Lessons Learned

I have come down off the Sewanee mountain top a humbled and changed person. Humbled in a way that was what I needed, and knew it was what I needed, and was glad to have had it happened. Changed because out of the experience, I made another step in the way of becoming more of the person I am meant to be.

The humbling came in attempting to lead my group in what is called "Theological Reflection". The best description I have for the experience is that I was like that winning coach of the sports team that makes into the big game... and then proceeds to change the team's winning game strategy thinking somehow this would be unexpected? Clever? Put the other team in chaos? And, instead, leads the team to a remarkable... and yet avoidable... defeat. I had allowed myself to be talked out of using a method of reflection that would have been easier for me, the extremely green, to handle. Instead, I went with something more difficult, and abstract, and ultimately, a potato too hot for me to hold my first time out of the box.

I also didn't thoroughly prepare what I was doing. A few notes to self jotted onto a notebook sheet is not exactly the way that I would have wanted to approach my inaugural TR presentation. My normal course of action would have had me working out the steps to their fullest, so I'd be ready to get up in front of the board and "do this thang!" But then brain took over from gut and said, "Oh, no. Don't you know that the group is supposed to be the ones doing this work, so don't do too much or you will be trying to control the group." (Wrong! I needed to have the sketch with the different categories... not just a few notes!)

My TR would be centered on an object from culture. I was going to use a debit/credit card... and that's what I'd been plotting and planning around. Instead, I opened my wallet and thought, "Oh, no. Don't use the debit card; use the key card and guide a discussion about security... a discussion you haven't even written any notes about at all! Oh, and while you're at it: switch which method you're going to use!"

In short, I was sticking nails in the tires of my car and after I'd made it through the first ten minutes of the presentation (which was going fine enough)... the blow-out started happening. I lost my place... tried to keep going... getting futher lost as another tire blew... until finally, I asked the group to help patch up these tires, so I could at least get us to the end. I was mortified. There is nothing in this world more humbling than to stand before a room full of people and have things fall down in a presentation when you're the one standing at the board.

I left that evening feeling like a moron and a failure. I felt as though I'd let everyone down: my group, my church, my mentor, my friends, me. At one point, as I was lying in bed replaying the afternoon meltdown, I questioned why I was doing this training. Why was I even in EfM? Should I bother to go in for the final day? Mind you, the group had been willing to take responsibility for their part in the blow out: my presentation was after lunch, they were tired and getting sleepy, and having a really hard time focusing on what we were doing. Some of the fellow trainees, recognizing that I was looking shaken, assured me that they thought it wasn't as bad as I was feeling, and that I would make a good mentor.

I didn't believe them.

And that was a big realization: even when I am being praised, I can't hear the appreciation through the noise in my own head. What was that song that had been in my head recently?

Open up, open up, baby, let me in.

You expect for me to love you

when you hate yourself my friend...la la la la la.

I woke up the next morning at about 5:45am, grabbed my journal, and sat out on the porch of the house where I was staying. After taking in a few breaths, doing my centering prayer, I sketched out my TR again... filling in the steps as I needed them to go in order to lead an effective and enlightening conversation. That made me feel a little better. Then I went to All Saint's Chapel for the 8am service. One of the stained glass windows was of my "power prophet" Jonah. We'd gone over Jonah during one of the earlier TR's, and again, I was struck with how readily I could see the things I do as being very Jonah-like. And here was a stained glsss window with Jonah. I heard the collect that I love... and took in the words of passing through those things temporal while not losing sight of that which is eternal. No truer words could have been spoken to me. And I was soothed by receiving the body and blood of Christ. Taking that in, on this particular morning, reminded me again that no matter what, I am always part of something bigger that will love me still... even when I stub the toe of Christ against the sin of pride and total self-reliance.

Going into class, I felt a little stronger and lighter than I'd been feeling. I thought, "Whatever will be will be. I have learned something valuable, and something more valuable than if I had come in here and blown everybody away with my brilliance."

How did it end? I was accredited as a mentor along with everyone else... and I was able to hear the words of appreciation from my trainer and the others: I was appreciated for my courage, my willingness to say 'I don't know', my deep spirituality, my eagerness to learn and attentiveness and willingness to learn, my contribution to the future of EfM and the hope that it gives for the continuation of the program and, most of all, that I am more capable than I give myself credit for being.

And so with all that, may I mark, learn and inwardly digest my weekend experience as I do my part to build up and support others in the body of Christ. Amen.