Stones on the Road

So, a week ago, I led our church women's retreat. It began with registration around
4:00 (read wine and cheese hour between the lines, because I missed that but will make note of that next year) Dinner at 6:30, and then a group gathering that night, followed by more wine and cheese into the wee hours of the night. We had 40 women at this lovely retreat center in our city, which made it possible for some women to attend only Friday evening; and others only Saturday. I completely overplanned, but it was o.k. It was the best retreat ever...because it
EMERGED and EVOLVED in the way it needed to.
I provided a gentle structure,
and women were able to move around it in the way they needed.

So, Friday evening, we built cairns in small groups, marking where God's presence had been with us lately, like the Israelites....and the parting of the river as Joshua led them into the promised land, where they built a cairn/altar of twelve stones from the river bed they passed through to Gilgal.
After sharing, we brought the cairns back to the altar space in the middle of the room, and had a meditation...silent, and then lit candles for prayers, and sang the Tallis Canon in round. It was very lovely.

Saturday morning, I plans to continue this theme, but since we had 40 women, three generations of fabulous ladies, someone said, can we just sit in one large group, and share about ourselves--our names, a little something of who we are, and how we ended up in this church? Even though a 40 person sharing time sounded like a nightmare to me, we went with it. What magic! What blessing! That Holy Spirit sure does work wonders, huh?

We continued with the stone theme thru the afternoon...and pack-up and left. Our church isn't that big,so to have 40 women was to have about 1/3 of the church present.

It was wonderful...and I just want this post to be my stone of remembrance and gratitude for that time, so I can return to it (especially in the lean, wilderness times of ministry).

So, I set my stone here as remembrance.
Amen.