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.
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