I prepare for ages before running/leading an open group work session.
Regular blogger students will have picked up some of the prep and process which I strive for.
I need to be tuned to the context. What the vibe and the attendance will be ...... and thats a laugh when you work with those who have special needs - a range of!...... Where are they at, and what is the next step that I can encourage and facilitate them to explore.
I usually have a hand built handout which feeds individual souls. That paper tool needs designing. Then, how to process it through to a positive end. I think about that and make notes to myself. Thinking of every angle and every possible scenario.
Feelings ...........right now ........ I have them. Sometimes erupting from every pore. Sometimes the feelings are under the surface and needing a pin to pick them out, ......... like I used to use on a pomegranate when I was a kid. Every little module needs to be dug out and examined before eating or understanding.
Such, the latter, is now.
A group moving around, sometimes hidden from me but engaging in the discussion. Some big story tellers who will roll away with length of permitted. Some fantastic personalities. Some great wisdom pouring out of such young lips. I think the big thing I am looking at now was my facilitation. I allowed the group to stay at the 'opinion level' rather than guiding the sharing to a level 4/experiential level.
I am pausing as I write this ..... pomegranate like. I think there was learning. No, I am sure. I believe that as individuals say something they are themselves learning. Their thoughts are not 'thought out' until they are 'spoke out'. Only when sharing in a group do they become reality. Otherwise it can stay undisclosed and undiscovered.
And the rest of us learn too.
So that is the aim, developmental stuff at the pace of they themselves. Hey hey. Feel a bit better now because I have searched the feelings and process.
In another module of life...............
I have been working on, mind and ears, the search for suitable music for a tv programme. As I listen on my laptop, as I type, there is some fantastic Norwegian jazz that is great moody stuff. That gives my my mind a holiday for a start.
“Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity . . . that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally.”
Frederick Buechner (Telling Secrets , 1991)
YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL
