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.
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