Just checking in...

So, the retreat was the best ever.
They are such a happy group, and really treat themselves well, and want a lot of time to talk and catch up.
So, for instance, when we are supposed to start on Friday night, at 7:00, at 7:15 I invite them to make their way from the dining room to our meeting room in their own time. A little after 7:30, we start.
For the first part of the evening, we did an icebreaker with two boxes of Table Topics. You are supposed to pick a card from this cube, and answer it. I thought they should pick two cards and then choose the question they liked the best. Of course, some people had to take 15 cards just to find a question they liked. The second part of the evening I talked some about the concept of blessing, and then I had invited them to bring one word to the retreat to use as a blessing word. They wrote their words on note cards, and then we built an altar space with them. Lovely.

The next morning we did talk about being originally blessed, being in the image of God, and shining the god spark within (we talked about the Kabbala teaching on the divine spark the night before. They broke into small groups and had questions to talk about, and then the second hour and a half we made blessing bowls. Coolest idea ever--I knew I wanted them to make these bowls, but was struggling with the medium. I wanted to do recycled materials, but the first bowls I made from that were not all that attractive.

So then, I bought some plain ceramic rice bowls, and asked everyone to bring tissue paper, beautiful paper, and perhaps quotes or blessings they might want to adhere without decoupage to their bowls. It was a fantastic project--one woman made it for her new baby granddaughter for a blessing, etc. I will post some pix on fb later. Then--I had cut up some heavy scrap booking paper--beautiful on one side, and blank on the other--smaller than business cards, and had everyone write their word 35 times. SO then, everybody had a set of the words that
were brought to the retreat! They can put them in their bowls, or somewhere else.

We had another small group after lunch, and then closing worship.

Anyway, it was great, and now today I am having a bed party.
:-)
Love you!

There's more, but the spirit of the group this year was extra magical.