Connections

Last Saturday was our Meeting's annual retreat, which I helped plan. I'm writing what will seem like a seriously self-involved post about it. This is partly because I am, in fact, self-involved. But I also want to respect the confidentiality of others, so I'm only relaying my own experiences here.
Our theme was Connections, and we had the day to explore the many connections in our lives: to the Meeting, to the Earth, to our work, families, friends, pets, avocations... We opened with a brief period of silent worship. Well, as we had managed somehow to set off the smoke alarm in the kitchen that was locked (!), it was only theoretical silence. I closed worship, announced the flow of the day, and explained our opening game. Borrowing an activity that I often use to open the school year with my students, we divided into 4 groups of 10 or so folks and made a web with yarn. The first person held onto the end of the yarn with one hand and threw the ball of yarn with the other hand to another person. That person held onto the strand with one hand, while throwing the ball to a third person. We kept doing that until everyone had caught the yarn at least once. When a person pulled on a string, everyone could feel it. We then walked our webs to back to the center of the room, laying them on top of each other, while singing a chant I learned from Betsy Rose (who set this poem by Rumi to music):

Come, come, whoever you are
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving
Ours is no caravan of despair
Come, yet again, come

This was thankfully the conclusion of my mistress of ceremonies duties. Next, Catharine led us through a guided meditation, and then we went to our worship sharing groups. Our queries were: What connections are most important in your life right now? How do you see your connection with the Meeting?
I love worship sharing: The process of sitting in silence with others, the tender listening that makes people feel safe enough to be vulnerable with one another, the gift of another person's message that speaks to my condition. Even though I helped write the queries and they had been percolating a bit in the back of my mind, new and surprising thoughts came to me. I found myself thinking especially of my connection to my dad, and how after he died, I felt so adrift, like I might float off the Earth. Part of the reason I joined the Meeting was that people treated me so lovingly during this time. But the other part was that I needed to belong, to be bound to a community. Another thought that surprised me a bit was how integrated and yet distinct all my connections feel. My work in schools, singing Sacred Harp, being part of my Quaker Meeting, my friendships, birding and hiking, they all feel of a whole to me. They're all things I feel called to do, all laboratories of faith. However, the people that I know in each of those disparate yet unified communities don't cross over. I find myself missing my Quaker friends while I'm singing, my teacher friends in Meeting, my friend Beth who lives on the wrong coast while I'm doing just about anything...
After lunch, we got to do activities: movement, more worship sharing, poetry, and my choice, collage. I love doing a collage in a group. People who don't consider themselves artistic, and start out being very nervous, end up making beautiful stuff. And I love how it surprises you: the art you start out to make is not what you end up with, ever. Our facilitator, Biliana*, gave us the assignment to make a map of our connections: the ones we have now, and the ones we desire to have. Mine is posted above. Part of this collage was conscious: I planned to put an open heart in the center, I was looking for a yoga image, near the end I was looking for a Georgia O'Keefe bone or skull to represent Sacred Harp (lots of songs about death, you know. Wonderful for fostering a sense of perspective). I also planned to have the yarn connect each image to the heart as at least a nod to the map assignment. My subconscious had a field day, though. Lots of nature images were a reminder that that is a connection I've allowed to atrophy a bit. The yoga position I found is the one I hate most, and yet it echoes the bridge, and I've certainly been in a bridging position in and between my various communities. What I noticed first about the cacti were that they were prickly (which was how I was beginning to feel at being so overextended). Later I noticed that they are filled with water, and are very hardy. My fussy plan to have each area attached by yarn was quickly laid aside when I realized I could just wrap the entire collage, thereby echoing our webs of the morning and my comments in worship sharing about needing to be bound to Earth.
We closed with silent worship, in the midst of all our collages. In the last message, the speaker again sang our song from the morning. It is a song that I have sung in my heart so often in Meeting. It delights me to know that it is a song in the hearts of many other Friends now.
*Biliana is a wonderful artist. Check out her work at www.stremska.com.