, and I relied on compiling everyone's input to stitch together an image of the retreat as a whole.

This year at my current school, we have to be much more rigid during the retreat, since we're in our first year; structure has to be established now from which we can grow in the future, or we can't gain real momentum. Our changes/revisions have to occur between retreats, not during, because we have to move more carefully in the moment. We are also beholden to a very strict retreat center staff that is very particular, so we aim to please in our manner and behavior.

Our leadership team is based in regular team meetings in which we review the schedule in bits every couple hours and do constant recaps of everyone's statuses. We are constantly looking to what the next few things are and seeking to smooth out our execution of the activities and movements of the retreat. Our director does not really belong to a small group and uses those parts of the schedule to do practical setup, liaise with the staff, and respond to other emergencies (more on that later). He relies on the input of his team members during these meetings to give him the grassroots info, while he watches the retreat as a whole from a wide lens.

Last year's way enjoyed greeter flexibility but suffered from a lack of structure; this year's way must attempt to follow a framework, which can be a struggle but often enhances the effectiveness of the retreat. Today, our team members were not responding well to the collaboration and conversation of the team meeting, going inside shells of avoidance.

Blessedly, though, the enforcement of the structure proved beneficial today. In large-group sessions, we share "reactions," where small groups send up volunteers to react to a particular talk or activity by reading a reflection they've written in their notebook. Yesterday, this session got out of control as several students improvised their remarks, many of which were unrelated to what was occurring on retreat and more so attempts to unburden themselves of heavy memories.

The sharing of emotionally challenging things - abuse, suicidal thoughts/suicide attempts, family issues, etc. - is helpful because, "A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved; a joy shared is a joy doubled." Getting it out lessens one's own burden and gives others the chance to support you, but there was no context for some of these admissions. And Kairos cannot become a therapy session because no therapist is present. We refer certain students and their admissions to the school counseling staff on every retreat not just for legal reasons but also because they need help and support that exceeds what the hugs and back-pats of friends can provide.

Today, our session lacked that emotional extremity, which was actually good. The reactions had to come from written reflections, and what ensued was more genuine, real, and legitimate than the reactions that sprung from the spontaneous desire to unload an unprocessed, un-reflected-upon memory. Whereas yesterday, students shot up to hug the emotional speakers, today we asked them to reserve their hugs for afterward. When the session ended, a beautiful scene unfolded: students intentionally sought out particular peer-speakers to console them, ask questions, reassure them. The affirming interactions were so much more measured and precise, a welcome improvement over the seemingly obligatory parade of embraces from the day before.

The structure set the group free. By having to stick to premeditated remarks, students had to be themselves rather than trying to meet or exceed the emotion and intensity of another person. They reacted as themselves, and their remarks were met with a more authentic reaction from their peers after the session.

The challenge today was an unfortunate call our director received from some folks back home. One of our leaders was losing her grandma, and her family needed to come get her and bring her home, cutting her retreat leadership a bit short. Luckily, our director made free time around the lunch hour and assisted the family in making arrangements while supporting our leader, who would now have to leave prematurely. His flexibility in prioritizing this young person and the family set a beautiful example to the team. The subsequent shuffling of responsibilities is never easy, but a good team becomes resilient in the face of a challenge.

"Trust the 3rd" reflects the bonds and comfort that really emerge by this point in Kairos. You can see it small groups, in the body language of the students, and in the participation levels in group activities. You can also see it at meal time, and I got a big dose of it first-hand.

I've been poking fun at a young lady in my group, to whom I gave a silly nickname based on her name. She has embraced it and now uses it to refer to herself in the 3rd person. Her friends invited me and our retreat director to sit with them at lunch. As we bandied about over the silliness of her nickname and potential nicknames for the other girls, the conversation moved down quite silly roads as we all got our laugh on.

For some reason, one girl barked. Another claimed she could make a dolphin noise. So I felt compelled to admit my ability to make a very shrill, high-pitched dog bark. They put me on the spot to do it, offering the dolphin noise as a trade, so of course, I barked at them. Thus, a chorus of dolphin and other inhuman noises proceeded to come forth from everyone's mouth. My stomach ached with convulsions of laughter, as even our dear priest-director was in the throes of the giggles as well.

Whether it's vulnerability in group conversation, courage to pray aloud, or the willingness to squeal like a dying dolphin, today is indeed Trust the 3rd.

Live-Blogging Kairos: Cry the 2nd

This is part of a short series of posts written while on a Kairos retreat with high school students. Click here for previous posts: Intro | Day 1

After a half day on Day 1 (students come from a partial school day) to kick things off, Day 2 really kicks Kairos into gear. The retreatants have stayed the night at the retreat center, and are starting to feel more at home with their groups, their leaders, and their surroundings. The newness of the center hasn't worn off though, and it comes in handy to pair with the trust that's budding in the individuals and the collective group.

