Yesterday, I said that I would look for ways words help me follow the lead truth offers. I listened to myself speak, for at least part of the day, and so learned a piece of what I need for the coming leg of my journey. This is how the insight came to me.

Last year I led a retreat with a friend. This past weekend, I led one by myself. I was indirectly supported by the priest present, but her leadership role was contained in our closing healing service. At the conclusion of the retreat, I felt spent, probably more spent than necessary.

So, when Father Mark, my priest asked me how the retreat went, I said, "I was really spent." Then, in my mind, I heard the beginning of the next sentence I was about to speak. Does this happen to you? I am talking while forming the thoughts for the next sentence, and in that moment, I have the chance to edit those words. This time I consciously let them come out as they had come up within me. So I continued speaking saying something like, "I think it cost me something to spill my guts." I didn't want to sound that out of control, that messy, that unprofessional, but more than my desire to attempt to control my image, I want to be free and to be free I know that honest vulnerability is required. So I let myself say that in some fashion I had spilled my guts as the leader of a retreat. 

I believe a retreat leader's role is to provide a holding space for others to be present to whatever the Spirit is stirring within them. Retreats are not meant to provide one person with a captive audience for the unintegrated and irresponsible parts of their personality. Although I think I could take my confession too seriously, I am not. I believe that owning the fact that in some way I had spilled my guts, in saying just a little to much,or too graphically, I can learn the fine balance between too much and too little vulnerability as a retreat leader.

So I am studying the art of being present with others in this role. 

"Oh send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling." Psalm 43:3

One way to follow the lead truth offers is by paying attention to the words we use. What happens when we are careful to be truthful? 

Recently, I had a Sunday off from teaching in our Godly Play class at St. Luke's Episcopal Church. After church, I asked a child how her Godly Play class had been. She said, "We didn't have it, because nobody came." I thought, "That's not right -- you came." Because I have learned to value the path that speaking truth opens, I was able to somehow make a break in the conversation at that point and her mother, who overheard us talking, explained that she had joined the older children for Sunday school.

Does it mean anything that she could not count herself, that she did not say something like, "I joined the older class because I was the only one to show up for ours" or "nobody else came but me, so I went to the other class?" If truth will lead us, I believe that we will be more easily led if we practice speaking truthfully. As adults, we can help the children rely on truth as a gift or tool of God, by speaking accurately, even when we think it does not matter or maybe especially when we think it cannot matter.


I will look for an example of learning to speak more truthfully myself today. Somehow, you know how humans are, I more easily remember the errors of others! 

I have a new lap top, a MacBook. I am learning to use it, to integrate the stuff of past computers, and to play with what I find. Here is a photograph taken by Molly Kunselman a few years ago, that signifies the joy I receive in caring for the smallest seeds of new life.