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?