"Cry the 2nd" refers to some activities that can evoke deep emotion. Our chaplain, who directs our Kairos retreats, likes to say, "On Kairos, there are no secrets, just surprises. There is nothing secretive about God's love." I think he's right on, and so if you have yet to attend a Kairos, I'll omit many of the specifics of the schedule and activities to maintain the confidentiality and surprise.

Today, we awoke to an interesting email: the (hopefully final) snowstorm of this winter that hit the midwest laid enough snow on Northwest Indiana to force our school's sixth snow day of the year. So while the almost 500 students not on Kairos stayed home, our 47 students were in the early parts of a lengthy retreat. I wondered if this was something we should try to keep under wraps, but before I could even dialogue, word had gotten around. Thank God the kids brushed it off; no one really even talked about it at all today. Props to the kids for their presence, to the leaders for setting a positive example.

In ministry, the administration/organization/planning side of things often involves the futile quest for perfection. We try to organize ourselves maximally ahead of these big Masses, retreats, and gatherings to minimize the confusion when things go live. The beauty comes when the first mistake is made, when the first bump in the road interrupts the smooth ride. That imperfection reinfuses humility and refocuses everything and everyone on growing closer to God and one another.

We start each full day of Kairos with morning prayer - a lectio divina style Gospel reading and reflection followed by brief homiletic input by an adult and a closing prayer. To add some continuity around the themes that change with each day, we use the same songs each morning as bookends to the service: "The Day is Dawning" by Jill Phillips and "Say" by John Mayer.

This morning, the snowstorm knocked out the main power to our building, leaving us to rely on a generator that only powers lights and heat, and not wall outlets that power sound systems and boomboxes.

One of my deputized responsibilities is to take care of the first things each morning. As breakfast ended and morning prayer neared, I gathered with our student leaders to decide how to handle the music. iPods and cell phones were too quiet on their owns to play the song to everyone, so we settled on an interesting idea: put the iPod on the altar, jack up the volume, and let it be the support to us, as we attempt to be the choir and lead everyone in singing together. So the seven leaders and I sheepishly but enthusiastically sang our hearts out, praying our strength wouldn't fail. And it sorta worked.

Then one of my fellow teachers began presiding over morning prayer while I scrambled to try to enact an idea that lightbulbed into my head: I bring my guitar on Kairos to play the songs associated with my talk and to play in the background of some evening prayer services. So I ran to my room, got my guitar, and looked up "Say" on Ultimate-Guitar, praying that John Mayer's propensity for choosing wild tablature patterns would be merciful on my adequate sight-reading abilities. But the internet was down!

So I turned the WiFi off on my phone and slogged through the rural 3G signal to grab a screen shot of the "Say" chords. I quickly transposed it and slid the capo up to sound more like the recording; I made it back just as morning prayer ended, and I was scribbling down the last chords as I walked toward the altar. I slung my guitar over my shoulder and asked if I could attempt to embarrass myself a bit. I asked the leaders to come back up and be the choir with me. I told the group that we were just gonna go for it and that we were a bit scared, so we'd need their help.

Through the grace of God, the mostly-four-chord song came out pretty clean. With sturdy support from the leader-choir, the retreatants latched on to the simple, catchy, and inviting repetition of "Say." What a beautiful accident it was.

It brought me back to last year, to the only Kairos I've directed thus far, while I worked at a school in California. On the morning of Day 3, I went to the bathroom as our first speaker took the podium. When I came back, rather than hearing a her opening song via a booming stereo and timid voices underneath, I happened upon an amateur but solid a cappella rendition of "I Won't Give Up" by Jason Mraz. While I used the facilities, my DJ-leader couldn't get the sound to fire up, so they simply went for it sans music.

The problem and fix was simple: the master volume on the sound board was all the way down, a bonehead error by us. But the "mistake" was beautiful.

When we get out of our own ways, the bumps in the road can help us find good paths. By being open to the potential for goodness in what transpires, we're letting God do what he does best. Evil tries to rear its head and turn us from our trajectory toward God. When silly things like this happen and we're tempted toward frustration, stress, doubt, and anger, the devil is scoring points on us.

We shouldn't seek out problems, issues, and frustration. However, when it presents itself, we need to keep good humor and race God, running alongside Him to discover the good that is waiting to emerge from apparent evil or obstacles. Openness to the unexpected outcome is a big help. If I woke up this morning and told myself everything would be perfect, I'd never have had the experience of being the accidental front-man to a John Mayer religious tribute band.

