Back in Action (continued)

Alright, I’m awake and, as I promised, it’s time to finish my previous post.

The leaders were divided into five teams and, before we even got to Hidden Acres, the first element of the competition began: a crossword puzzle whose answers were found along the drive to the retreat centre. I forget how many clues there were, but we got all of them! Woohoo!

Our team (Team 2 or ‘Lettuce’) made a song to the tune of the Adam’s Family, and I had a good time soaking Andrew 🙂 There were a couple of sessions in the afternoon about realigning ourselves as a church. There were some group exercises meant to generate some short-term goals and identify areas of tension that prevent us from going where we want to go. While some people were idealistic, some were surprisingly pessimistic! It was very interesting to see and hear both sides of the spectrum, and maintaing some sort of balance was challenging. All told, I think that the important problem areas were pointed out, and the job now is to get working on them!

Like I mentioned, there was karaoke, perhaps my favourite thing to do in the whole wide world. And by favourite thing, I really meant least favourite thing. We had to do it, for the good of the team, so we got up and sang “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” At least it wasn’t a Backstreet Boys song, right? Right. Kat says that I seemed really “into” karaoke. That’s one big lie and I’m glad that I was far away from the microphone.

That night, I borrowed Paddy’s guitar and played for a good number of hours.. a group of us went to the recreation room and hung around. Some of us played guitar, some played cards, and all of us chatted with each other. Slowly, people skirted off to bed and, by the time 3:00 am rolled around, the last couple of us went too.

8:00 am. I’m awake. Ugh, that sucks. Shut down.

9:15 am. Hebron’s wandering the halls: “Room service! Room service!” I’m awake. Ugh. Breakfast time. I trudge my way upstairs, with my eyes half open, and my feet reluctant to move further away from the bed. I felt like death.

It didn’t take long for me to get some workable amount of consciousness… and good thing! The morning’s activity was walking the labyrinth, which is a guided path (i.e. no dead ends) with various stations along the way. Before we went in, there was time to do some personal reflection and spiritual meditiation. I took the Bible and I read the section about how the Bible came out. I’ve learned some things about it, but it was interesting to read how the most important book in my life was compiled.

Some of the stations were really good, and I think they seriously affected me. In particular, I liked one station where we cast a stone into a pool of water. The stone represented something that we wanted to let go, and the act of placing it in the water symbolizes us relinquishing it.

I spent about 80 minutes in the labyrinth because lunch was shortly afterwards; had I had more time, I probably would have been there for maybe two hours. After lunch, a group of us went outside to play around in the snow. The conditions made for really good packing snow and, well, it doesn’t take a genious to figure out what we did. There was one last session that afternoon before we all went home exhausted (physically and mentally)!

I had a really good time with my friends from the Embassy; I think we all took steps to grow as a team, and some of us had an opportunity to get to know each other better. Tonight, I really hope that the fruits of our efforts will begin to show…

Anyhow, I must apologize for the somewhat boring post. It was more a recounting of what I did than a reflection of what happened. I’m still mentally toast, and my creativity is somewhat lacking right now. I also have a substantial amount of reading to do and, subconsciously, I think that I’m going quick so that I can get to that soon! Another thing that I want to do in the near future is to have one of those good, reflective posts. Hang tight.

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