Officers' retreat

North central Kentucky has been a historic center of U.S. Catholicism, going back to the 1800s. Twenty years ago, Mom, Penny, and I visited her friend John who was staying at the Gethsemane monastery, once the home of famed Thomas Merton. (Merton was a contemplative monk whose writings became well known in the 1960s - as he then turned to social activism - for civil rights and agaisnt the war - and then in favor of interfaith. Merton died mysteriously during a 1968 trip to Asia.) Monks there pray five times a day - the first time at 5:30 a.m. - and we joined John, who stayed there for a week checking it out, at a midday service. Nearby is a Catholic college and a nunnery, for the Sisters of Loretto (pictured above). There every January the session at our church has a retreat. This year it was a church officer retreat, as the deacons (in their second year of existence again) joined us. Soni and I took a wrong turn driving there, but wound up in a restaurant in Bardstown where, to our surprise, four other folks headed for the retreat were already dining. Soni drove aggressively so we could get there just 20-25 minutes late. But a group of four others was much later than us - more than 1 1/2 hours late. This group drove up to the entrance pictured above, but then decided they were hungry - and - having missed dinner at the nunnery cafeteria - decided to drive back to Bardstown. They used Ben's GPS device - which was new - which apparently doesn't work well in rural Central Kentucky - and so they ended up driving down dirt roads and through fields until some hour or two later they wound up in Bardstown (should have been 20-30 minutes). Then they ate and finally returned - but regaled us with funny/interesting stories about their trip late Friday. The nunnery is on a small campus proper within a much larger property. There is a very small pond and an old cemetery which I explored last year (it's usually cold when we're there). The men usually stay in a guesthouse, whose kitchen and living room are everyone's base of operations. Apparently the place is quite reasonable and we have this house to ourselves every year. The women usually stay in dorm rooms on the second floor of a building that houses many of the nuns - many - aging - essentially in a nursing home. Pictured below are our pastor, Jane, and a new deacon, Claudia, displaying the bowl of M and Ms (we brought snacks and Saturday PM dinner food to supplement are 3-5 meals in the cafeteria) that became a metaphor for the passage of time at the retreat.

Elaine, an elder who chairs the Nurture Council and so is one of our Chidlren's Fellowship bosses, and Claudia got there before us. Jane and the clerk of our session (the group of elders who serve both governing and spiritual funcitons), Peter, always get there earlier in the day - Jane to prepare, and Peter also to ride his bike around the area.

Sally is an elder, Kay is a deacon, and Ada is a new elder on session.

Below Jane was about to get us started as two of the elders and errant car riders - Anita and Marcus - surrounding Lowell, a deacon - converse and look on.

There are those M and Ms again.

Lowell, Marcus, and Elaine took a break in the kitchen too (Saturday AM?).

A top national church official who attends our church, Marcia, joined us Saturday AM to help lead us in a prioritizing activity, which worked out well. Marcia is mother of Kate, another of our Children's Fellowship bosses, and grandmother of Izabal, pictured in earlier blog entries.

In the whole group, individually, and then in small groups, we ended up taking some congregational visioning statements and trying to flesh them out - including IDing ways we do and don't follow them. The sheet pictured below was a small part of the products of that activity. (Click on it if you want to be able to read it.)

I tried to take head dshots of some of my colleagues - for one of my church blogs - but this didn't work out perfectly - partly because I was stil trying to get the hang of Mom's camera. I generally ended up using more extreme close-ups - but this is an early one I took of Elaine.

Elaine is a management consultant and mother of a middle-schooler who's done a good job with us before in a Marcia-like role. Below is another session colleague whose head shot I was trying to get - Ben, a Baptist minister, former mission worker in the Caribbean, and member of our church's youth team, who has recently helped plan our Guatemala trip and changed jobs within the local school system.

Below is Ben being playful with the lasagna that Elaine broght for us for Saturday PM dinner. Eventually Ben had trouble getting all of the lasagna into the oven. (Last year I spent our entire 3-hour Satuday afternoon break time locked (sort of) in a room with our pastor and 2-3 other elders trying to come up with part of the vision statement. This year I spent some time typing our notes and writing letters to church members who I'd be praying for this year - but I also got in a short time laying down in my room (instead of helping get dinner ready). Later Saturday PM I would get out my laptop to work in a report for work.)