Let me close with this: the snowstorm that hit didn't treat us too violently out here in North Central Indiana. Most of the snow fell overnight, so we simply awoke to fresh powder. The sidewalks and streets nearby were slushy, and the grounds around the center were newly snow drifted.

Our "chapel" is really just a conference room with added ambo and altar, but the beauty is that, rather than stained glass or altar piece, we have humongous picture windows that share with us a view of the woods and lake behind the center. The backdrop to our prayer and liturgies is a stunning portrait of Creation.

This morning, the impact of this tableau was especially stark, as the fresh white snow reflected the scant rays of sunlight that worked through the clouds. Rather than the faint glimmers of perma-cloud sun, we were bathed with luminous, bright light.

Despite the stark, lingering presence of winter, we were being almost blinded by reflected light. God's Creation was openly receiving the light from above and reflecting it onward to everything it could. Where one would expect simply grey tones, darkness, and cold from winter, the snow was profoundly bright.

What a beautiful image for us to reflect on while we retreat - how can we more fully and completely reflect the light that God shines for us and in us?!

Live-Blogging Kairos: Doubt the 1st

This is part of a short series of posts written while on a Kairos retreat with high school students. Click here for previous posts: Intro

On the last Kairos, I was in perhaps the most un-open (is that a word? I'm making it one) small group I've ever been a part of on retreat. They exhibited many of the classic symptoms - short, brusk answers; leaning on the going-in-a-circle pattern of answering; short attention span for the topic at hand; and, great enthusiasm for tangents. My disappointment was less with these typical signs and more with the tightlippedness.

It was the classic case of no one taking a risk; everyone kept things to themselves or spoke in broad generalities. Trust never developed, and I watched my dear student leader try her heart out to make the group comfortable while also seeking to compassionately challenge them. She even gave a heartfelt and appropriately worded pep talk about openness, but to no avail. I can't remember how many times I put a hand on her shoulder or brought her in for a hug to affirm her for her effort and tact as a leader, even if it didn't produce the results we craved.

Often, the temptation with Kairos is to want tears, sometimes to the point of equating dry eyes with failure. Crying is a reputed part of the experience, and words gets around between kids who've gone and kids who will go soon. Students come in with mixed emotions about the potential certainty that they will weep.

Some leaders even go so far as to treat tears as currency - efficacy as a facilitator and community builder measured in tears? It's a dangerous temptation that boxes group members into a specific response that isn't universal - some cry, but others think, breathe, journal, shut down, or even laugh.

Openness to openness is required. You have to let your group speak for itself so each group member can be authentic rather than conform to a reputed expectation.

On this retreat, the small group I belong to is gently engaged. Some leaders boast about tears on night one, and I will admit it happened in our group. But in this instance, it was a personal moment, based more on the young man than on anything that had sprouted in our group as of yet. Seeing a teenager emote in this way is powerful, especially when authentic vulnerability is so obscured by the personae we perpetuate on social media for ourselves in this era. In our case tonight, a young man regretted not being able to say good bye to now-deceased loved ones. Rather than the classic waterfall of tears, this young man was physically overcome by his love for his family members, to the point where his body struggled to let the emotion manifest physically. It was beautiful to see him let such reality out of the depths in his heart.

The first day is so full of expectations, whether high or low, met or unmet. As a Mentor-in-Faith at Notre Dame Vision, I would talk with other mentors about how to break the ice; our conference began with dinner with our groups of 7-8 teenagers gathered from disparate parts of the country. My friend, Jason, acted as if he was far-and-away the coolest one in the dining hall to establish undeniable credibility with the teens. My friend, Scott, would make sure he was the most awkward one in the group; that way, none of his group members could feel like they were the weirdest one there. I would try to keep a steady flow of uninvasive conversation going over food and always made a point to encourage group dessert; I hoped the slow but steady stream of chit-chat would set a comfortable tone and take the pressure off anyone from feeling like they had to be super-outgoing.

Teenage leaders often obsess early and often over the quality of their group, sometimes even indulging in humble brags about the early returns. We even did a brief check-in on how things were going just thirty minutes in to the retreat. On the last Kairos, early comfort evaporated into detached observation as our group opted to watch the retreat happen rather than make it profoundly their own. In this case, the group has built on the initial laughter and camaraderie to put themselves out there.

As amazing as it is to see how differently two groups can approach a similar experience, it's neat from this perspective to see also the impact it has on leaders. I was flabbergasted by the stonewalling my previous group members undertook, as they resisted every trick in the leader book and insisting on an arms' length experience. This easily could have demoralized my student leader, but she was wonderfully resilient and likely learned more from their unresponsiveness than other leaders did from their well-invested groups. In today's case, I see my student leader gently and calmly coming into her own as she feels the group out. The group's open willingness to share themselves doesn't necessarily make her job easier, but it changes what her job is. Whereas last time, the leader's job was to emphasize the trust and community as the means to foster sharing, this time my leader will need to be a good traffic cop.

Good small-group leaders have to know when to tell people to go and stop. Sometimes it involves follow-up questions and a bit of probing; other times, it requires just simple affirmation and gratitude. It's just a case of blowing the whistle, putting up your hand, and waving others through as you invite the group to deeper sharing and listening to learn about themselves, others, and God.

Kairos is set up to invite students to doubt on the first day, centered on the beginnings of a quest for self-knowledge. On this retreat, we don't have any big personalities in the retreatant group or on the leadership team, so it projects to be smoothish sailing. It feels like most of our leaders and many of the retreatants are going to bed tonight feeling optimistic and understatedly pumped, but doubt is an inherent part of looking forward. Let's sacramentalize that - how can God speak to us in our hope as well as our doubt?

Live-Blogging Kairos: Getting Started

Being a Campus Minister, I go on a lot of retreats. And though my preference would be to enter into them as fully as I can, the duties of supervising/chaperoning, or sometimes directing, can preclude me from that fuller investment.

I am here at a retreat center with my school's chaplain, who directs our Kairos retreats, another teacher who drove our supply car, and the seven student leaders who are tending to the final particulars - hanging room signs, setting up our meeting spaces, etc. This is my third Kairos of the year, in addition to a senior overnight and three school-day retreats.

For those who need a little introduction, Kairos is a four-day retreat named after the Greek word for "God's time." The concept of God-time rather than calendar-time/clock-time calls Kairos retreatants to embrace timelessness, to give up clocks and cell phones, and trust their leaders as they spend four days and three nights investigating relationships with self, others, and God. The extended length coupled with lots of community building leads to deeper trust and openness between teenagers than in everyday life or even than on other retreats.

I went on Kairos as a senior in high school, and then led it later that year. As a teacher last year at a high school in California, I went as an adult leader, and later in the year, I directed a Kairos, completing the Kairos superfecta. This year, I find myself in a new role I barely knew existed - somewhat of a deputy director.

I am working in support of a chaplain who has a wealth of knowledge, wisdom, and experience directing retreats, specifically Kairos retreats. He does a fabulous job when he can be with us, but he works only part-time at the school, spending most of his time in his ministry as a parish associate pastor and only coming full-time for the retreat itself. To keep things rolling strong, I am deputized to do a small-group training workshop and a talk-writing workshop with our leaders as part of their preparation; then on retreat, I sort of sit at his right hand and do some of the auxiliary errands to move things along. I am the Kairos first mate, hearing my chaplain's comments and concerns and helping plot the best courses of action.

Meanwhile, I still give a talk and still am part of a small group in support of a student leader. And more importantly, I'd love to be mingling with the students and getting to know them in the context of this immersive retreat. I am pulled between two worlds, two necessary and central ministries, and as a result, gain a new view of Kairos.

This perspective of a deputy director, so to speak, is simultaneously frustrating and enlightening. I bear little to none of the responsibilities of steering the whole ship but am involved in all of the minutiae and scrutiny. From this viewpoint, drawing also on the six Kairos retreats I've already experienced, I am going to attempt to share some of my thoughts as they arise at the end of each of our four days on Kairos. I appreciate the irony of coming to my laptop on the evenings of a retreat, but given my repetitions through this process and the value that writing holds for me as a processing tool, I think it's fitting for where I am personally and as a pastoral minister. Hope you'll enjoy!

A brief reflection to begin: this morning my stack of Kairos retreat permission slips contained 39 forms, one short of the holy grail of completion. Despite an announcement yesterday and the form's directive that it be turned in last week, one student remained delinquent. Then this morning, mere minutes before the bell rang to start the day, in he walked, permission slip in hand, to complete the total set. What glory indeed.

Meanwhile, in the past few days, 3 of my 57 seniors turned in their forms for their retreat, coming up at the end of the month. Their form is due 10 days from now, yet three of them saw fit to get it in and done early. What delight it brings a ragged minister to see such initiative.

I couldn't help but think of Jesus and the Lost Sheep. The shepherd loves his whole flock, but will readily set the 99 aside that remain nearby to seek out the one who is lost. Chances are, the kids who turn forms in early will be open-minded and primed to give retreats an honest effort; meanwhile, the last-minute guys might be a bit more scattered and unfocused toward it. At the end of the day, I would have chased him down to get that form, lest he not be able to come on retreat at all. Now that he is found, all the sheep are together, and the shepherd can resume treating them with equal and deep love.

Here on K3, it's almost time to assemble the flock in full and hand them on their student leaders shepherds.