Aside from the stories about Ben, Marcus, Anita, and Eva's drive and the visioning/prioritizing activity, a high point of the retreat was the always epic game of 25 Words or less that we played Saturday PM. This is a game in which there are two teams (in this case, elders vs. deacons), and each team sends a rep up front (sort of a la Family Feud). the two reps pull a list of five words or phrases that they must prompt their teammates to say (without geatures - the fewest one-word clues - wins - sort of the opposite of charades - but of course they can't use the actual words or any derivatives or variants of the words). Some of these words are proper nouns and/or phrases. A trick is that the two reps must bid on the list - whoever says they can get their teammates to come up with the words/phrases with the fewest one-word clues wins the bidding - and gets to try. (It's better if you've planned out all your clues even in advance of bidding.) The other team gets to do nothing - but gets a point if the other tries and fails. One other important feature of the game - team members can guess as many times as they want - supplying even hundreds of words and phrases in rapid-fire succession in response to a single clue. For a short time, the two teams monkey around with seven or eight words of clues. But quickly one has to bid as low as five to get a chance - and sometimes (as we shall see) even lower. All of this is a chance to have fun and to get to know each a little better - to explore intellectual and cultural interests of ours - words - and through a little competition. Our clerk of session, Peter, the bicylist whose kids we used to take to Sunday afternoon youth group, was a prime instigator of the game (he was disappointed when we didn't play long a year ago - but we surpassed even his expectations I suspect this time). Anita, a third-year elder, was also quite an expert. They led an opening round.

Deacon Lowell and Elder Laura were also both quite good in their own unique ways. Laura, also a librarian, got what I thought was the toughest word on my list during my last run.

Below is Soni, one of the deacons, who went with us to Guatemala, helping the deacons rack up some more points.

Claudia and Ben enjoyed strategizing and bidding against each other.

Deacon Andrea (sister of Elaine) and new youth Elder Ana considered the possibilities.

And so did Jane and Elaine.

And so did Carlos (our student pastor and Ana's father) and I. (Who took this picture?)

Peter and Ada (and then others) matched up as the game continued.

While some gave the clues, others guessed the words or watched the goings on (or signed thelr letters).

Below - with Anita and Laura - is Marcus (who works at UPS and is also a professional juggler). (When I joined the session as a new leder a year ago - I joked that I had always thought that I was too young to be an elder - but now - as it turns out - I was (almost) too old. Many of the newer elders are in fact younger than I am.)

One of the most memorable parts of the game when Lowell got hopelessly behind and quit trying to get his teammates to guess the words and phrases with the fewest clues. Instead, he began to adopt particularly funny gestures and clues.

Ada found Lowell's performance particularly funny.

By Saturday night, there were not very many M and Ms left.

Probably the high point of the retreat came relatively late during the 25 Words or less game when Pastor Jane went up to bid and went where no 25 Words or less team has successfully gone before: In order to get the chance, she said that her team of deacons plus Peter could guess all five words or phrases after hearing just FOUR one-word clues from her. She obviously had mapped all this out before she actually bid. Not only did her team come through, but they did so in record short time. And, so, at 10:37 a.m., our church set a Guiness Book of World Records mark for 25 Words or less run with the fewest word clues (four) and the shortest time.

A short time later, I tried to get our elders' team to replicate this. But we stumbled on "water animal' as a clue for three words, and "piranha" was not forthcoming. And the deacons won the game. After an even later night for some of us and a cafeteria breakfast for some, we got back together Sunday AM for worship in the familiar living room. That's Eva (a Toastmasters colleague of mine), an elder on session again (who - like Ada - has been an elder on session before) on the far left.

That's Carol, a new deacon, to Pastor Jane's left. (Three elders - Ben, Martha, and Stephen - weren't able to make it.)

After worship, we got ready to go (without needing to take any M and Ms back, you'll notice.).

I got a ride back with Ana and Carlos. Carlos had hoped to drive slow and enjoy the countryside, and perhaps to drive by Gethsemane. But I mentioned that I was interested in getting back to Louisville to participate in part of worship at another church (where our friend would be recognized) and so he picked up the pace and went home partly on the freeway instead of on Bardstown Road. Below is the pond down the hill from the house, across the street from the cemetery.

Au revoir, Loretto!

-- Perry